The British Press Notices “Million-dollar Miliband”

Miliband a member in good standing of the “begging bowl barons!”

It looks like the UK Daily Mail has done some digging and noticed the same thing I did—that the International Rescue Committee’s head honcho, former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has almost reached the million dollar a year salary making him a member of what one British government agency called “begging bowl barons!”

Consider the fact that Miliband’s meteoric salary rise comes as the IRC is closing resettlement offices and letting staff go around the US while they whine about cuts in refugee admissions being made by the Trump Administration.

Here is the story from Sunday at the Daily Mail:

Million-dollar Miliband! Former Labour Minister’s pay soars to $911,000 at US refugee charity that takes huge sums from British taxpayer

Former Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband is being paid almost $1 million a year to run a humanitarian charity that receives massive sums from British taxpayers.

David Miliband was one of Hillary’s favorite Brits when she was Secretary of State.

His astonishing pay package as chief executive of International Rescue Committee has soared to $911,796 (£741,883) – almost five times the salary of the British Prime Minister – according to the US-based organisation’s latest tax return.

Mr Miliband’s income has swelled by $240,047 (£195,314) over the past two years while he has toured the world demanding more support for refugees, migrants and victims of conflict, and hobnobbing with billionaires, royals and presidents.

Other senior figures at his organisation are also creaming in the cash, with the 12 top-paid officials pocketing more than £4 million between them – a collective rise of £1.1 million in just two years.

The revelation – the latest pay scandal in the aid industry exposed by The Mail on Sunday – provoked calls last night for the charity to stop receiving British cash until it curbs the huge salaries.

The IRC has been handed £107 million over the past two years by the Department for International Development to run refugee, health and poverty-relief projects in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. [That is peanuts compared to the over $415 million the US government gave the IRC in one recent year—ed]

‘They say charity begins at home and clearly it does for the top bosses in this organisation,’ said Tory MP Nigel Evans, a member of the Commons International Development Committee.

‘This is a grotesque waste of money given by British taxpayers to help the most vulnerable families around the world. Instead, it is being funnelled to the Miliband family – and until the IRC puts their house in order we should stop funding them.’

The revelation comes amid talk that Mr Miliband might return to British politics.

Here is a frightening statistic.  Everyone of you should be careful about where you are sending your hard-earned charitable dollars.

‘This salary is in the middle of the range of New York’s non-profit CEO salaries,’ it added.

I have an extensive archive on David Miliband that extends back to his earliest days in 2013 as the CEO of the International Rescue Committee (the wealthiest of the nine federal refugee contractors).  Actually the wealthiest as far as we know because it is pretty difficult to determine exactly how much the US Catholic Bishops get along with their extensive network of Catholic Charities.

***For new readers these are the nine federally-funded resettlement contractors:

30,000 Refugee Ceiling Reached Yesterday as FY2019 Closes

As many of you may recall, at this time last year the Trump Administration set the CEILING, for resettlement of refugees largely chosen by the UN for the fiscal year, at 30,000.  And, that is exactly how many refugees were admitted and distributed to 48 states and the District of Columbia.

That 30,000 does not include the Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) from Iraq (181) and Afghanistan (7,501!) who entered the US this past fiscal year with all of the benefits refugees receive (welfare, food stamps, job counseling, housing, medical care and the list goes on!)

For the fiscal year that begins today, the President has reduced the ceiling (or cap) to 18,000 and by doing so has lit a firestorm in the refugee industry that includes Open Borders advocacy groups, federal resettlement contractors, and businesses which are freely admitting that they need the steady flow of cheap legal labor (labor that doesn’t complain and can’t readily leave!).

So from what countries did they originate and which states were the most ‘welcoming?’

All data is from the US State Department’s Refugee Processing Center.

 

The top five sending countries (FY19) in descending order are these:

DR Congo

Burma

Ukraine

Afghanistan (if you add the SIVs, Afghans would make up the second highest number of taxpayer supported ‘refugees’ for this year.)

Eritrea

Muslim refugees made up about 16% of the 30,000.  However, virtually all of the SIVs are Muslims so that would push the percentage of arriving ‘refugees’ who are Muslims to 33%.  No Muslim ban!

Here is a map showing where the 30,000 were placed. There is a spread sheet detailing where the SIVs were placed, but it isn’t in this handy format.

 

I know the numbers are difficult to read so here are the top ten ‘welcoming’ states for FY19:

Texas

Washington

New York

California

Kentucky

Ohio

North Carolina

Arizona

Georgia

Michigan

Teddy and Uncle Joe were chief sponsors of the Refugee Act of 1980, yet Delaware, Biden’s home state, rarely gets any refugees. Hmmmmm!

Two states received no refugees.

Wyoming has never agreed to resettling refugees in the history of the program.  And, then Hawaii rarely gets any.

Delaware got one refugee in FY19 and it also usually only gets a handful—a fact that has always made me laugh since their homeboy, Joe Biden, was one of Ted Kennedy’s sidekicks when the program was created in 1979/80. (Ha! And, don’t say it is because the state is geographically small, RI is smaller than Delaware and it usually gets a bundle!).

