Feds will close 74 refugee offices during the course of this year

04/15/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We knew this was happening, but this article at The Indypendent has some useful nuggets of information on the internal turmoil involving the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program which began in 1980 as a supposed public-private partnership, but has evolved in to an almost entirely publicly (taxpayer) funded industry.
I’m guessing that the average uninformed reader of this story is scratching his or her head and asking, how can the federal government ask non-profits to close their doors?
It is because the ‘non-profits’ are really fake charities and they can’t survive without the continuous infusion of federal dollars.
Here are a few nuggets from the story:

The Trump Administration is Dismantling the Refugee Resettlement System

April 1 marked the halfway point in the federal government’s fiscal year and, so far, the United States has only admitted 10,548 refugees, placing it on track to fall far short of its already record low admission ceiling of 45,000 individuals. Resettlement workers and refugee advocates say that this is further evidence of the Trump administration’s deliberate efforts to sabotage the refugee resettlement system now and for years to come.

shelley callahan — “The program is being torn down from the top!”

“The program is being torn down from the top,” says Dr. Shelly Callahan, executive director of the Mohawk Valley Resource Center in Utica, which works to resettle refugees.

[….]

The U.S. government works with nine private nonprofit organizations***, known as voluntary agencies, to assign refugees to host communities around the United States.

Voluntary agencies receive $2,125 in federal funding for each refugee they resettle and administer networks of local offices that provide services directly to the refugees. All of the approximately 320 local offices provide new arrivals with housing and social services including language training, job-search assistance, school-enrollment assistance and help integrating into the community during their first months in the United States. [They can never bring themselves to say they are signing them up for welfare, medical care and food stamps!—ed]

In practice, virtually all resettlement offices also provide a variety of services to other immigrant, minority, and vulnerable communities alongside refugees, and assist refugees beyond the first months of resettlement. [Yes, we know they are providing taxpayer-funded services to illegal migrants too!—ed] They rely on private donations for these programs. [No they don’t! Only small amounts!—ed]

[….]

erol-kekic — Erol Kekic of Church World Service says they are trying to find a more sustainable model. Does that mean trying to raise private money now that the easy federal money, doled out on a refugee per head basis, is drying up?

In December, the State Department informed the voluntary agencies of its intention to close all local affiliate offices [aka subcontractors.—ed] that are not projected to receive at least 100 refugees in fiscal year 2018. According to a plan drawn up by the voluntary agencies and obtained by Reuters, some 74 offices are expected to be closed this year.

Eleven new offices that were in the planning phase at the time will not be opening, although some of them may still be able to operate as sub-offices dependent on other offices for cases and funding.

“We’re trying to look into what would be the best make up of our network and how do we change what currently exists into something more sustainable that can still meet its moral and legal commitments,” says Erol Kekic, executive director of Church World Service, one of the national voluntary agencies. Church World Service has closed 17 offices this fiscal year, bringing its total to just 19.

[….]

The layoffs and closures being engineered by the Trump administration will impact the refugee resettlement system for years to come.

More here.
The article references a cool Reuters interactive graph showing how many offices are closing in each state. See the whole thing here. This is just a portion of a screen shot.
Here is where the original list of over 300 subcontractors is archived, but it looks like the list has not been updated for over a year.

Screenshot (378) — Partial screenshot. See full image here: http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/USA-IMMIGRATION-REFUGEES/010060WC1Q2/index.html

*** I post the contractor list almost every day because I want new readers to know exactly who is responsible for driving the US Refugee Admissions Program (in addition to the UN!). We are hearing reports that all nine might not survive the year.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of the nine VOLAGs’ income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees, line them up with (low paying) jobs in food production and cleaning hotel rooms, and get them signed up for their services (welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.

Australia "dumb" deal update: Aussie Libs want US to take families

04/11/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Let me say at the outset that the Australia deal struck by the Obama Administration in its waning months is dumber than dumb and Donald Trump should have followed his first instincts and cancelled the whole thing (as even the Australians suspected he would) and been done with it in February of 2017.
Here we see that Australian immigration official Peter Dutton is being blamed for not allowing an Afghan family (who attempted to break in to Australia illegally) that have been split between the mainland and offshore detention to apply to come to the US.

peter-dutton1 — Dutton’s call to rethink the 1951 UN Refugee Convention has to make the No Borders agitators crazy! Out to get him now for sure!*

Not one word in The Guardian story about whether the US has any say in this!

