Category: Where to find information

A quick primer for new readers: The Refugee Contractors

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It just occurred to me, when writing my post earlier this morning about State Department secrecy, that new readers are probably lost and confused by the many names of local organizations placing refugees in your towns.
First, there are nine major federally funded ‘non-profit’ groups that receive funding (some as much as 98% of their budget) from mainly the US Department of State (Population Refugees and Migration) and the Office of Refugee Resettlement which is in Health and Human Services.  (An aside: it is critical to pay attention to Trump cabinet picks for State and for HHS). Smaller federal grants come from other agencies as well.
Here they are:

Then working for them are hundreds of subcontractors scattered across 49 states.  Go here to the government’s data base of resettlement subcontractors (aka affiliates) working in your state.  Below is a screen shot of the Connecticut page.
See the abbreviation in the left hand corner of each entry. That stands for the major contractor over this particular subcontractor.
Obviously USCCB is the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. CWS is Church World Service. Not so easy to identify is DFMS. That is the other name (don’t ask me why!) for Episcopal Migration Ministries and it is Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (scroll to bottom of page here).  My personal guess for why there are two names is that it has to do with their financial structure (keeping their finances hard to track?).
 
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But when you look at that data base know three things.  1) the data base is out of date, 2) we are told there are 47 new sites not listed and, 3) see if you live within 100 miles of one of these offices because that means your town is fair game to receive refugees.
Here are some of the new sites being chosen by the US State Department (that we know of!):

Asheville, NC

Rutland, VT

Reno, NV

Ithaca, NY

Missoula, MT

Aberdeen, SD (may have been thwarted as a primary resettlement site!)

Charleston, WV

Fayetteville, AR

Blacksburg, VA

Pittsfield, MA

Northhampton, MA

Flint, MI

Bloomington, IN

Traverse City, MI

Poughkeepsie, NY

Wilmington, DE

Watertown, NY (maybe)

Youngstown, OH (maybe)

Knowledge is Power!

Go to our Frequently Asked Questions in the header. And, check out our category ‘where to find information’ if you are trying to research the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.  Also, our search function is really good so type in a few key words (try your state to begin with) and I am confident you will get an education!

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society lectures Trump; never mentions its pecuniary interest in refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is one more in my continuing update and review of the financial positions of the nine major federal refugee resettlement contractors.
Here we have HIAS CEO Mark Hetfield admonishing Donald Trump on the day after his big win last Tuesday. I might respect the resettlement contractors a bit if they would make it clear somewhere, sometime, that they have a vested financial interest in the resettlement of refugees rather than this usual holier-than-thou pontification.  LOL! maybe there should be a little disclaimer at the end of all media references to them—“This organization is paid by the taxpayers of America to place refugees in towns and cities in 49 states.”

mark-hetfield
CEO Mark Hetfield is pulling down a salary package worth $336,323 running this ‘charity.’ http://www.give.org/charity-reviews/national/human-services/hias-in-silver-spring-md-19163

So far I’ve updated our older financial information on USCRI, LIRS, World Relief, and Church World Service.
USCRI is here (97% funded by taxpayers).
LIRS here (95% funded by taxpayers).
World Relief here (73% funded by taxpayers).
Church World Service here (64% funded by taxpayers).
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society is up next.
And, btw, HIAS was given a huge grant a few years ago to study the growing opposition to the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program and mentioned RRW as a site that should be investigated by the Southern Poverty Law Center which did just that, see here.
Headquartered in Silver Spring,MD, HIAS had an income in 2014 of $36,161,323 according to this Charity Report. Their website is here.
This is how their income breaks down.  The way I see it, they are 56% funded by you, the taxpayer, which is the best of the contractors so far as some are above the 90% taxpayer funded level. (The service fee and operating grants below might be tax dollars too, but will give them the benefit of the doubt. The Migrant loan fee is definitely your money).
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From full report here: http://www.give.org/charity-reviews/national/human-services/hias-in-silver-spring-md-19163

You can check out their Form 990 for that year as well by clicking here.
riva-silverman
Riva Silverman ($250,000)

