***Update***Breitbart reporter JohnBinder reported just yesterday that Shapiro is helping move illegal aliens into the US interior too.
In 2016, with the big push to resettle tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in America, the Shapiro Foundation patriarch Ed Shapiro got the idea to increase the number of refugees that resettlement contractors were bringing into the US by pushing for an expansion of the government-run refugee resettlement model used in the US to a system similar to Canada’s.
Canada has a government program and in addition allows for private groups to sponsor refugees outside of the government program.
Now I might argue for private sponsorship if that was how our entire system was run, with no taxpayer funding permitted, purely private money for private charity. But this “new era,” as they are calling it, is simply to make more places available for third world refugees.
By the way, family foundations are a way for very wealthy people to shelter their wealth from taxes, but still use it for pet (often political!) projects.
We are Ed & Barbara Shapiro, and along with our two young-adult children, we make up The Shapiro Family. Our philanthropic work through the Foundation is an incredible labor of love and each one of us invests considerable time into the meaningful projects that we get involved with.
We are inspired by Nelson Mandela’s quote: “History will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday lives of children.”And for the first 15 years of our Foundation, we did so largely passively, through our initial significant grantees: Boston Children’s Hospital, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Horizons for Homeless Children and scholarships to The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and UCLA Anderson School.
I guess helping America’s children just wasn’t satisfying enough, or woke enough, for Ed. so…..
2016 marked a turning point for our Foundation. Ed and Barbara led a successful community-wide effort–including local, regional and national partners—to sponsor Syrian refugee families being resettled in Greater Boston. This program convinced Ed to start his next chapter, retiring from his 27-year investment management career in order to devote himself full-time to tackling the global refugee crisis.
Ed carried the highly focused approach he used during his investment career to the family’s philanthropy and decided to concentrate almost exclusively on refugees and immigration.
NPR is on it!
NPR’s Amos
And, so now here we are with NPR Refugee Reporter-in-Chief, Deborah Amos, telling us all about how Shapiro is not only using his own money for refugees, but is soliciting funds elsewhere in order to move more money into the hands of mostly federal resettlement contractors to find more community sponsors for refugee families because America has run out of poor children and families in need of help.
One of the funders of Shapiro’s new gig is none other than George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
By the way, these Leftie movers and shakers are masters at public relations and media manipulation. A big part of what they are doing with this is to generate warm and fuzzy stories as churches, synagogues and mosques join hands to “sponsor” poor refugee families.
‘New Era In Resettlement’: U.S. Refugee Advocates Count On More Community-Based Help
When President Biden announced this week that his administration would raise the cap on refugee admissions to 62,500 for this fiscal year, refugee advocates breathed a collective sigh of relief. The number is far above the historically low limit of 15,000 refugees set by the Trump administration. Biden’s announcement was a stark turnaround after weeks of pushback from refugee advocates, outraged by a previous order keeping the 15,000 limit.
Biden is calling on communities to do more, to put foreigners first!
One of those most elated by this week’s announcement is Ed Shapiro, a Boston-based philanthropist and advocate for reimagining the U.S. refugee resettlement system to enable a lot more community-based efforts.
“It is the start of a new era in resettlement,” he says.
Biden’s goal, laid out in a key phrase in a February executive order, introduces “community and private sponsorship” as an innovation that allows local groups of volunteers to become part of the circuitry of resettlement, including the day-to-day tasks of helping newcomers find housing, jobs, health care and a sense of community.
Just so you know, libertarian think tank, the CATO Institute, has been pushing this concept for the last five or so years as they say here.
The goal is to not simply take better care of the refugees the government admits, as Shapiro and Amos imply, but to expand the number admitted.
As I’ve argued before, the United States could accept more refugees using private money and private sponsors without needing Congress’s sign-off.
Amos continues at NPR….
The U.S. usually resettles refugees in a different way: The State Department contracts with nine large resettlement organizations. Volunteers play a role, but the program is centered around professional caseworkers.
Here is my favorite line from Amos. She is saying what we have been saying for over a decade—the program operates in secret!
It’s all done quietly so communities don’t reject the newcomers.
Now, the higher cap on refugee admissions means Shapiro can finally accelerate a project that has consumed him for four years. His aim is to fund pilot programs to kick-start an addition to the traditional resettlement infrastructure. “There is pent-up demand and interest,” he says. “These are people, families, who want to help.”
