It is September and as we speak, the Obama Administration (US State Department) is putting its final touches on their annual Determination Letter and accompanying report to Congress. Don’t tell Congress and let’s slip this by them again—maybe this time with 65,000 Syrians! The new fiscal year begins on October 1 and by the 30th of this month Obama will send to Congress for “consultation” a document which states how many refugees and from what regions of the world we will be “welcoming” refugees to America.
This so-called “consultation” with Congress is a legal requirement. However, it is common knowledge that the House and Senate Committees responsible for analyzing this information have in the past been silent.
In fact, Ken Tota (who recentlyserved as the interim directorof the Office of Refugee Resettlement) was overheard saying that “in his entire almost 30-year career, Congress has never questioned the numbers.” State Department scoping meetings
For our many new readers, this year there was no US State Department hearing on the “size and scope” of the refugee program (or, LOL! they kept it very secret!). We can only assume that was because in the three previous years they heard testimony that they didn’t like from citizens that were concerned about the program. Here is one post of dozens on the topic. Readers of RRW had flooded the State Department with negative testimony about the program. In fact, we testified that there should be a moratorium on the program. See my 2014 testimony here.
I mention this because the Presidential Determination being prepared now is the culmination of the annual process that began with those late spring ‘hearings’ (and again there was no public opportunity to comment this year that we were aware of).
Also, regular readers know that we have been discussing, and attempting to obtain, R & Pabstracts the subcontractors located around the country prepare for Washington—those are part of the process as well. Just as taxpaying citizens had no opportunity to testify to the State Department this year, taxpaying citizens have no input in the abstract preparation process either.
Presumably one final check in the system to protect America is the “consultation” with Congress in September of each year.
However, if this year is like all others, our elected representatives in Washington will not lift a finger to question the size and scope of this year’s proposed refugee quota!
And, this could be the year that plans to resettle tens of thousands of Syrians will be announced! Click here for last year’s Presidential Determination, and here for the lengthy reportwhich was sent to Congress on September 18th last year. The report begins:
This Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2015: Report to the Congress is submitted in compliance with Sections 207(d)(1) and (e) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The Act requires that before the start of the fiscal year and, to the extent possible, at least two weeks prior to consultations on refugee admissions, members of the Committees on the Judiciary of the Senate and the House of Representatives be provided with the following information….
Note that the report goes to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. Chairmen of the full committees are Bob Goodlatte and Chuck Grassleyrespectively. Subcommittee Chairmen responsible for Refugee Resettlement areTrey Gowdy and Jeff Sessions. Will those chairmen help protect America this year by holding hearings when the Presidential Determination for FY2016 arrives on the Hill which by law should be in about two weeks! Or, will they (yet again!) simply rubber stamp what Obama wants?
Revolving door and one big happy family! This is Bob Carey, the new director of the ORR. He was previously a VP at the International Rescue Committee. And, what a coincidence, over at the State Department, the Asst. Secretary of State for PRM, Anne Richard, was also a VP at the International Rescue Committee. Gee! Do you think federal contractor, the IRC headed by Brit David Miliband, might have a bit of an inside track to the federal agencies that feed them?
The US Refugee Resettlement Program is administered by two different agencies of the federal government. The US State Department admits refugees and contracts with thenine major federal resettlement contractors(they call them VOLAGS short for Voluntary Agencies which they definitely are not!) to distribute them.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Dept. of Health and Human Servicesis responsible for making sure that myriad grants get out to the contractors and their subcontractors and to manage much of the other day-to-day operation being dictated from Washington.
The ORR has produced a handy map. When you click on your state, contact information pops up for the bureaucrats who are responsible in your state.
You will see some states are Wilson-Fish states which means they are run pretty much with no state government involvement. Go here to learn more about Wilson-Fish.
To find which federal resettlement subcontractors have offices near you,go here.
Regarding my reference to David Miliband in the photo caption—Milibandis the first resettlement contractor head honcho to push for Obama to admit 65,000 Syriansbefore his term ends.
September is an important month in the resettlement process, first because the feds and their contractors are scrambling to bring in as many refugees as possible in hopes of meeting the 70,000 refugee target that Obama set last year.