I believe the US State Department has already said that we aren’t taking extended families of the detainees (so far 220 of Australia’s rejects, mostly Muslim men, have been airlifted to Your Town, USA!).
For new readers, Australia had such an awful problem with boat people attempting to break in to their country that they made a new policy. Anyone breaking in would be detained in offshore detention facilities and would never be admitted to the mainland. That was about 5 years ago and they are sticking to the policy. However! Lefties in Australia have been beating up the government ever since, so they found a way to wiggle out—thanks to Obama—by sending those they won’t grant refugee status to to America!
The Guardian:

Dutton urged to allow refugee families in Australia to apply for US resettlement

Split up refugee families stuck in limbo because of Australian government policy could be reunited if Peter Dutton let them apply for US resettlement from Australia, the opposition has said.

The comment follows revelations by Guardian Australia that a family of four had been split between Nauru and Australia since 2014.

Leftwing “shadow minister” Shayne Neumann blames Dutton for not allowing sick Shiite Muslim family to reunite and apply for US resettlement. Hey! Neumann, why should the US take on Australia’s migration problems!

Australian Border Force has told the 27-year-old daughter on Nauru that they could be reunited but only if her mother and sister returned to the island. The mother is in Australia confined to a wheelchair and awaiting surgery, and doctors have said she cannot go back.

While the mother and one daughter are in Australia they cannot apply for resettlement in the US, offered under a deal struck between the Australian government and the Obama administration. More than 220 have been resettled, out of a promise of “up to 1,200”.

By the way, something must have slowed the flow to the US. Last report was over a month ago. Wonder what that is all about!

“Labor strongly supports the US refugee resettlement agreement and wants all eligible refugees – including those in Australia for medical treatment – to have the opportunity to apply for resettlement in the US,” the shadow minister for immigration, Shayne Neumann, said.

“The long-term issue of asylum seekers from Manus Island and Nauru in Australia could have been avoided entirely if Peter Dutton simply allowed eligible refugees in Australia the opportunity to apply to resettle in the United States.”

Nuts! No offense to Dutton, but the US gets some say in this!
More here.
Asylum shopping!
Follow links back and see that this family with its health issues (including mental health issues) would be a huge burden on US taxpayers! Legitimate refugees are to ask for asylum in the first safe country they enter, however, the whole system has been perverted and that is why the 1951 UN Refugee Convention should be trashed.
I have dozens of posts on the Australia “dumb” deal, click here to learn more.
*Don’t miss Dutton calls for reconsideration of outdated 1951 UN Refugee Convention, here.
Contact the White House! Tell the President to cut it off now. 220 is too many already!

Why is it our job to clean out UN refugee camps?

04/10/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, why is the Trump Administration continuing refugee resettlement started for no other reason (by George Bush and Barack Obama) than to please the UN?

anne-richard-and-unhcr — Obama Secretary of State for PRM, Anne Richard with then UNHCR, now Secretary General of the UN Guterres, decided that the US should take 50,000 from the DR Congo.

Previous presidents jumped to the UN piper’s tune and said sure, the US will step up to take the Bhutanese and the DR Congolese because the UN asked us to.
These people were not our responsibility, no one could say we caused the problems that resulted in their care by the UN.
We have no strategic interest or reason other than to make the UN happy (and some big employers who want the cheap labor, the Dems who want voters and the contractors who want the payola!).
(By the way, there are other examples of cleaning out camps and of course the largest over the years have been the UN camps in Kenya, but the numbers have dramatically slowed in the last year, not so for the two I’m writing about now. And, of course the UN has no interest in cleaning out the Palestinian camps and sending those people to other Arab countries.)