You will see on page 9 that in addition to CEO Hetfield, they have 9 other staffers making in excess of $100,000 at the top of a paid staff of 76! Why does Riva make so much $$$? And, where is Melanie?  As I have said many times before. If these were truly private charitable non-profits and not quasi-government organizations I wouldn’t care what they chose to pay their staff, but since we fund them, we have every right to publish and question their salaries.
Here are some of the places HIAS works:

Affiliates

Carolina Refugee Resettlement Agency
Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Community Services
HIAS New York
HIAS Pennsylvania
Jewish Child and Family Services (Chicago)
Jewish Community Services (Baltimore)
Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Pittsburgh
Jewish Family and Children’s Services of San Francisco –
Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay
Jewish Family Service of Buffalo and Erie County
Jewish Family Service of Greater Seattle
Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles
Jewish Family Service of Metrowest
Jewish Family Service of San Diego
Jewish Family Service of Washtenaw County
Jewish Family Service of Western Massachusetts
Jewish Family Services of the Silicon Valley
Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest New Jersey
US Together

HIAS was very involved in lobbying for the ‘Gang of Eight’ amnesty bill a few years ago in the Senate.  Still don’t understand why a group resettling legal refugees in search of jobs would want to make it even harder for their refugee clients when they must compete with mostly Hispanic laborers for low skilled jobs.
And, one final thing. It was HIAS that went crazy going after Donald Trump Jr. about likening a decision to take in not properly screened refugees to being told that one skittles candy in a handful was poisoned and asked if you would thus eat any. See what I mean—google HIAS and Skittles.
Our complete archive on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society is here.

Why is North Carolina a swing state while South Carolina is still RED?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is because the demographic change (remember they are changing America by changing the people) is far advanced in North Carolina while it is only beginning in South Carolina.

trump_v_hillary
Trump and Clinton are both in North Carolina today. Is it a swing state because of its huge refugee/immigrant population? I think so! http://heavy.com/news/2016/11/north-carolina-poll-polls-2016-election-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-winning-losing-new-forecast-percent-men-women-independent-undecided/

Of course all that will change for SC in a few years as Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham and Rep. Trey Gowdy are making little to no effort to hold the line in terms of the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program, and Graham himself was one of the Senate ‘Gang of Eight’ that pushed through an amnesty bill for illegal aliens a couple of years ago.
I don’t understand how Rs like Graham don’t see that as the immigrant population grows it will be attracted to the Democrat Party which promises to keep their welfare goodies flowing and will ultimately lead to the downfall of the Republican Party in states like his.
But, it isn’t SC I want to tell you about.

Trump and Clinton going to North Carolina today!

***Update*** November 4th: 1/2 million federal grant to encourage ethnic separation awarded in Raleigh.
I’ve wondered how North Carolina, the land of Senator Jesse Helms, is now a toss-up state and today as both Hillary and Trump head there, we see very clearly that it is a traditional red state turning blue and both parties are fighting for it.
So, I did a little numbers research.  And, I am not saying that there are enough refugee voters to swing the election, but the vast disparity between the states is stunning.  Also, NC has obviously thrown out the welcome mat to illegal aliens. (Note in my previous post that it is clearly in the top ten for the placement of the ‘unaccompanied alien children.’)
All of the following data can be found at the Refugee Processing Center.  And, I found a bit more at an ORR annual report to Congress.
From 1983 to 2001, North Carolina resettled 16,640 refugees, while South Carolina only got 1,925.
Then from FY 2003 to FY 2016 the states break down this way: NC (27,748) and SC (2,042).

Total refugee tally for NC is roughly 44,388 to SC’s 3,967. 

(In between those two documents, I was too lazy to look up 2002, but you get the idea).
So, I am maintaining that it is the influx of vastly more immigrants and refugees to North Carolina than South Carolina that makes the difference—why NC is turning blue and SC isn’t (yet!).
***Update*** And, I should have mentioned all those worker visas for NC, here.
We have a pretty substantial archive on North Carolina and problems there with refugees, go here to learn more. Don’t miss a stunning murder case, contractors not taking care of the refugees, companies looking for cheap labor and posts on how NC colleges lured Arab students, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, to the state to boost their student enrollment.
Then I found this stunning. From FY2003 to FY2016, North Carolina received refugees from the following 56 countries. This list does not include illegal alien-sending countries like Mexico and some from Central and South America. Can you imagine the problems with languages in the medical system, the school system and the criminal justice system!
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Where were they placed?
I started to look at all the towns and cities and when I got to 35 I quit.  Bottomline, I bet there were at least 50-60 towns and cities in North Carolina that received refugees.  Maybe only a couple in some towns, but they were very widely distributed and surely helped destroy community cohesiveness.
Eight of the nine major resettlement contractors are operating (competing!) in North Carolina. The only one missing is the International Rescue Committee. Go here for office locations.
The wild card for Trump and Clinton is whether the African American community there gets it—that they are being out-competed in the job market by tens of thousands of refugees pouring in to the state. And, if Hillary is elected there will never be a slowdown.

