Category: Where to find information

'Religious Left' on the rise in response to President Trump's people and policies

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Are they organizing in your name?
This is a Reuters story highlighting the phrase ‘Religious Left’ something we have been talking about on these pages for years.  Entitled of course to their political views, what has grated on me for so long is the FACT that many of the organizations working on the ‘Religious Left’ receive large pots of federal grant money that is not sufficiently accounted for.
The ‘Religious Right’ has not tapped in to the US Treasury as the Left has done!
Also, I believe churchgoers (Catholics and Protestants) should know what is being done in their names.
Here are some snips from the story featured at Drudge yesterday:

(Reuters) – Since President Donald Trump’s election, monthly lectures on social justice at the 600-seat Gothic chapel of New York’s Union Theological Seminary have been filled to capacity with crowds three times what they usually draw.

Rev. Serene Jones, a leader of the Religious Left

In January, the 181-year-old Upper Manhattan graduate school, whose architecture evokes London’s Westminster Abbey, turned away about 1,000 people from a lecture on mass incarceration. In the nine years that Reverend Serene Jones has served as its president, she has never seen such crowds.

“The election of Trump has been a clarion call to progressives in the Protestant and Catholic churches in America to move out of a place of primarily professing progressive policies to really taking action,” she said.

Although not as powerful as the religious right, which has been credited with helping elect Republican presidents and boasts well-known leaders such as Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson, the “religious left” is now slowly coming together as a force in U.S. politics.

This disparate group, traditionally seen as lacking clout, has been propelled into political activism by Trump’s policies on immigration, healthcare and social welfare, according to clergy members, activists and academics. A key test will be how well it will be able to translate its mobilization into votes in the 2018 midterm congressional elections. [They better darn well not use taxpayer dollars for their vote mobilization!—ed]

[….]

Some in the religious left are inspired by Pope Francis, the Roman Catholic leader who has been an outspoken critic of anti-immigrant policies and a champion of helping the needy. [These reports NEVER mention that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic Charities receive millions of tax payer dollars every year!—ed]

Although support for the religious left is difficult to measure, leaders point to several examples, such as a surge of congregations offering to provide sanctuary to immigrants seeking asylum…

[….]

The number of churches volunteering to offer sanctuary to asylum seekers doubled to 800 in 45 of the 50 U.S. states after the election, said the Elkhart, Indiana-based Church World Service, a coalition of Christian denominations which helps refugees settle in the United States – and the number of new churches offering help has grown so quickly that the group has lost count.

You need to know that “asylum seekers” are illegal aliens until their cases are settled by an immigration judge. The Left uses the phrase to put a veneer of respectability on illegal aliens who may or may not have a shot at being granted asylum and thus being deemed a legitimate refugee.

Church World Service!

As we said here earlier in the month, CWS, got nearly a HALF A BILLION tax dollars during the Obama years. Why doesn’t Reuters ever mention this!

There  should be a law! Any non-profit sucking this kind of money out of the US Treasury should be prohibited from running anti-Trump (or anti-any President) campaigns!

 

 

Donald Trump needs to nip this in the bud through the budget process. Will he?

Are you being used by the Religious Left?  Are they working in your name?
I recommend that you check with your ministers and pastors!
See the churches that are affiliated with Church World Service and its progressive policies:

Member Communions

    African Methodist Episcopal Church

 

Here we go again, refugee numbers jump, 342 since Wednesday

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As we have said repeatedly, and most recently here, the Hawaiian judge did not have the power to slow the flow of refugees entering the US, nor did he have any power to set the ceiling.   That said, a week after the 120-day slowdown was  to go in to effect, the numbers entering the US picked up dramatically since we reported 38,111 as of Wednesday (for FY17).

Who is calling the shots on refugee admissions? Career bureaucrats or Sec. of State Tillerson? Either way, why the big jump in admissions over last two days? And, what is taking Trump so long to choose Asst. Sec. to oversee refugee program?

Today data at Wrapsnet indicates that another 342 refugees arrived in the US in the last 48 hours.  We are now at 38,453!