He partnered with the Open Society Foundation and other funders to tap a pool of donors and raised $800,000 for grants awarded in March to eight U.S. community groups in seven states. Another round of grantees will be announced this month.
The proposals are moving testimonies, says Shapiro. One, from New Orleans, came from a multifaith community group that includes representatives from the oldest Jewish temple in the U.S. and a Roman Catholic congregation.
Who are the lucky winners?
Of course at this point in theNPRstory I wanted to know which eight community groups got those first grants from Soros and Shapiro, but other than the one mentioned in New Orleans, Amos was mum on that.
Here are the eight big winners of $100,000 each. I have to laugh because most are among the nine federal refugee contractors*** already raking in millions of taxpayer dollars for their ‘charitable’ work.
Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas (Kansas City, KS)
Church World Service North Carolina (Durham and Greensboro, NC)
Ethiopian Community Development Council (Denver, CO and Washington, D.C.)
Home Is Here NOLA (New Orleans, LA)
Interfaith Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS) & Home for Refugees USA (Los Angeles, CA)
New Roots Fund (Seattle, WA)
U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) Albany Field Office (Albany, NY)
World Relief Chicagoland (Chicago, IL)
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are alsopaid to find locationsfor the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
This is Dadaab in Kenya, one of the largest refugee camps in the world. It is where most of our Somali refugees lived before coming to America (including Rep. Ilhan Omar). Kenya wants the camp closed by June 2022. So where do you think thousands of the 430,000 housed there now will go? Anytown, USA? https://www.dw.com/en/kenya-to-close-2-refugee-camps-next-year/a-57382561
***Update***Another Letter writersays he is happy refugees will be placed in his “rural community” where people know and love their neighbors. The point is that when Church World Service does its work, they soon won’t know their neighbors.
Editor: This is a follow-up to my post on Saturday:
A letter writer who lives in Frederick County (Winchester is the county seat) is critical of the plan to begin moving Biden’s refugees into the city.
But as interesting as the letter is, it is the comments that are most informative.
First, hereis the letter from county resident Dale Watten to the Winchester Star:
Letter to the editor: Winchester wrong location for refugee settlement
I think that Winchester is the wrong place and this is the wrong time to place a refugee resettlement office in our community. As Kim Herbstritt pointed out, Winchester does not have any excess housing, much less affordable housing for refugees. Our schools are overflowing as are the English as second language classes. After a year of COVID lockdowns and business closures, I don’t think this area has enough jobs for our own citizens let alone foreign refugees who can’t speak English.
I don’t think rural America should have to bear the burden of the Biden administration’s misguided policies that most of us in rural America did not vote for. Might I point out what has happened to once lovely Minneapolis in large part due to refugee resettlement. Send the refugees to NYC, San Francisco or Biden’s home state of Delaware. Don’t send them to Winchester. I strongly urge Winchester City Council to reject the proposed refugee resettlement office.
Dale Watten
Now, check out the comments.
They have devolved into controversy mostly between two commenters, one arguing that rural people (mostly Trump supporters!) should basically shut up about what the city does, demonstrating the great and growing divide between rural and urban America.
The fact is, and what readers need to know is, that once a resettlement office is established, refugees may be placed up to 100 miles of that office.
And the other area of discussion relates to the illegals flooding our southern border and whether Winchester will end up being the recipient of some of those illegal aliens, demonstrating exactly what supposedly Biden, or at least whoever is Joe’s brain, feared when expanding refugee admissions in the middle of the border crisis.
I found this tiny segment of aPolitico storyfrom Monday of interest.
The story is about the flip-flop-flipping the White House has been doing for the last couple of months on the issue of setting the refugee cap at a level 4 times higher than Trump had left it.
Near the end of Politico‘s report is this bit of information.
Biden, or his other brain, feared conflation of the two issues—expanded refugee resettlement and the border invasion would be one and the same in the minds of the increasingly angry general public:
Several sources have said that Biden himself has expressed distress over immigration issues overall and raised concern about lifting the cap before the system could catch up. The White House has also been sensitive to thesteady stream of bad press coming from conservative media about the border and predicted that if Biden announced a large number of refugees would be allowed in on top of it, critics would purposely conflate the two issues to accelerate a “open borders” false narrative.