Secrecy abounds as Unaccompanied Alien Children arrive in massive numbers again, on par with 2014!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No surprise! Election year silence about invasion at our Southern Border, as they make a mad dash for America before Trump is elected!

In 2014 it was wall-to-wall media coverage of the run on our southern border by what turned out to be mostly teenage boys from Central America. The country was stunned that year as over 53,000 so-called Unaccompanied Alien Children were seeking asylum from Central American countries, mostly El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

illegal-aliens
In 2015 68% of the “children” entering the US were 15-18 years old. And, 68% were males!

 
They have become the wards of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, although they are NOT refugees. Legitimate refugees must prove they would be persecuted for race, religion, political persuasion if returned to their home country. Running from crime or lack of opportunity is not a legal criteria to receive refugee status.
The cost to the US taxpayer is approaching $1 Billion a year to care for the ‘kids’ (see below).  More than half of ORR’s whole budget is for these illegal aliens!

A few hundred alien ‘kids’ short of the 2014 levels!

After a slowdown in 2015, to about half the number, in FY2016 the number for the year rose to 52,147!!!  And, have you heard a peep from the media (other than some on-line websites) about the huge numbers being distributed around the country?  Go here and see how many your state received in FY2016.***
What got me thinking about this was an article yesterday by Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart where he reported on an emergency intergovernmental conference call to identify federal properties in which to place the thousands still arriving.  Here is how he opens his story:

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is holding a series of emergency conference calls with all departments and agencies of the federal government requiring them to search for and vet “properties to temporarily house [unaccompanied alien children]” because “the need for facilities continues to grow.”

Turns out there is a multi-agency Facility Task Force (FTF) for the Unaccompanied Children (UC) scouting for properties near you!  LOL! The feds have completely abandoned the word “alien” from what they at one time referred to as ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children.’
Continue reading here.
NOT refugees!
Let me remind readers, these ‘children’ are not ‘refugees,’ they are not legitimate asylum seekers either, but the Open Borders agitators and the Obama Administration have been working for the last 8 years  to change the definition of a refugee for this group of illegal aliens—now numbering in the tens of thousands and distributed to all 50 states and the District of Columbia!  The wide distribution is going to make it extremely difficult to ever locate them again!
NOT little children!
The younger children in the chart (below) actually crossed the border with Mom, but they don’t tell you that.  And, although they apparently have not tabulated the ages of the ‘children’ in FY2016, the pattern is likely similar for the fiscal year that just closed on September 30th.

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http://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/about/ucs/facts-and-data#lengthofstay

 
Mostly males!
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http://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/about/ucs/facts-and-data#lengthofstay

 
They are costing taxpayers nearly a BILLION bucks annually!
This (below) is the projected cost for the ‘kids’ in FY2017 from the House Appropriations Committee Report (and these are FY2016 levels!!!).  Look for efforts in the lame duck session of Congress to increase taxpayer funding for the mostly teenage illegal alien boys.
screenshot-59
https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/114th-congress/house-report/699/1

 
 
***Here are the top states (received over 1,000 each just this past fiscal year) where the UACs were distributed to “sponsors.” This is a good indicator of which states have the most illegal aliens from Central America. Go here for all the states, and note there is a link for counties there too.

California (7,381)

Texas (6,550)

Florida (5,281)

New York (4,985)

Maryland (3,871)

Virginia (3,728)

New Jersey (2,637)

Georgia (1,735)

Massachusetts (1,541)

North Carolina (1,493)

Tennessee (1,354)

All of our posts on this topic are tagged ‘Unaccompanied minors’ because that was a tag we used years ago, before the designation (terminology) for these ‘children’ went through an evolution.

