ORR/IRC: Conference for Ethnic Community Based Organizations

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have told you on many occasions about the Volags (Voluntary Agencies) that run the Refugee Resettlement program with federal grants and contracts from the Office of Refugee Resettlement(ORR) in the US Department of Health and Human Services (among other agencies).   The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is one such volag.  I wrote about them beating the drum to bring more Iraqis to the US here.

Next week ORR and the IRC ‘s Project SOAR (Strengthening Organizations Assisting Refugees) will hold a joint conference funded by you to train the growing number of refugees who are starting their own Ethnic Community Based Organizations (ECBO).   Sessions will focus on how to get government grants, build a board of directors, work with community leaders, etc.    My personal favorite is one on how to get favorable media for your group and refugees in general.

The Importance of Media for Successful Refugee Integration– Robert McMahon (Council of Foreign Relations), Joshua Yager (CBS News), Theresa Vargas (Washington Post)

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A panel of print, web, and television reporters will discuss how to educate reporters about refugee issues, identify and “pitch” the most appropriate media representatives, and ensure coverage for their events, clients, and programs. Through two case studies, participants will develop step-by-step processes for ensuring coverage for programs and clients. Panelists will also address how to prepare refugees for media interactions, and how to address clients’ concerns related to anonymity and confidentiality.

Alfonso Aquilar, US Citizenship Office head in the Dept. of Homeland Security, is also scheduled to speak

You are funding Project SOAR at the International Rescue Committee.   So, you are actually funding this entire conference.

The IRC’s Project for Strengthening Organizations Assisting Refugees (Project SOAR) is a unit within the IRC’s Resettlement Department that assists these new organizations, founded by and for refugees. Funded by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, the unit provides technical assistance in the area of organizational capacity building to ensure that the groups we assist accomplish their missions, serve their beneficiaries effectively and engage in long-term strategic planning.

Now, here is what I wonder.  Why do we need all these ECBO’s?   Doesn’t the establishment of groups called Montagnard Human Rights Organization,  Bosnian American Association of New York City,  and the Boat People SOS simply continue to separate us in America, to  continue to accentuate our differences?  Shouldn’t we have workshops and conferences on how refugees should assimilate into America?  

I envision sessions called perhaps “American Holiday traditions”,  “Important people in American history”, “Following the laws, big and small in America”, “What’s acceptible public behavior in America (how to be polite in the supermarket, rules of the road)”,  and so on.

Examples of ECBO’s at work with your money 

We have written about a couple of Ethnic Community Based Organizations whose directors have personally enjoyed your money.  One was Nikki Tesfai of the African Community Resource Center  in Los Angeles arrested for allegedly enjoying the high life on federal grants.   The other was the director of the Somali Center in Nashville and his Imam (now of Kenya) who received money from ORR while out on bond on charges he misused the first grant money. See that shocking story here.

P.S.  I was going to write more about the IRC and its tax returns here, but it’s way too much, so come back later for a continuation of this story.

Refugees in Connecticut

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Nothing much new here but we don’t often see information about refugees going to Connecticut, so if you live in CT then check out this article from the Republican-American about Burmese refugees to your state.  Burma is much in the news because the leader of the Karen was assasinated this past week.  

We mostly resettle the Burmese Christian Karen refugees from camps in Thailand, but there are rumblings that the Muslim Rohingya from Burma (now in Bangladesh) are being considered for resettlement in the US. 

More on Burmese refugees here from Reuters today.

Connecticut received over 20,000 refugees between 1983 and 2005.  The largest numbers are from the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia.

State Dept. Press Briefing, Part IV, so what happened to the Christians?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I hope this is my last post on the State Dept. Press briefing of February 4th.    You can see Parts I to III here.  

We had been told all along that one major purpose of the original Kennedy bill on Iraqi Refugees was to assure that religious minorities and others would have a way to escape persecution by the majority Muslim population particularly those who want to see Iraq run according to Sharia law.   (To be completely honest this isn’t how Kennedy would describe it.)