DR Congo express to America….

map DR Congo
The largest ethnic group of refugees coming to the US right now are DR Congolese. In the first 6 months of this fiscal year (’18) we admitted 2,569.
In 2013 the Obama State Department told the UN High Commissioner for Refugees that we would take 50,000 from the DR Congo over five years.
Checking Wrapsnet just now, I see that we have taken 40,899 since that promise was made, however going back to FY10, I see we are now at 49,476.
Will the flow ever stop?
Based on the Bush Bhutanese deal, the answer is likely NO!

Nearly 100,000 Bhutanese scattered across America…

In 2006 we told the UN we would take 60,000 Bhutanese off their hands over five years.
These displaced people are really Nepali people that were kicked out of Bhutan and Nepal wouldn’t take them back.
map nepal and bhutan
Other western countries promised to take another 30,000.
Here in 2015 the UN reported on its “success” at that point in time:

A core group of eight countries came together in 2007 to create this opportunity for Bhutanese refugees to begin new lives: Australia (5,554), Canada (6,500), Denmark (874), New Zealand (1002), the Netherlands (327), Norway (566), the United Kingdom (358) and the United States of America (84,819).

Now 10 years after Bush Asst. Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey said we would take 60,000, we are at 95,841 (as of today).

In the last 6 months, an additional 1,925 ‘refugees’ of Nepali origin that we call Bhutanese were resettled across the country. I have to laugh because the total number in 2006 was 108,000 and between the US and other countries we have far surpassed that number now, so it begs the question—have more people arrived at the camps looking for resettlement in recent years? (See one of my many posts on fuzzy math!)
Here is where 95,481 have been place in the US in just 10 years!

Screenshot (372)

Screenshot (368) — The numbers are difficult to read even in the original. The top five ‘welcoming’ states are Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, New York and Georgia. And, can you believe it, Hawaii, the state that is hankering for more diversity got zip!

I don’t believe there is a law that says we must take refugees that the UN wants us to take!
And, thus, I think it is time that the Trump Administration distanced itself from the dictates of the United Nations. In fact, maybe it is time to do more than that! Let’s take the lead in rethinking the entire 1951 UN Refugee Convention.
Surely, if we are going to offer ‘welcome’ to legitimate refugees, we have smart people who would know how to pick the most worthy candidates and not just take in ethnic groups wholesale because the UN tells us we must!
See Nayla Rush writing at the Center for Immigration Studies about the haphazard choices being made (even under Donald Trump!).
See my archive on the Bhutanese by clicking here. The thing that has brought them to the media’s attention over the years is the fact that they have a high suicide rate in America. In fact, for years leading up to 2006, they steadfastly maintained that they did not want to be “scattered to the four winds.”
Contact the White House, tell the President: As your Administration prepares refugee plans for the coming fiscal year, stop asking how high, when the UN says jump! We will pick our own refugees, thank you very much!

Family reunification (chain migration) is bugaboo for new German government

04/08/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Invasion of Europe news….

German special forces cropped — Members of German Special Forces in Muenster yesterday. Still no official report on the deadly attack. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/muenster-attack-several-dead-after-car-drives-into-crowd-in-germany-a3808266.html

I bet Japan Times is eager to show the citizens of Japan what a mess one’s country becomes when the migrant tide is invited in!
From Japan Times:

BERLIN – A scuffle over immigration has marred the first weeks in office of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s fourth coalition, promising anything but smooth sailing in the years ahead for the loveless left-right alliance.

Conservatives among Merkel’s Christian Democrats are keen to restrict as heavily as possible so-called family reunifications that would allow some of the million-plus migrants and refugees who have arrived since 2015 to bring in relatives.

That has stirred the ire of Social Democrats (SPD), the reluctant junior partners who helped Merkel into office to end the longest period of post-election limbo in post-World War II German history.

A thousand a month!

GERMANY-EUROPE-MIGRANTS — Chancellor Merkel and Interior Minister Seehofer

Japan Times continues…..

In their painstakingly negotiated coalition deal, the parties agreed that up to 1,000 people per month could enter Germany under family reunification, with only immediate relatives eligible.

New Interior Minister Horst Seehofer is eager to tighten the screws further, with a draft law that would prevent people dependent on social benefits from bringing in family members and further restrict which relations are eligible, including ruling out siblings.

Now that is an idea! The US should be doing that too! If the family already here is on welfare, they can’t bring other family members over. Gee, I bet that is already a law we don’t follow!