There is nothing false about it, the Biden administration has gone full-on Open Borders and they know their time is limited to flood America as the 2022 Midterm elections loom!
The vast majority of Americans will see this for exactly what it is—an invasion run by Democrats to relocate poverty from every corner of the world and thereby putting Americans Last!
You have been told what they fear, and so it is incumbent on you to make sure the “steady stream of bad press” keeps coming!
Get some pockets of resistance going!
As I said yesterday, call your local government officials and find out if your community is being fingered as a new home to the third world, and if so, make your views known just as Frederick County, Virginia resident Dale Watten did yesterday.
But, be prepared for the vile verbal attacks that will come from the Socialist Leftwing pressing Harris/Biden for double 62,500 for admission to the US in FY22 which begins in less than five months.
If you are feeling whiplash over the Biden teams’ Refugee Admission plans, join the crowd.
I don’t have the time or energy to go back over the flip-flop-flipping the White House has been doing over the last few months on the decision to raise, not raise, and now raise the refugee ceiling from the level President Trump had set for Fiscal Year 2021 which ends on September 30, 2021—a mere 5 months away.
But, for new readers here is one recent postabout the mess the administration stepped in when they dared to leave the ceiling/cap for refugee admissions for the remainder of the year at the Trump level—15,000.
Looks like the administration, in its latest iteration, has listened to refugee contractor Mark Hetfield who told the Biden team to “set the damn cap.”
He explained it is a cap and likely won’t be reached, but that Biden/Harris must send their virtue signal around the world!
It was heard loud and clear yesterday by the United Nations which chooses most refugees admitted to the US and applauded the decision.
Somalis who live in one of the world’s largest UN refugee camps—Dadaab in Kenya—will soon be arriving in Anytown, USA. Trump had slowed the movement of certain groups of refugees to America.
Biden increases refugee cap to 62,500 after backlash
President Biden has increased the refugee admissions cap to 62,500 for the current fiscal year, after keeping the historically low Trump-era cap of 15,000. But Mr. Biden also admitted in a statement on Monday that the administration will not reach that cap this year.
The Biden administration faced intense backlash from liberals, immigration advocacy groups and religious groups alike after announcing last month that they would keep the Trump-era level of 15,000 refugees for the time being, despite an earlier pledge to quadruple admissions of immigrants escaping war and violence. The White House said Monday that they would increase the cap this month.
“Today, I am revising the United States’ annual refugee admissions cap to 62,500 for this fiscal year,” the president said in a statement. “This erases the historically low number set by the previous administration of 15,000, which did not reflect America’s values as a nation that welcomes and supports refugees. The new admissions cap will also reinforce efforts that are already underway to expand the United States’ capacity to admit refugees, so that we can reach the goal of 125,000 refugee admissions that I intend to set for the coming fiscal year.”
We are raising the ceiling just for show and to get the crazed Leftwing Refugee Contractors*** off our backs!
But Mr. Biden also said in his statement that the U.S. will not reach 62,500 admissions and a cap is just that — a ceiling.
“The sad truth is that we will not achieve 62,500 admissions this year,” the president said in his statement. “We are working quickly to undo the damage of the last four years. It will take some time, but that work is already underway.
Have you noticed that not only on the refugee admissions, but with the southern border that they have decided on the perfect propaganda message to cover their screw-ups. Blame it all on Trump!
Now what?
Based on comments from readers, I see that many of you still don’t know that the invaders at the southern border are not refugees that will arrive under the legal refugee admissions ceiling. Don’t worry too much about that for the moment.
Biden/Harris are out scouting for new locations to place either group of migrants (aka new Democrat voters).
Just know that no one in Washington is going to help you if your town/city/county is going to be a relocation site for legal refugees or illegal aliens. See my post about Winchester, Virginia.
A reader yesterday asked me how she could find out if she lived in a target town? I have no way of finding out….However!
Pick up the phone!
I told her she must call her local elected officials at the city or county level and ask them if they have been alerted by the federal government or a federal resettlement contractor if they have been targeted.
Get other like-minded people to do the same, the more the better! And, if the answer is yes, yours is now a target town, you will have to get to work organizing locally against it.
I know that isn’t what you want to hear, but that frankly is all there is—you making the most political noise you can make against Biden and the Democrats working to change America by changing the people.
