Was there fraud in the huge resettlement of Burmese 'refugees' to the US?

02/27/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They must have found something at the USCIS or a thousand Burmese living in the US right now wouldn’t have gotten a letter to report to a USCIS office.
Was there fraud in transit country, Malaysia???
(Checking Wrapsnet I see that since FY06 we have admitted a whopping 167,583 Burmese people and they were coming before 2006 and are still coming, see map below.)
Here is a short article at the Des Moines Register about the “summons” Burmese living in Iowa have received:

Dozens of refugees in Iowa received letters from immigration officials asking them to appear for an interview and provide information that validates their status.

The refugees are from the country formerly known as Burma, a group that has grown in the past five years to include more than 8,000 living in Iowa.

[….]

Abigail-150x150 — Abigail Sui, program manager of Ethnic Minorities of Burma Advocacy and Resources in Des Moines. http://www.embarciowa.org/

She [Abigail Sui] said at least 50 refugees in Iowa, all who came from Burma and to the U.S. through Malaysia, got the letter from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Department that requested the in-person interview. One letter required travel to Indianapolis, while a refugee from Indiana appeared at the USCIS offices in Des Moines for an interview Monday, according to EMBARC.

[….]

“A current USCIS investigation has raised concerns about identity and biographic information provided to USCIS in a number of cases involving Burmese refugees, including many who have resettled in the U.S.,” said Sharon Rummery, a USCIS public affairs officer based in San Francisco.

She said in an email that the USCIS sent 1,000 requests for interviews nationwide that “will help determine the refugee’s immigration status or eligibility for future immigration benefits.”

The interviews are voluntary, but Sui said that she thinks consequences are possible if the refugees do not go.

Already facing resettlement hardships, the refugees would have to fund a trip to the interviews and take time off work, said Sui. In addition, no interpreters would be made available.

Can you hear the immigration lawyer stampede now—no taxpayer-funded interpreters is a big no-no! And, how dare the Trump Administration dig more deeply into the US Refugee Admissions Program.
More here.
Here is a map from the US State Department’s Refugee Processing Center showing where the 167,583 Burmese have been placed since FY06. Obviously there is an error as there is no number on the dark blue Indiana. Texas takes top honors.

Screenshot (219) — New readers may not know that Wyoming is the only state with no refugee program.

My archive on the Burmese may be found by clicking here.
Most of the Burmese are not Muslims but in the last few years, the US has begun admitting larger numbers of the so-called ‘Rohingya,’ Muslims from Burma and Bangladesh.

Israel set to deport African economic migrants, Canada says wait (they want more)

02/25/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Canada is apparently the leading country to take off Israel’s hands some of the tens of thousands of Africans who entered Israel illegally. Israel says they are mostly economic migrants and not legitimate refugees.
Canada wants a bunch, so why they are dragging their feet isn’t clear.
And, readers, know that the US is taking some too. I just checked data at Wrapsnet and it looks like we have taken 58 during this fiscal year as of January 31.
Here is the news at The Star:

Ottawa has reached a last-minute deal with Israel to suspend the deportation of asylum-seekers who currently are waiting for resettlement to Canada.

Israel refugees — Waiting for a ticket to Canada?

Israel is set to begin deporting some 37,000 asylum-seekers, the majority of them Sudanese and Eritreans, in April after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government issued them expulsion notices.

The asylum-seekers, most of them deemed by Israel to be economic migrants rather than refugees in need of protection, can either leave voluntarily for a “safe” African country and receive $3,500 and a plane ticket, or face imprisonment.

The Canadian government is under the gun to resettle 1,845 of the African refugees whose sponsorship applications are currently in process, some for years.

“Canada does not support policies of mass deportations of asylum-seekers. The rights of asylum-seekers and refugees are laid out in the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, of which Israel is a signatory,” said Adam Austen, press secretary for Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland.

Joanne Beach — Working on finding more churches willing to sponsor one of Israel’s illegal aliens!

“As the country that resettles the highest number of African asylum-seekers from Israel, we are in direct contact with the Government of Israel to convey Canada’s concerns about the situation.”

[….]

Joanne Beach, director of justice and compassion for the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada, which has a sponsorship agreement with Ottawa, said Canada must do its utmost to expedite the resettlement of refugees.