And, because Obama, by the end of September, will submit his Annual Determination Letter(this one for 2015) to Congress (where it has been rubber-stamped each year) in which he will lay out the goal for FY2016 which begins on October 1. Watch for a huge jump in the number of Syrians to be admitted and distributed to your towns in the coming fiscal year.
We will be watching to see if any Member of Congress or US Senator says anything about Obama’s picks for 2016.
A reader, Phillip, sent us this very interesting map. It is a little annoying to have to figure out in some cases which flag is depicted on certain states, but it is nonetheless informative. States with dominant populations of Burmese, Bhutanese, Somali, Cuban, Ethiopian, Iraqi or Vietnamese got that way through the Refugee Admissions Program since they are all major refugee-sending countries.
Somalis are dominant in Minnesota and Maine; Iraqis in Tennessee, Michigan and Idaho.
We don’t take many refugees from the Philippines, China, Dominican Republic, India or of course Canada. They get in here through other means. However, the Chinese are the largest group of asylum seekers who successfully get in.
The map makers excluded Mexico (don’t know why). And, I would have guessed the Salvadorans would dominate Maryland. Here is where Phillip got the map, I don’t have time to examine it further, but you might.
That phrase is a favorite one of a longtime critic of the refugee resettlement process as it is now administered in the US—bidding for bodies. Catchy isn’t it! CSI Refugee Programs is a subcontractor of the Arlington, VA-based US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) which is 99% funded by taxpayer dollars. It is headed by Lavinia Limon who was Bill Clinton’s director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Photo: http://refugeecenter.csi.edu/
Yesterday we were alerted to yet another editorial*** at MagicValley.com which has heretofore demonstrated a bias in favor of more refugees for Twin Falls. The editorial basically asks, what is the big deal with theR & P Abstract?
Before I get to the editorial, here is a little background. Each year the resettlement contractor working in your town or city prepares a report (a proposal of sorts) called an Abstract that is used to get its federal funding. It says how many refugees your town (in their opinion) can accommodate and from what regions of the world they might come. It also contains a text portion that explains why your town would be ideal—describing what “services” you have available.
We contend that citizens are entitled to this document in advance of it being sent to Washington for funding and that you should have some say about the “capacity” of your town to ‘welcome’ more third worlders. However, it has been extremely difficult to even get copies of those from this year (FY2015) which ends in just about 7 weeks. Indeed the citizens of Twin Falls were only able to get the 2014 documentthrough a public information request. The paper also needed to obtain one through the same means (they confirm in the editorial). You can be sure the subcontractor, CSI Refugee Center, wasn’t handing them out without legal pressure!
Contractors: Do not give out the Abstracts!
Thanks to inside sources we learned recently that the subcontractors working in these cities had been instructed (by their primary contractor) to NOT give any Abstracts out to citizens who called looking for them.
So, if the Abstracts are so ho-hum and uninformative as this editorial implies, why the secrecy?
Unfortunately, you may not be able to use a public information request (as did the citizens of Twin Falls) to get yours because some of the subcontractors are non-profits completely on their own (other than receiving $$$ from Washington). I’m guessing this one in Twin Falls was obtainable becauseCSI (the subcontractor) is intimately/financially entwined with the College of Southern Idaho—a state college.
The group filed a public records request seeking the CSI abstract being prepared for next year – and was denied. Not because CSI is trying to cover something up, but because the document is still being processed, and disclosing it now would amount to sharing trade secrets, since each refugee center around the country competes for resources through the federal resettling program.
Trade secrets!Can you have trade secrets from the taxpayer?
What the heck! This isn’t a private business that needs to understandably protect itself in a contract bidding process. This is a non-profit group competing with another non-profit group for YOUR money—the “resources” of the federal treasury! These contractors and subcontractors are paid by the head (by you!) to resettle refugees—they are indeed bidding for bodies and here we get confirmation that you can’t know what they plan for your town while you pay for the whole thing!
We, in Twin Falls, have amenities to offer including a TB Clinic!