The original bill spelled out those who needed protection and resettlement to the West: Chaldo-Assyrian Christians, Jews, Sabean Mandeans, Yazidis, Bahais and others.  It also made special mention of gay and lesbian Iraqis.   All that is gone now and in the February 4th press briefing there was not one mention of the Christians or other specifically persecuted refugees.   I contacted Senator Lieberman’s office (he was a chief sponsor of the Kennedy bill) to see what happened to the minority reference and was told they didn’t know and I would have to go to Kennedy to find out.  Yeh, right. 

Previously we reported that a fact finding mission to Jordan heard evidence that Iraqi Christians were actually being turned away by Muslim employees of the United Nations.  See Judy’s post here and go back to read the entire article by Ken Timmerman.   I’m not going to be cagey.  The Islamist agenda is to get more Muslims into the United States and other western countries.

So, lest you think that somehow the Kennedy “Refugee Crisis in Iraq” Act could help solve the problem of specific minority persecution, this exchange at the press briefing sets the record straight on who determines who comes to America—-the United Nations.

QUESTION: And what was the other thing I asked? About how you become a refugee. Like, how do you qualify to be a refugee?

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MS. SCIALABBA [Homeland Security]: You have to have a well-founded fear of persecution based on one of the five grounds: race, nationality, membership in a particular social group, religion, political opinion [this is the description of refugee generally and not specific to the Kennedy bill]. Any number of stories can fit that definition. I mean, if you lost your house because of your political opinion and you can’t find anyplace else to live, you don’t have anywhere else you can go, you could be a refugee based on that.

Then this is actually amusing if it weren’t so serious.  Terry Rusch the head of refugee admissions at Population, Refugees and Migration quickly sets the record straight.  You just can’t show up at the US Overseas Processing Entity (OPE).   You must go through the UN. 

MS. RUSCH: But even in – if I may, given access to the program, it’s not that somebody who’s lost their house can just show up at our OPE and say, “here I am.” Given the size of the world’s refugee population, we want to focus the resources that are available on those that are the most vulnerable. Most of the refugees that come into the United States, and indeed in most other resettlement countries, have been referred by UNHCR, who has the mandate of the international community to look out for the needs of refugees worldwide. They determine when, in their dealings with individual cases, who are most in need of this particular durable solution, resettlement in a third country.

So, we are back to square one,  the Muslim United Nations employees can choose who they want to resettle in America.

Another Muslim Food Stamp Scam busted

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As always I’ll preface this with a disclaimer that this has nothing to do with refugees.  I’m interested in the topic because it’s allegedly happening right here in our western Maryland county too—food stamp fraud perpetrated by immigrants of a particular variety. 

Doing my nightly rounds of blogs I stopped at one of my favorites, Debbie Schlussel, and was surprised to find yet another food stamp bust–a big one this time.

As soon as I learned that 27 people from eight Detroit-area stores were arrested and facing charges for illegal trafficking in food stamps, I just knew they were from the “Religion of Peace.” This crime satisfies way too many of the precepts of that moon-god cult to be anything other than perpetrated by one of its members: cash easily transferred to terrorists, ripping off Infidel American taxpayers, laughing at the great American satan at the ease with which they can pull off this sham.

I just love Debbie’s colorful way of telling the story, don’t you. 

See our last Food Stamp scam story here.   I spoke with the US Attorney’s office in that Minnesota case and asked the spokesman if there was a national trend developing and he said he didn’t know about that and maybe someone in Washington would be tracking it if there was—I think I spot a trend!

Did you know about the refugees in South America?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I hadn’t heard anything about refugee issues in South America until I saw this article.   The only mention I ever saw previously was that some countries, Brazil is one I think, have taken in Iraqi Palestinians.  But here is an interview with the retiring head of the UNHCR’s Americas Bureau.  I don’t know enough to even add my two cents worth, so read it all.

As director of this bureau, I have had to continually fight to win more visibility for Colombia and convince the High Commissioner, the Deputy High Commissioner, the Assistant High Commissioners and other directors that they have to pay attention to this region. The attention of top management is focused on the big stories that run daily on TV, such as Iraq and Sudan. When you have a situation like Colombia that’s been going on for more than 50 years, it’s difficult to get attention and support – but the problem is there. We are talking about 3 million internally displaced and half-a-million refugees in the region.