“The alliance is still concerned for the welfare of those at risk of deportation in Israel who do not have applications currently in process. We are appealing to churches to consider entering into a sponsorship agreement or partnering with a Canadian Jewish organization to help those at imminent risk of deportation from Israel,” said Beach.

More here.
This post is filed in my Canada category and my Israel and Refugees category.

Investigative reporter and blogger, Leo Hohmann's first-hand account of trip to South Dakota

02/24/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It was an eye-opener on so many levels Hohmann recounted to me and here is the first of a couple of posts on what he saw and learned when he was invited to help educate a South Dakota legislative committee about refugee resettlement and the refugees being secretly placed in American towns in recent years.
Joining Hohmann on a witness panel were James Simpson and Phil Haney, both should be familiar to regular readers here at RRW.
Below is the title and a few snips of the must read post at LeoHohmann.com, but please read it all! (Emphasis below is mine):

GOP governor leads fight against ending refugee influx from Somalia and other jihadist strongholds

Many of you have noticed I’ve been quiet this week, posting only one article about the efforts of Kansas Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins to win amnesty for an illegal-alien Muslim professor with ties to a terror-stained mosque.

Rest assured I haven’t been slacking. I was traveling on special assignment, so let me fill you in.

sen-neal-tapio — SD Senator Neal Tapio is running for Congress. Although Republicans soundly defeated his bill, the hearing served as an educational opportunity that should be replicated in other states.

Refugee resettlement has over the past couple of years become a controversial subject in many state capitals as more Americans educate themselves on the dark underbelly of a program that has been transforming U.S. cities and towns for 35 years.

South Dakota — like Idaho, Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Tennessee, West Virginia and Minnesota — is a state where patriotic Americans have formed pockets of resistance to the resettlements. They’ve seen the fraud and greed upon which the program — run by the United Nations in cooperation with the U.S. State Department and its federal contractors affiliated with private agencies like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services — is based.

[….]

My task Wednesday was to testify before the South Dakota Senate’s Committee on State Affairs in support of a bill introduced by Sen. Neal Tapio that would place a moratorium on refugees entering that state from any country that has been placed on a federal travel ban.

Any time a state pushes back against refugee resettlement it is a big deal, so I dropped everything and flew to South Dakota. This federal program has evolved over the decades from a legitimate humanitarian effort into a fraudulent operation whereby agencies like Lutheran Social Services serve as headhunters for industries looking for cheap Third World labor. The cost for U.S. communities has been devastating in terms of crime, terrorism and welfare abuse but the establishment of both parties will tell any lie necessary to keep the cheap labor flowing.

I saw them in action in South Dakota Wednesday and it left me with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Continue here for the remainder of part one.
See the Argus Leader here for its sanitized story on the hearing. More later on that!
Go here for my South Dakota archive, a state I visited during my tour of meatpacking states in the summer of 2016.

Get those federal "monitoring reports" for your community (if you can!)

02/24/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m reminded by this report on the San Diego refugee housing scandal at Inewsource.org.
The US State Department on some sporadic basis sends monitors out to refugee resettlement offices around the country to see if your local resettlement agency is compliant with guidelines for the care of refugees they have placed.
Years ago I spoke with Chris Coen who had a blog called ‘Friends of Refugees’ and he regularly submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the State Department for those monitoring reports, then patiently waited YEARS to get responses. Lacking patience, I never sought them (little did I imagine that nearly 11 years later, I am still doing this!).

IRC’s representative in San Diego: Mireille Cronin Mather

Now that we know that the Tillerson State Department is trying to clear its FOIA backlog, maybe some of you should try again to get the reports for contractors operating in your towns.
Clearly the reporters at Inewsource.org were able to obtain one for the International Rescue Committee in San Diego.
Here is the title and first paragraph of their latest report. The contractors are extremely vulnerable on the issue of how they care for refugees they are paid to care for (I’ve been hearing it for years), and it goes to the heart of the question about whether this is really a ‘humanitarian’ program or simply driven by money.

Federal monitors warned San Diego refugee nonprofit of problems with resettlement practices

Federal monitors raised concerns about a local refugee resettlement agency’s housing placement practices months before the organization’s employees committed additional violations, which KPBS uncovered and detailed in a series of reports last year.