RRW Monthly round-up for October 2016

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Didn’t get around to my sporadic weekly roundup on Saturday, so since it was so close to the end of the month, I’m posting a round-up for the month of October. A big month here—readership in a week is more than my first half year in 2007!  And, as I mentioned in a post this morning about Denmark, we have readers from all over the world—from 182 countries and territories just in October!

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Thanks to the $PLC for the nice drawing: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/10/27/a-great-honor-splc-names-me-one-of-15-anti-muslim-extremists-in-america/

You should know that there is way too much to cover on the topic of refugees that I can’t possibly keep up by myself and luckily lots of media outlets are picking up refugee news (LOL!) other than fluffy puffy news about refugees seeing their first snow. Breitbart and World Net Daily are two online publications with regular refugee news.***
Although now that November is here, be ready for lots of warm and fuzzy news about refugees and Thanksgiving.  The resettlement contractors make it a point each year to hold Thanksgiving dinners for newly arrived refugees and invite in the local press (Propaganda 101!).
Without further ado, here are the Top Three Most Visited Posts of the last month.

This is insane! Taxpayers pay rent for Somalis who feel the need to visit Somalia (for months!)

Obama State Department bringing refugees in at the astronomical rate of over 400 a day!

One town in Michigan is fighting for its survival as county targeted for even more Middle Eastern refugees

By the way, this number 3 top post was only published on the 27th of October so it did get a huge number of hits ( in only a few days) to be in the top 3.
Top ten countries excluding the US from which readers arrived at RRW in the month of October:

Canada

UK (will be watching the UK numbers more closely as a report yesterday from a reader suggested RRW might be being blocked there)

Australia

Germany

South Africa

Norway

India

France

Netherlands

Sweden

For new readers:

This (below) is my usual information to new readers so you can catch up with the last nine years of RRW.
RRW is a blog, a news outlet, not an organization with an office and staff.
I want you to be able to find information here where nearly 8,000 posts are archived!
Are you having problems with your subscription?  I’ve heard from several of you lately that you are not receiving your usual e-mail notices.  I have no control over that.  Those e-mails are managed directly by wordpress. I recommend that if you are having trouble (or you are getting too many every day), then simply visit here from time to time and just scroll back through recent posts.
Also, if you visit regularly you can use the search window using a few key words and find some important information among almost 8,000 posts going back to 2007!  If you are seriously interested in this issue, you won’t be getting the most out of RRW by simply reading posts in e-mail notices.
Also, see our newly updated Frequently Asked Questions and our fact sheet (out of date but still useful) in the header. In the FAQ you will see a link for ‘Ten things your town needs to know.’
I’ve been tweeting a lot and sometimes if I can’t write about a story you send, I tweet it.  See my twitter feed (over 5,000 followers at this moment) in the right-hand side bar. Even if you aren’t on twitter, you should be able to open the links to the news embedded in the tweet.  I am@RefugeeWatcher.
Likewise you might want to ‘like’ and follow RRW’s facebook page, here.  See it also in the left-hand side bar. It has over 33,000 likes now.  A friend helps me there (because I stink at facebook) so you will see other related news there that is not on RRW.
If you are looking for fellow grassroots activists in ‘pockets of resistance’ see the Refugee Resisters facebook page here (Jim Simpson).
All previous round-ups and this one are archived in a category simply called ‘blogging.’
My FIRST video about how the refugee program works is here (over 2.5 million views as of this writing).
All comments you submit are screened and we don’t post threats of violence, most foul language, or ad hominem attacks on other commenters.  Sometimes I am away from the computer for many hours, so you may not see your comment posted quickly.
As much as I would love to see you all in your hometowns, I hate speaking. I think I am more useful right here researching and writing.

In one week from today we will know if there is any hope of reforming this out-of-control refugee program or not! Go Trump!

***Best little blogroll on the net!

Want to keep up with all the news from your favorite writers on this issue? Visit Richard Falknor’s Blue Ridge Forum for his excellent blogroll! It’s one-stop shopping! Click here where Richard has hot links to so many great websites and writers.  You won’t have to search all over the web every day for all of the important news on this issue and others, your sources are right there in the right hand column blogroll.