West Virginia got 2 refugees, and the District of Columbia got a whopping total of 5 refugees!

This post and others like it is filed in two categories here at RRW:  Refugee Statistics and Where to find information.

 

Office of Refugee Resettlement Annual Reports to Congress are Running More than Two Years Late

But, Congress has never seemed to care (likely because no one there bothers to read anyway!).

This post is a service for serious students of the US Refugee Admissions Program. 

Go here to read the entire document: https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/arc_16_508.pdf

The Annual Report to Congress, in which the Office of Refugee Resettlement analyzes the entire program and the refugee population for a given year, is required by law to be submitted to Congress in January of the following fiscal year.

In other words we should expect the FY19 report to be available in January 2020.  But, much to my shock I just now checked the Annual reports and find that the last one that ORR published is the FY16 report!

By the way, this report should not be confused with a report the President will be sending to Congress along with his Presidential Determination for FY2020 which begins tomorrow!

The reports that are now very late are a treasure-trove of information on the program and serious students should at least see the FY16 report (published in June of 2018) to get an idea of, for instance, the percentage of refugees finding jobs and/or using welfare.

It also includes pages and pages of federal grant money—-millions of dollars—going out to ‘non-profit’ groups for myriad reasons.

Some of you might also like to see how much payola your state is getting from the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

About ten years ago the ORR was equally remiss in getting these reports done in the time frame outlined by the law, then for a few years they got better at it, but I guess they are again dragging their bureaucratic feet!

A list of all Annual Reports is here.

 

Desperate Bowling Green, KY School System Overloaded with Refugee Children

What!  How can this be? Too many refugees are arriving in one location in a year that we are told has one of the lowest arrival rates of all time.

Iraqi terrorists arrested in Bowling Green in 2011. As a result of this pair getting through our supposedly robust security screening, the entire cohort of Iraqis arriving in the US had to be rescreened that year.

Bowling Green, by the way, is the location where those Iraqi refugee terrorists were found about eight years ago and it is Senator Rand Paul’s hometown.

It has been a controversial resettlement location for years, see my archive here.

There is one important bit of information you need to pay attention to as you read about how the schools can’t cope.  Hint! It involves a key component of Trump’s recent Executive Order that seeks to allow some cities and states to turn away refugees.

From Bowling Green Daily News:

Local schools ‘overwhelmed’ by refugee arrivals

The Bowling Green International Center  is working with a special stakeholder group that will address local school superintendents’ concerns that their schools have been “overwhelmed” by the number of refugee arrivals in recent years.

“We’re barely getting by,” Warren County Public Schools Superintendent Rob Clayton said.

Clayton was joined Thursday by Bowling Green Independent School District Superintendent Gary Fields at the International Center’s fourth quarterly meeting with local resettlement stakeholders. [Just a reminder that you—members of the public—should be admitted to these meetings, but I know the contractors do everything in their power to keep the public out.—ed]

Together, the two superintendents emphasized a need for what they described as a more sustainable approach to refugee resettlement.

“We’re at capacity,” Fields said, describing the dearth of resources available to current English learner students in his school district.

By the end of the school year, Fields said, his district anticipates reaching the 20 percent mark for students classified as English learners. In Warren County Public Schools, one in five students fall into that category.

“As of September, we will have 190 Swahili speakers in our school district,” he said. “We have one translator.”

[….]

In some cases, due to the nature of their persecution and displacement from their homeland, refugees have interrupted educational experiences.

Bearing the responsibility for educating those students is sometimes a Herculean effort, Clayton said, citing an example of a 19-year-old student with no formal education.

[….]

Overall, the center received 513 refugees as of Sept. 20. That’s up from 297 refugees resettled in Bowling Green during the previous fiscal year.

Here it is, the major point I want you to see.  Refugees are placed with family members who came before them so that once you have a contingent of certain ethnic groups in your ‘welcoming’ town or city more of that ethnic group will follow.

Also, note that there is no way to control “secondary migration” as refugees are permitted to move and often do for jobs or to be with their own kind of people.

Despite the uncertainty around what number the Trump administration would set, the Bowling Green International Center has seen a steady stream of arrivals.

This is mainly due to the role a refugee’s U.S. ties play in the resettlement process.

Refugees can ask to be resettled with family members already established in the country.The International Center also sees a significant number of “secondary migrants,” who initially resettle in other parts of the country and then travel to Bowling Green, often seeking work.

So, although you may hear the contractors squawking about Trump’s plan to let communities (or states) decide if they want more refugees, once a seed community is established there is usually no going back and the resettlement contractors know it.

Dear Trudy, Why are We Obligated to Take One More Iraqi or Afghan Refugee?

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s esteemed foreign affairs columnist Trudy Rubin has penned an opinion piece dripping with venom and bias against the President (and White House aide Stephen Miller) claiming we still owe US citizenship to thousands more Iraqi and Afghan “translators” who supposedly all helped the US military.

Trudy Rubin says we must admit thousands more Afghan and Iraqi ‘interpreters’ to America! I want to know when is enough enough?

The war in Iraq ended in 2011, so first let me ask why after 8 years we still must be giving anyone from Iraq (maybe with an exception for truly persecuted Christians) a taxpayer-funded new life in America?