And, although the great minds at MagicValley.com want to downplay (sneer at) your interest in the Abstract, I found it pretty informative and I don’t even live there. For example, read the textand see what Twin Falls is offering in the bidding war with other subcontractors/contractors around the US.
Here, for instance, I learned this: CSI promotes the fact that Twin Falls has a cracker-jack medical system including a Tuberculosis Clinic! Wow! So that means Twin Falls can take a bunch of the refugees entering the US with TB (yes, they are permitted entry!) while some other town can’t.
Twin Falls is home to an adult tertiary care hospital, a tuberculosis clinic, a renal dialysis clinic, and a dental clinic. Clients can also access transplant and rehabilitation services.
Guess who pays for all of that medical care for refugees?
Every bit of this is about money (humanitarian mumbo-jumbo is the cover). Now the trick will be to figure out who in Idaho benefits the most!
For more on Twin Falls,click here, and to make contact with those who have formed a ‘Pocket of Resistance (POR)’ in Twin Falls, go here.
*** In a previous editorial they called me a “thief!” Endnote: I have another post in the works on Idaho for today besides this one and my previous one about the conviction of Idaho’s refugee terrorist, so come back later!
Editor: From time to time we post guest columns and other notable comments from readers. This one is from someone who knows the US Refugee Admissions Program better than anyone else on the outside (LOL! maybe better than some on the inside!). Don Barnett has been following the refugee industry for over 25 years and is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.I’m happy to call him a longtime colleague and friend.
Below, Mr. Barnett addresses some of the ridiculous ‘studies’ being promoted around the US which posit that resettling impoverished third worlders will bring economic boom times to states losing population, or that refugee-run ‘businesses’ can rescue financially strapped cities.
The refugee resettlement program is perhaps the federal government’s most advanced case of politicized, Orwellian speech.
Don Barnett (See also: Time for the refugee program to come out of the shadows!) https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/03/24/wyoming-op-ed-time-for-the-refugee-program-to-come-out-of-the-shadows/
Are refugees too dependent on government hand-outs? Simply re-define the term “self-sufficiency” so that those dependent on government hand-outs are declared officially “self-sufficient”. According to the feds, a refugee can be on every welfare program except TANF and still be considered “self-sufficient”. Thus the media dutifully report the absurd claims of the refugee contractors about refugee “self-sufficiency” for individuals who may be in public housing, receiving Food Stamps, cash assistance from SSI and on Medicaid.
So much ignorance abounds that a “task force” recently formed to study the possibility of introducing refugee resettlement in Wyoming allowed itself to be assured by U. of Wyoming College of professor and immigration law specialist, Noah Novogrodsky, that the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees ‘pay 100 percent of the costs of refugee resettlement for many years. It’s not like we’re going to get stuck with an unfunded mandate’.
Of course it is a massive unfunded obligation placed upon states and localities by a federal program. Most refugees are placed into one or more public assistance programs by the refugee resettlement contractors. In recent weeks Congressional Research Services provided data about welfare usage among refugees. Among refugees who had arrived in a recent 5-year period, 56 percent were receiving Medicaid or Refugee Medical Assistance, 74.2 percent were on food stamps, and 22.8 percent were in public housing. 47.1 percent were on some form of cash assistance. (1)
State tax payers fund a portion of some federal programs such as Medicaid. When the 1980 act was passed the federal government promised to reimburse states for their cost share of refugee usage of SSI, AFDC (today TANF) and Medicaid at 100% for 3 full years. Even 3 years of coverage was acknowledged to be inadequate, but was better than nothing. By 1991 the states were getting nothing: all reimbursements for state refugee costs were eliminated.
Newspeak and Newthought permeate the cottage industry of studies “proving” the net positive economic benefits of refugee resettlement. A look at 2 past studies shows just how willing the media is to be spoon fed information rather than seeking, finding and questioning.
According to Tennessee’s state refugee coordinator – an employee of Catholic Charities, the state’s largest refugee resettlement contractor – a “comprehensive” study by the Tennessee legislature “found …that refugees pay more in taxes than they consume in benefits — in fact, twice as much.”