For four years, we all sat back and let Trump take care of us. He did a mostly good job, but here we are—back to square one—local organizing by hard working citizen activists asking local elected officials:
Don’t we have an obligation to care for our own poor and homeless first?
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are also paid to find locations for the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
This is probably going on in most of America right now!
The nine federal Refugee Resettlement contractors*** that work for the US State Department and ultimately the United Nationsare getting ready for Chairman Joe’s promise to begin the massive, possibly annual, flow of 125,000 refugees to America beginning October first!
(It is still unclear how many will be admitted before that date since the Biden team has beenflip-floppingon what they plan to do for the remainder of this fiscal year.)
This is exactly how it begins!
This is exactly what Church World Service did in Hagerstown, MD in 2007 when I first became aware of the federally funded plan to diversify America.
They send a spokesperson to a local elected board, in my case the county commission, to explain how wonderful it would be to bring impoverished refugees to the community.
Winchester is the county seat of largely rural Frederick County, Virginia. It borders West Virginia.
Then completely uninformed elected officials nod in agreement (fear of looking racist!) not having a clue what types of questions they should ask.
As for Winchester, Virginia, it looks like there will be an opportunity for some citizen input before May 11th, but even that may be too late because Winchester’s Democrat mayor is signaling that Winchester is welcoming.
WINCHESTER — A global faith-based organization thinks Winchester is an ideal community for international refugees who have been driven from their own countries.
Susannah Lepley, Virginia’s director of Immigration and Refugee Resettlement for the nonprofit Church World Service (CWS), told the city’s Planning and Economic Development Committee this week that her organization — formed in 1946 as a partnership between 17 religious denominations that wanted to feed, clothe and shelter the impoverished— hopes to open an office in Winchester that would serve people who have been forced from their homelands due to political, social or religious persecution.
[Lepley doesn’t mention that the majority of CWS funding comes from the US government (aka taxpayers) letting officials believe their work is purely driven by ‘religious’ charity—ed]
“We feel that refugees would add to the Winchester community,” Lepley said. “There would be more people to work here, and Winchester would be great for the refugees themselves.” [What? So Winchester is short on workers?—ed]
Lepley said the refugee resettlement office’s goal for the first year would be to bring in 100 refugees, which equates to about two families per month.
However, that number could increase in later years if President Joe Biden follows through on his pledge to raise the number of refugees allowed into the United States annually.
It will not end! Once the flow begins, elected officials in Winchester will have no say on how many more will be placed there. Schools? Healthcare? Social Services? Law enforcement? What happens when those services are stretched? Winchester will be out of luck!
By the way, Lepley’s office is in Harrisonburg, VAand they have likely saturated that area with impoverished refugees and so must now find new territory.
Currently, only 15,000 refugees are allowed in per year — a number that Lepley said is “a historic low” — but Biden has said he wants to elevate that number to 125,000, possibly as soon as October. Prior to the tenure of President Donald Trump, she said, the yearly average number of refugees allowed into the U.S. was 96,000.
“What we’re doing is building the structure so that when the presidential determination is 125,000, we’ll have places to send people that are welcoming towns, welcoming cities,” Lepley said.
The Winchester CWS office, at least initially, would primarily serve people who have fled Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
After 90 days the refugees are the responsibility of ‘welcoming’ Winchester!
“Before they arrive, we find an apartment for them, we set up the apartment, we furnish it with everything from dishes to lights to beds, sheets, towels, shampoo, everything,” Lepley said. “We help them within the first seven days to apply for government assistance to get them through the first several months, provide very intensive case management for the first 90 days, and then we provide employment assistance, help put their kids in school, things like that for the first five years they’re here.”
CWS also helps refugees learn English and obtain permanent residence in the United States.
Why are they coming? Because the United Nations has “granted permission” for them to come to America!
Kim Herbstritt
Committee member Kim Herbstritt asked Lepley why the refugees would come to the U.S.
“They’re invited by the State Department,” Lepley said, explaining the refugees have already applied for, and been granted permission to, emigrate to the United States by the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees.
At least someone has the good sense to ask about housing availability!
Herbstritt said it may be difficult for Lepley to find enough local homes for the refugees. The city’s housing supply is so low that on Tuesday, only 19 homes were available for purchase in Winchester, and half of those cost more than $300,000 each. She recommended Lepley also look at available housing in nearby Frederick and Clarke counties.