We spent enormous blood and treasure giving Iraqis new leadership and a fresh chance at governing themselves, why must we move tens of thousands of the newly freed Iraqis (mostly Muslims) to a town near you?

Just a reminder here, dear readers, that when we go to war in a Middle Eastern country the Leftists will claim, now and forevermore, that we are morally bankrupt if we don’t bring that country’s nationals to America!

To hear Ms. Rubin you would not know that since the fall of 2006 through last week we admitted the following astronomical numbers from these two countries.

Afghanistan:

11,142 refugees and 59,104 SIVs (those that supposedly helped us) 

Iraq:

143,135 refugees and 18,530 SIVs

All of the SIVs are not so brave and helpful. Maybe Ms. Rubin doesn’t know about Jasim Mohammed Hasin Ramadon. https://denver.cbslocal.com/2014/04/18/iraqi-called-war-hero-sentenced-in-colorado-rape/

(Below I’m going to show you all where Ms. Rubin can find accurate numbers so that maybe next time she won’t get all her facts from refugee contractors who make fat salaries off the US taxpayer and thus have a pecuniary interest in ever-growing refugee numbers.***)

So I guess Trudy Rubin doesn’t think we have already done enough!

Here is the Philadelphia Inquirer piece that got my blood boiling.

And, by the way, by highlighting a sympathetic case she deploys the sob story method to play on her readers’ emotions. I can do that too….learn more about the convicted rapist Jasim.

For extra added measure she throws in the canard that our population is declining in America so we need all these new people to pay taxes.

Another Trump scandal: Blocking visas for Iraqis who saved American lives

Apart from Ukraine-gate, another White House scandal revved up recently, almost unnoticed.

The White House effort to block legal immigration shifted into overdrive. The State Department announced last week it would slash the already shrunken U.S. refugee program almost in half, to 18,000 admissions over the next 12 months, nearly eliminating America’s historic role as a safe haven.  [I’m questioning why America always has to be a safe haven!—ed]

And the Trump team is trying to limit the impact of a recent D.C. District Court ruling that it end years-long delays in granting special immigrant visas (SIV) for thousands of Afghans and Iraqis who helped the U.S. military – as mandated by Congress. 

The SIV mandate is a joke.  Then Sen. Ted Kennedy added the provision for SIVs to a defense authorization bill and so there was never a Congressional debate on Iraq and Afghanistan SIVs.

What kind of moral bankrupts try to shut our doors to those who saved American lives?

Cry me a river! 

Look who is talking!

“With one final blow, the Trump administration has snuffed out Lady Liberty’s torch and ended our nation’s legacy of compassion and welcome,” says the Rev. John L. McCullough, president of Church World Service, a cooperative ministry of 37 Christian denominations.

Just a cooperative ministry of 37 Christian denominations?

John McCullough pulls down a salary of over $300,000 a year as President and CEO of Church World Service, a federal refugee contractor that got over $40 million in federal tax dollars in a recent year to place refugees throughout America while acting as a leading far left Open Borders political agitation group!

(Ms. Rubin might want to have a look at CWS’s Form 990 here.)

Even more shocking is the White House willingness to betray Iraqis and Afghans who are at risk because they helped the U.S. military.

[….]

Administration callousness beggars belief. Many of these applicants and their families have been hiding for years under death threats.

Meantime, State Department data show that only 1,649 Afghans got SIV visas in 2018, a 60% drop from 2017.

See how she cherry-picks the numbers to put Trump in the worst light! Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, it is time to stop the SIV program? Haven’t we brought enough already?  Isn’t 59,104 enough already!

As for Iraqis, the situation is far worse. Those in greatest danger – such as military interpreters and their families – have been tossed into a huge pool of applicants also entitled to visas because they worked for U.S. civilians. That backlog has reached 100,000.

Under Stephen Miller, only 51 Iraqis were admitted in 2018 (as compared with 10,000 in 2016).  [LOL! Of course, gotta get their boogey man Miller in here.  Don’t they call this dog whistling!—ed]

“They [the SIV applicants] served bravely in support of our missions abroad, and we promised them a pathway to safety in return,” points out Deepa Alagesan, the supervising attorney who brought the successful court case on behalf of the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Under pressure from Congress, 4,000 [more—ed] of the rare refugee slots will supposedly be reserved for Iraqis who worked for the U.S. military. But will they ever receive them?

There is more here.

Haven’t we already done enough for Iraq? 

161,665 refugees and SIVs moved to America isn’t enough?

Was our blood and treasure squandered for a country that eight years after the war ended isn’t safe enough according to the refugee industry agitators?

Are we expected to bring Iraqi ‘refugees’ to our American towns for the next ten years and ten after that?  

*** For inquisitive readers, lazy reporters and for Ms. Rubin, here is where you can find accurate numbers. This is the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center.

These particular data bases for Iraq and Afghanistan show placement for each state for refugee numbers vs. SIV numbers.

This is a screenshot of the page. Go to the page and click on the link and a large spreadsheet will open. https://www.wrapsnet.org/admissions-and-arrivals/