Many people who arrived in Germany as refugees are yet to join the labor market, undergoing job training or language classes, and would therefore not qualify.

Seehofer is a former leader of the ultra-conservative CSU, the smaller Bavarian sister party of Merkel’s more centrist CDU.

[….]

“If the Social Democrats don’t cooperate, the ‘grand coalition’ would be over” less than a month after Merkel was sworn in, deputy leader of the conservative parliamentary group Georg Nuesslein told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper.

The family reunification row is just one front in a broader battle over immigration, integration and Islam in German society that has pitted the SPD against the CDU/CSU.

Seehofer is also keen to speed up expulsions of people whose asylum applications are refused, many of whom spend months or years contesting the decisions in the courts or acquire a “tolerated” residence status.

The twin issues of asylum abuse and family reunification are also key elements in the US debate over our southern border.
Can’t lose with the issue of more law and order!

Health Minister Jens Spahn, a rising star of the CDU’s right wing seen as a potential future candidate for the chancellorship, has spent his first weeks in office giving interviews urging more “law and order” in troubled city districts.

Continue reading the story at Japan Times, here.
Japanese readers must be asking: Why would any sane government act to destroy its own country and culture?
See my Germany archive here. And, new readers might like to know that Japan doesn’t want to open its doors to the third world, here.
And, for those with a lot of time, see my archive on the ‘Invasion of Europe’ by clicking here.

Kentucky Somali says the UN picked Louisville as his resettlement destination

04/06/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Hmmmm!

This is from a short article at The Catholic Record in Kentucky. It’s about how difficult it was for a new employee with Migration and Refugee Services in Louisville to learn the ropes about the resettlement process.
I can relate since I’m still learning the system after writing about it for nearly 11 years, but one bit caught my attention!
Here is what Catholic Charities of Louisville’s “employment team leader” Somali Ahmed Hussein told the new guy on the block:

One of my co-workers who is always willing to share his story and answer questions about his experience as a refugee is our employment team leader, Ahmed Hussein.

Ahmed is a Somali refugee who came to Kentucky after spending eight years in a Kenyan refugee camp. I remember when I first met Ahmed, I asked why they chose Louisville as a destination, and his response was really eye-opening to the entire resettlement process, “Man, we didn’t choose Louisville, they (the United Nations High Commission for Refugees) choose for you, and you take the destination they offer.”

You know what!
Since the US State Department and their resettlement contractors*** NEVER explain to the public how locations are chosen (it is one of the most closely held secrets of the whole process), we’ll go with Mr. Hussein’s explanation until we get some real answers!
And, have a look at this graphic I found. It’s a couple years old, but it does give you some idea of where the UN is placing Somalis!

Somali cities map — I missed this article in 2016: http://stumpinfortrump.com/2016/03/19/somali-tsunami-obama-sending-700-per-month-u-s-cities-despite-admitted-terror-recruitment-problem/

This is the Top Twenty list of cities (targeted by the UN?) from that map:

Minneapolis-St. Paul – 646
Columbus, Ohio – 412
Buffalo, N.Y. – 361
Syracuse, N.Y. – 307
Dallas-Ft. Worth – 302
Salt Lake City, Utah – 276
San Diego – 275
St. Cloud – 243
Louisville, Ky. – 236
Phoenix, Ariz. – 218
Seattle, Wash. – 212
Erie, Pa. – 207
Atlanta – 159
Glendale, Ariz. – 155
Tuscon – 154
Boston – 153
Houston – 150
Nashville – 148
Kansas City, Mo. – 145
Portland, Ore. – 132

See my Kentucky archive, here.

Contact the President by clicking here. Tell him it is time to get the UN out of our refugee resettlement business!

*** These are the nine major resettlement contractors who keep this secret well: How is your town or city chosen?
I post the contractor list almost every day because I want new readers to know exactly who is responsible for driving the US Refugee Admissions Program (in addition to the UN!).
(Catholic Charities works for the US Bishops.)
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of the nine VOLAGs’ income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees, line them up with (low paying) jobs in food production and cleaning hotel rooms, and get them signed up for their services! From most recent accounting, here.