If the US Department of State had been preparing for a 120-day pause to begin on March 16th, how is it that this large number of refugees was ready to board planes?  Is there anyone in charge (other than the career people) at the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration? Are they still calling all the shots?  Or, is it possible that the White House isn’t willing to fight on this portion of the EO (assuming we wouldn’t notice)?
The top five nationalities among the 342 newly arrived are as follows:

Syria (55 and 51 of those were Muslims)

Somalia (50 and all are Muslims)

Burma (44 and a surprisingly high number of those—17—are Muslims)

Iraq (41 and 32 are Muslims)

Ukraine (32 and zero Muslims)

The top five states receiving Syrians over the last two days are: Michigan, North Carolina, Tennessee, Idaho and Ohio.
The top five states receiving Somalis since Wednesday are: Massachusetts, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota, and New York.
This post is filed in our Trump Watch! category as well as ‘refugee statistics’ and ‘where to find information.’

Tucson area resettlement agency may close; Memory lane! Iraqis unhappy there in 2007

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They say they may close if the number of refugees admitted to the US falls as a result of Trump’s 120-day pause on the program.
Somehow they seem to think that the flow will pick up because of the Hawaiian judge’s misguided restraining order.  As we have said repeatedly, Trump didn’t need the Executive Order to reduce numbers being admitted to the US. (We are monitoring the numbers coming in every few days, see refugee admissions in right hand side bar.)
After I give you the latest news, I want to tell you about Tucson, Arizona and unhappy Iraqis there ten years ago.
Here below are a few snips from a story yesterday at Arizona Public Media.
Notice that once again, they are admitting, and the media is publishing the fact, that these so-called non-profit agencies actually live off of contracts (based on per refugee head payments) with the US government.

Tucson-area nonprofits that resettle refugees are worried that they may have to cut services or close their doors under the refugee ban President Donald Trump is seeking.

Refugee Focus is one of three nonprofit agencies in Tucson that resettle refugees from around the world.

Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest runs Refugee Focus, and Connie Phillips oversees the nonprofit. [She participated in an ‘interfaith’ rally against Trump, here, last month.—ed]

Connie Phillips Lutheran Social Services Southwest. http://www.lss-sw.org/key-staff/

She said Refugee Focus may have to stop operating if the Trump Administration wins the court battle for the most recent executive order and there is a 90 to 120 day pause in settling refugees.

[….]

Money to run the program comes from federal contracts for resettlement services.

“There’s just a lot of uncertainty. It is just highly, highly stressful right now.”

The other two nonprofits that resettle refugees in Tucson are International Rescue Committee and Catholic Social Services.

I just checked Lutheran Social Services Southwest recent Form 990 here.
92% of their funding is from you, the taxpayer. Their gross revenue in that form (2014) was $14,238,656.  $9,210,621 is from government grants and $3,957,813 is listed as medicaid contracts (What the heck is that! Why is some Lutheran non-profit managing medicaid contracts?)

Iraqi refugees resettled in Tucson voice their unhappiness!

Back in the earliest days of RRW (2007), this news (below) from Tucson was an eye-opener for me.
Iraqis complained to the Washington Post that they were unhappy and neglected.

Like the Cuban, Vietnamese, Laotian and Sudanese refugees before them, some of the Iraqis are going through a difficult adjustment period, feeling disoriented, alone and even abandoned by the social service agency that is supposed to serve them.

[….]

When the Iraqi refugees arrive in the United States, they are sent to cities where there are other Arab or Muslim populations. Social service organizations are assigned to help them resettle.

“Refugees, in general, endure a tremendous cultural shock,” said Janell Mousseau, a program director at the Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest, an Arizona nonprofit organization that helped to resettle the 34 Iraqis here. “They have a lot of adjusting to do in a short time.”

LOL! Read this next paragraph!  What a difference ten years makes. Back then the WaPo and most media never mentioned that the resettlement contractors were PAID for their charitable work by the US taxpayer!

The organization was asked [LOL! asked!—ed] by the State Department to find proper housing for the Iraq families, providing them basic supplies and helping them acquire Social Security numbers and food stamps. The group is paying [LOL! the group is paying!—ed] the refugees’ rent for three months. After that, the families will have to pick up the cost themselves.