If city officials give their blessing to the refugee resettlement office, Lepley said it would most likely open in April 2021 [that date has passed?—ed] somewhere within city limits.
Mayor Smith
“Winchester has always been an open community,” Mayor and committee member David Smith said before the panel voted unanimously to recommend City Council’s approval of a resolution supporting the refugee resettlement office.
Council will open discussions on the proposal at its next meeting on May 11.
So has Winchester run out of its own poor people to care for? That is what you should be asking the Mayor and city officials!
If you live in Winchester or anywhere in Frederick County, Virginia or adjoining counties and have problems with bringing third world poverty to your town or county when Americans are unemployed and homeless, you better get moving and make your voices heard.
That is the only way to stop this train.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
First up this week to lure you in (before I get to some more important, but less titillating news) is today’s post at ‘Frauds and Crooks’which could just as easily have been posted here first.
Know that almost all Somalis in America arrived in the US as refugees (you paid for them to come with your tax dollars) or are the children of refugees.
The resettlement contractors*** and the US State Department salted them throughout the country including in Tennessee.
A new campaign by the refugee industry is calling on Chairman Joe to get behind the idea of allowing colleges to sponsor refugee families!
This is one more ploy to find more places to ‘welcome’ refugees and it’s a twofer as far as they are concerned—it will help indoctrinate your college students to the supposed joys of diversity as the push is on for so-called ‘action civics’ as I mentioned at ‘Frauds and Crooks’on Tuesday.
More Than 50 Organizations Call Upon Biden Administration To Pursue Campus Sponsorship of Refugees
At first when I saw this news, I assumed that 50 colleges were begging for refugees, but check out the letter, here, and see that the signatures are the usual refugee industry activist groups (including Americans for Prosperity/Koch Brothers, and a few of the resettlement contractors) and only a smattering of colleges are backing the idea.
For my Minnesota friends, St. Cloud State signed the letter.
Another bit of news this week that you need to keep an eye on going forward is this.
The refugee industry wants to make sure that a President could never again lower the ceiling on refugee admissions as Trump did.
Pay attention to this news too! In 2014, Obama began a likely illegal program involving Central American children who could be processed into the US as refugees from their own countries. Trump abolished the program, but now Biden has reinstated it.
They think that if they can process ‘kids’ (mostly teens) into the US from their own countries it will slow the rush on the border. It won’t.
And, by the way, remember that fleeing violence is not a criteria for a legitimate determination as a refugee. Over the years the open borders Lefties have expanded the definition and just assume they will get away with it because they are rarely challenged in court.
Biden restarts program to help migrant children fleeing violence in Central America
State news…..
Here is news from a few states. I think the refugee industry lobbyists have sent out marching orders to their “affiliates” and asked them to gin-up warm and fuzzy stories on refugees for local media consumption.
Refugee coordinators are in the process (right now!) of figuring out (along with the contractors) how many refugees can be accommodated in certain towns and cities in your state.
Get in touch with them and get as much information as you can about plans for your state by being friendly and courteous. Your goal is to get information first, so it is also best to not be a know-it-all. You won’t learn a thing if you start by antagonizing them.
***For New Readersthese are the nine federal refugee contractors who worked to put Biden and Harris in the White House, are lobbying for millions of illegal aliens to be transformed into legal voting citizens, and they have succeeded in getting the new administration to promise to raise the ceiling for refugee admissions to 125,000 for next year FY2022—that is the highest it has been in 29 years.
The 62,500 number is for the remainder of FY21. FY21 ends in less than 7 months.
They are largely paid by you, the taxpayer, for their work of changing America by changing the people, and in so doing, are putting struggling Americans last!
See my category News Round-upfor previous posts. Round-ups have been sporadic over the years, but I am trying now to do them regularly.
Susannah Lepley, Virginia’s director of Immigration and Refugee Resettlement for the nonprofit Church World Service (CWS), told the city’s Planning and Economic Development Committee this week that her organization — formed in 1946 as a partnership between 17 religious denominations that wanted to feed, clothe and shelter the impoverished — hopes to open an office in Winchester that would serve people who have been forced from their homelands due to political, social or religious persecution.