The 2013 study made no such finding. In assessing the cost of publicly funded benefits for refugees, the study looked at just 2 programs – public education (including ELL) and Tenncare (Tennessee’s version of Medicaid). It ignored a whole range of programs which refugees use and which Tennessee tax payers fund both with state tax dollars and as federal tax payers.
The study assumed that refugees were using Medicaid at the same rate as average Tennesseans even though up to 59% of refugees have been placed into Medicaid upon arrival in recent years.
Also, the report assumed refugees pay state taxes at the same rate as average Tennesseans while federal studies find very high usage of welfare, high unemployment and low wages among those refugees with jobs.
The study authors themselves concluded “The information necessary to complete a comprehensive study on the possible cost shifting from the federal government to the state for the resettlement of refugees is not available.” Nevertheless, The Tennessean and other media reported more or less as fact the “take away” that refugees bring in twice as much in taxes as they use in benefits.
The study’s outcome – more accurately, lack of outcome – was likely foreordained by a Chamber of Commerce/left wing coalition that had hijacked other supposedly objective fiscal reviews of state operations.
Another study of refugee economic impact sponsored by an amorphous, shape-shifting Chamber of Commerce/left wing coalition calling itself The Refugee Services Collaborative of Cleveland got more traction than the embarrassing Tennessee study. It found, according to an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, that “Three resettlement agencies spend about $4.8 million a year helping refugees to start new lives in the Cleveland area. From that investment of mostly federal dollars comes an annual economic impact of nearly $50 million.”
Now the tax dollars invested are paying back 10 to 1!
The study looked at 3 areas where refugees make an economic contribution in the Cleveland area: refugee service organizations, refugee-owned businesses and household spending of refugee families.
Speaking of refugee service organizations, the study notes that the “preponderance of funding for these organizations is derived from federal sources”. That is not a negative finding for the authors of the study; after all it still represents a net inflow of money into the Cleveland area and employment for 95. I assume most of the employees are refugees or immigrants, but the study does not say. An interesting question for a study is why an area which in the year of the study resettled 598 refugees and resettled less than 400 per year in the previous 12 years needs 95 federal taxpayer funded employees focused exclusively on serving refugees.
The next category of economic contribution comes from refugee-owned businesses of which the study reports: “The Chmura survey indicated that over the last ten years, at least 38 businesses were started by refugees in the Cleveland area with a total of 141 employees (including owners). In addition, it is estimated that almost all of those employed by refugee-owned businesses are refugees themselves. Though the survey did not gather information of the types of businesses that were started, estimates were made based upon studies conducted elsewhere. The assumed mix of industries for the refugee-owned businesses includes the following: restaurants, retail, health and beauty, transportation and automotive services, and child care.” (my emphasis)
In other words, over a period of 10 years just 141 refugees found employment in 38 refugee-started businesses – average size less than 4 employees. The job-creation miracle yielded 141 jobs for the 4,000 or so who were resettled in the area at that time. And we have no idea what the businesses are – foodcarts, in-home day care centers, one man and a lawn mower, consultants on how to work the system? It is more than amazing that having located and counted all the businesses opened by refugees they didn’t ask “oh, by the way, just what does your business do?”
The third category of economic vitality is household spending of refugee families.
Offering no real supporting evidence the study assumes Cleveland area refugees use welfare at less than the national average for refugees. (See above for an idea of welfare usage for refugees nationally.) It doesn’t matter anyway: a dollar provided by the federal taxpayer via a welfare program is a net plus in this study as it is assumed that this dollar will be spent in a Cleveland business.
The study is filled with findings such as “refugee services will purchase goods and services from other local businesses to support their organizations” and there are “benefits to local consumer-oriented businesses (such as retail and restaurants) that make sales to workers of the refugee services”.
Remember “refugee services” purchase goods and pay salaries with federal taxpayer dollars. But the dollars keep going round and round with positive ‘direct impacts’, ‘indirect impact’ and ‘induced impacts’. (No mention is made that some of these dollars are going directly back to the home country.)
The fog of ignorance and misinformation around this program is largely thanks to the inattention, if not active collusion of the media.
The facts are out there if the media would but investigate and report them. Until that happens we will ever be in the twilight zone when it comes to this topic.