Before they arrived here, the refugees said they were told by U.N. representatives that they could get jobs based on their professional qualifications. But they said they have now been told that they should work as hotel housekeepers, an occupation many of them have refused because they deem it degrading. [The hotel industry along with food processing companies have been major consumers of cheap refugee labor!—ed]

To add to their frustration, when the families arrived, they said they found their apartments missing beds, kitchen supplies, bedspreads and blankets. [Contracts with the govt. specifically list these items to be supplied as requirements of the contract—-ed]

This last line resonated with me because one of the first things that people were buzzing about in my Maryland county, when refugees were placed there beginning in 2006, was that some teachers at the local junior college were finding the refugees blankets and winter coats!
I have 727 posts in my Iraqi refugee category (see early posts where I joked about Matthew Lee a reporter carrying water for the contractors by helping to beat the drum for more Iraqi admissions).

Obama gone wild!

You need to know that George W. Bush was reluctant to admit the thousands of Iraqi refugees (paying clients!) that the contractors were demanding. But, in the last year he opened the flood gates and we have now, 11 years and 5 and 1/2 months later, admitted 141,433 Iraqis!
Here at Wrapsnet you can see what happened when the Obama team took over the US Department of State in 2009:

 

You can see how the number jumped when Obama took office. Of the 141,433 Iraqis we admitted in the last decade plus, 1,578 were placed in Tucson, AZ. Do you see that low year (2011)? That was the year two Iraqi refugee terrorists were arrested in Bowling Green, KY and all of the Iraqis had to be rescreened.

 
Go here for more on Arizona.

Federal refugee grants to special ethnic groups "to promote community organizing"

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Community organizing for their group of people gratis the US taxpayer!

This morning, I was going to write about how elder refugees (yes, we admit many over 65 years old) are eligible for SSI, but I stumbled on the $millions in grants taxpayers give to ethnic groups across the country so they can help “their” special ethnic group of people integrate and become civically engaged.

Buffalo Imam Yahye Y Omar is listed as the agent for an ORR community organizing grant. Photo: https://www.hiiraan.com/news4/2017/Jan/140081/trump_crackdown_on_refugees_hits_home_for_somali_community.aspx

These grants previously were gifts to ECBOs (Ethnic Community Based Organizations) for which I had created a  whole category a few years back, see here.
I likened them to mini-ACORNS.
Do you remember ACORN which taught poor Americans how to get their stuff (welfare) and then organized them to vote, etc?  These groups are like that!
Now they are called Ethnic Community Self-Help groups (not really self-help are they if you are funding them?).
Because many are for specific ethnic groups, I believe they foster non-assimilation as they identify their people as somehow in need of special treatment by the government.
Here is what the Office of Refugee Resettlement says about these grants and groups.

Program Goal

The objective of this program is to support ethnic community based organizations in providing refugee populations with critical services to assist them in becoming integrated members of American society.

General Background

Throughout the history of the United States the involvement of refugees and refugee community based organizations in refugee resettlement has been critical to refugee integration. Today, these organizations continue to enhance the provision and effectiveness of services available to refugees. They allow the refugee experience to flow into refugee resettlement plans and decisions. For refugees, their active participation in resettlement is generally empowering and plays an important role in the integration of the entire refugee community.

Program Description

This program provides assistance to refugee community based organizations and other groups that address community building, facilitate cultural adjustment and integration of refugees, and deliver mutually supportive functions such as information exchange, civic participation, resource enhancement, orientation and support to newly arriving refugees (and other refugees that maybe in need of such assistance regardless of their resettlement date) and public education to the larger community on the background, needs and potential of refugees. In short, the purpose is to promote community organizing that builds bridges between newcomer refugee communities and community resources.

LOL! Building bridges to community resources=finding taxpayer-funded welfare goodies!
I thought the refugee contractors‘ job was to ‘orient’ new refugees and take care of their ‘needs,’ but nevermind, there is a whole cottage industry of non-profit groups sucking from the federal teat for their special ethnic ‘community.’
Here is a screenshot from the 2015 ORR Annual Report to Congress showing the $6,096,190 in grants sent out that year.

Sure hope the Trump team targets these for de-funding!