Continue here.
Now see what a Monitoring report looks like. 2016 report for IRC in San Diego:

Screenshot (217)

Here is the State Department’s FOIA guideline site.
If you need to know which resettlement agencies are working near you, go here for a directory. Pick offices that are within a hundred miles of your home.
This post is filed in my ‘What you can do’ category, see here.

Trump's "secretive" policies for slowing refugee flow to US

02/23/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is really a nothingburger story at a college newspaper, but I was drawn by the headline, and, since I hadn’t mentioned Colorado much lately, am posting it.

Colorado springs welcome — I will bet that none of these protesters for more refugees ever gave any serious monetary donations to the local program because they have come to expect their Christian ‘charity’ comes from the government.

Reporter Ramah Aleryan‘s provocative title at The Catalyst is:

Trump’s Secretive Changes to the Process of Reviewing Refugees

The story then goes on to explain how the vetting process is being tightened and that the local Lutheran contractor’s office is shrinking. It is the same sob story we are hearing from sea to shining sea.
And, I continue to contend that the whole Ponzi-scheme system of paying ‘religious’ charities like the Lutherans with federal dollars to place refugees on a per head basis is crashing and a major part of the blame (for staff reductions and refugees left in the lurch) rests with the agencies like this one in Colorado (a subcontractor of the ‘mothership’—Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services in turmoil at the moment) that never raised enough private money to tide them over in downturn times like this.

LOL! A good friend recently coined the phrase: “Live by the government, die by the government.”

So here is some of what reporter Aleryan says about Colorado Springs.
By the way, no mention anywhere about how the refugees were pouring in to Colorado to supply meatpackers with cheap labor (LIRS even has a contract with Brazilian-owned slaughterhouse—JBS—headquartered in Greeley!).

President Trump’s executive order to ban refugees from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from coming into the United States, known as “The Muslim Ban,” is what we often talk about and see on news regarding any refugee status or immigration policy. However, is the Muslim Ban what really affects the arrival of refugees in American cities such as Colorado Springs?

Laura Liibbe is the community programs coordinator at Lutheran Family Services, Colorado’s local organization that is responsible for refugee settlement, among other affairs. Liibbe studied international development and teaches English as a second language, which was what inspired her to get involved with the organization. Her work primarily entails connecting refugees to the resources they need in Colorado Springs. [Connecting to resources=signing them up for welfare—ed] She has been working with LFS for six years.

[….]

When the refugee ban was finally lifted, people believed that refugees could again enter the U.S.. However, Trump had already implemented secretive policies that were not at the forefront of the news, so refugees were still not granted access to the country.

The security processes that Trump altered made it impossible for some cases to be processed. The security screening process usually entails refugees providing medical documents, background checking, verification of their refugee status, and their employment history for 10 years. That process is already difficult for some refugees to fulfill, especially if they fled their country and do not have access to their official documents. This process was made more difficult by mandating a 15 or 20 year verification of employment and other documents.

Trump also took resources from refugee reviewing processes that were reallocated to U.S. asylum cases. Liibbe emphasized that this move was not necessarily bad, but she criticizes the shift of resources instead of investing in new and increased resources. The refugee reviewing process is now significantly slower due to the loss of financial support and expertise. Each year, the President chooses a number of refugees to accept. This year, Trump’s administration decided on 45,000, but due to the slowed nature of the process, only 18,000 are expected to be approved and able to enter this year.

[….]

Liibbe emphasized that the city of Colorado Springs has the resources, the capacity, and the capabilities to receive refugees. In the past, they have settled 150 refugees a year with ease. Now, Liibbe insists that we will see a major decrease in that number. This decrease will deeply affect the LFS partnerships because their government funding is dependent on how many refugees they settle.

Can you say Ponzi-scheme! For regular readers this per refugee head payment business is old news, but believe me, ten years ago when I began writing about the program, no media ever mentioned that critical fact!
Come on Congress, time to get off your butts and either dump or reform the Refugee Act of 1980!
Endnote to Ms. Aleryan: You might be interested in writing about the contracts LIRS has with meatpackers especially since this agency—Lutheran Family Services, Rocky Mountains—helped secure the contracts. Humanitarianism is not the primary driving force behind the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program! Big business and the Chamber of Commerce is! (Dems get voters of course!)