Homework assignment!
You should find out more about any of these special groups for special people (you fund them!) working near you.
The last one on the first page jumped out at me.  I wondered what is Helping Ensure Africa Looms International Inc. I didn’t even find a website or any description of what it does, just this NY state charity profile.  There I learned that the principle agent is one Yahye Y Omar of Buffalo.
We assume he is the same Yahye Y Omar who is the imam at the Buffalo Islamic Community Center who is quoted in this Buffalo News story entitled:

Refugees and immigrants reminded of legal rights at Buffalo event

Guess he is busy “community organizing!”
I didn’t have any intention of going farther with this, but be sure to see a recent Form 990 for ‘Helping Ensure Africa….’ Pretty much the only money they take in is from ORR and almost $70,000 went to salaries and $10,000 + went to rent.
But, I was still not ever able to find out what exactly the recipient of $170,103 in 2015 actually does!

Refugee resettlement contractors "whipsawed" says New York Times

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Of course, the New York Times could be expected to help the US Refugee Resettlement contractors wail about their loss of paying ‘clients’ (aka refugees).
As I have said (more than seven times), the contractors*** have only themselves to blame if they can’t maintain staff and offices during a pause in refugees entering the US.  They have gotten fat (with big salaries!) on the US Treasury teat and long ago stopped doing any serious private charitable fundraising.
Here is the NYT:

Last month, in anticipation of the Trump administration shutting down the flow of refugees entering the United States, Church World Service, one of the groups that handles resettlement, took drastic measures. It laid off all but 40 of the 600 employees at its African center that prepared refugees for travel.

My first question is WTH! did CWS need 600 employees in Africa for? And, since many were probably low-paid jobs for Africans, did the Reverend McCullough take a pay cut to keep some of those poor people employed?

Doing well by doing good! The President and CEO of CWS pulls down a cool $316,714 in annual compensation. Will he and other top execs take a pay cut to maintain some of their staff? BTW, I wouldn’t care what they paid their CEOs if they weren’t largely funded by taxpayer dollars. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/03/04/church-world-service-announced-yesterday-that-it-is-launching-anti-trump-campaign-to-raise/

Then on Wednesday night, a federal judge in Hawaii temporarily stayed the executive order that would have, among other things, halted refugee resettlement for 120 days and cut the total number of refugees admitted in the 2017 fiscal year by more than half, to 50,000.

First, Church World Service and the other organizations that resettle refugees cheered the news. Then they wondered, what now?

“We just simply do not know,” said Erol Kekic, the executive director of the immigration and refugee program for the agency. “There’s no guarantee that this, well, hold, will hold between now and Sept. 30,” he added, referring to the end of the fiscal year. [See our previous post which indicates that they better get used to a lower paying client flow—ed]

But one thing was clear, he said: “You can’t just play games with people. You can’t just lay off 500 people and then hire them back and lay them off again. We’re going to need some answers from the federal government.”

The judge’s decision was just the latest dramatic twist in six weeks of whipsaw changes faced by refugees and the agencies that work with them.

[….]

More than 60,000 refugees were already in various stages of approval before Mr. Trump’s first order went into effect on Jan. 27. The State Department, realizing that the new cap meant that there was only room for about another 17,000 refugees, slowed down the machinery to space out arrivals to 400 per week.

But the slowdown meant the agencies faced budget cuts. The State Department pays each refugee agency $950 per person to cover administrative costs, with another $1,125 going directly to the refugee or to cover expenses like rent.  [But they are paid, much much more! See below—ed]

Readers who are researching the refugee program where you live might see slightly different numbers involving the split of the $2,075 per head payment. Some of the contractors keep a larger chunk of the State Department’s per head payment which represents a perverse incentive to never stop the flow no matter how over-loaded a community becomes.
Also, I repeat!  This is not the only funding the contractors get from you.
They get myriad grants totaling in the millions of dollars for such things as building community gardens for refugees, training refugees to do ‘culturally appropriate’ daycare, handing out micro-enterprise loans to refugees, and teaching them English (something I have maintained could be done at local community colleges). And, in the case of CWS, running programs in Africa.
Continue reading here for more of the wailing at the NYT!
Can’t these lazy biased reporters ever take a few minutes and get all the facts! 
Look at how much CWS is getting from you! This is one page at USA Spending.  In the last 8 years they are approaching a half a billion $$$ from the US Treasury!
 

 
If anyone sees a report about the top execs at the nine contractors taking a voluntary pay cut, let me know and we will give them credit!
*** The nine contractors that monopolize refugee resettlement in America: