Here is one more in a spate of stories ginned-up by the federal refugee contractors***and their 350 subcontractorsto bring media attention to their supposed plight. Waahhhh! We are going to lose funding because of the flood of illegal alien teens (unaccompanied minors) now being treated as asylum-seekers by the Obama Administration (which by the way, the contractors helped encourage to come to America!).
Not enough money, stop bringing refugees into the US this year (and next year too).
These people remind me of animal hoarders with a psychological ailment who fill their homes with cats, don’t have the finances to care for them properly, and don’t know when to stop!
From The Tennessean (hat tip: Joanne). LOL! You can always count on The Tennessean to help Catholic Charities whine! Emphasis below is mine:
A surge in children illegally crossing the southwestern U.S. border in recent months may soon have an unexpected impact on refugees living in Nashville.
Last week, President Barack Obama asked Congress for more than $2 billion in emergency funds to help address a growing crisis along the Rio Grande, where more than 52,000 children traveling alone and 40,000 women with children have been apprehended illegally crossing the border since October.
[….]
Holly Johnson, Catholic Charities of Tennessee, decides which ethnic groups and how many refugees will come to the state. The state has no say in the matter. http://www.cctenn.org/node/531
The president’s solution would involve redirecting funding already budgeted for refugee programs across the country. Tennessee stands to lose more than $1.6 million of its annual $11 million budget. The cuts would hit programs designed to serve elderly refugees, children in schools and preventive health care for refugees, according to Holly Johnson, state refugee coordinator for the Tennessee Office of Refugees.
The president’s proposal puts refugee advocates in an uncomfortable position, pitting the needs of the population they serve against those of the newly arrived children….[Too bad! Maybe the Catholic priests and lobbyists who went to Central America late last year shouldn’t have encouraged the migrants to start moving north!—ed]
[….]
Tennessee accepted more than 1,600 refugees in the last fiscal year. Most of the refugees arriving in Tennessee come from Iraq, Burma, Bhutan, Somalia and Iran. Refugees, by definition, have fled or been forced to leave their countries to escape violence, persecution or natural disaster.
Definition of a Refugee
Tick me off! Note how reporters just parrot what the contractors tell them about the definition of a refugee. This has been going on for years—the open borders lobby re-defining “refugee” until it means anything they want, including kids who supposedly are fleeing gang violence.
Here is the definition of a refugee as updated in 1967 (from the original 1951 UN Convention):
“A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it..”[8]
Do you see anything in there about wars, violence or natural disasters? Refugees and asylum seekers are supposed to be able to prove they are being persecuted! Economic migrants and people who claim they are fleeing crime are not refugees!
See, US Catholic Bishops call the illegal aliens, refugees, here.
For our growing readership, all of our posts going back several years on ‘unaccompanied minors’ are here.
Wahhhhh! The Office of Refugee Resettlement has told the refugee contractors*** that their funds for the normal refugee flow will be cut by $94 million immediately if Congress doesn’t pass an emergency out lay of $200 million for the ‘unaccompanied alien children’ this week. (BTW, the Catholic Bishops call the illegal aliens, “refugees,” here.)
Bishop Elizondo leading a pack of priests on the border: they are all refugees now! http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/01/catholic-leaders-push-immigration-reform/7164359/
The irony, of Catholic Charities now crying for more money because the “children” the Catholic Church helped encourage to invade America (yes, you know Catholic groups are the “religious organizations” referred to here) are now gobbling up all the funds they need to run their offices, is funny if it weren’t so likely that Congress will just bow down and give Obama and the Catholic contractors the money (your money!).
Incidentally, there is nothing to stop them from appealing for PRIVATE CHRISTIAN CHARITY and thereby keeping their greedy hands out of Caesar’s pockets!
You can bet action alerts have gone out from the major contractors*** to their 350 subcontractors to send out appeals like this one Joanne saw from Catholic Charities of Baton Rouge:
On this July 4 weekend, tens of thousands of refugees given permission to enter our country and share our freedoms are threatened with having critical support services suspended, becoming collateral damage of the crisis of unaccompanied immigrant minors arriving at our border.
On June 20, the US Office of Refugee Resettlement announced plans to shift $94 million away from services for screened and approved refugees in order to aid unaccompanied immigrant children arriving at the US border. Those cuts will take place on July 5, if Congress permits. These cuts will reduce refugee services in job placement and training, English lessons, interpretative services, transportation, and access to health services.
Congress must both honor our nation’s commitments to approved refugees – many of whom have helped our troops overseas — and make an emergency supplemental appropriation of $200M to address the UIC humanitarian crisis before July 5th to adequately address their needs and prevent refugee funding from being gutted. Both are crises impacting some of the most vulnerable children and families on our planet.
They say to tell Congress this:
Congress must make an emergency supplemental appropriation of $200M to address the UIC humanitarian crisis before July 5th to adequately address their needs and prevent refugee funding from being gutted.
Congress isn’t in session today, July 5th.
Why don’t you tell Congress on Monday to stop the flow of refugees to America for the remainder of the fiscal year and maybe next year too, until all the “children” the church has encouraged to come here have been returned to their countries?
Not enough money, then don’t bring more refugees! It is that simple!
Update June 1: More negative news—refugee charged with ripping off resettlement contractor and a whole lot more, here.
Kentucky isn’t the largest of the refugee resettlement states but falls within the top 20 for the number of refugees it receives. In a recent 5 year period—2006-2011—Kentucky resettled 7,883 refugees making it the 17th largest resettlement state, of course nowhere near the top two: California (46,218) and Texas (34,069) for the same time period.
From now to eternity, the poster boys for refugee resettlement in Kentucky will be convicted Iraqi refugee terrorists!
Kentucky (well, not the state itself, but the non-profits) resettled 1,368 refugees in 2011 which moved them to 16th place for that year. We know this from the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Annual Report to Congress for 2011. The ORR is two years behind in supplying Congress with legally required reports for 2012 and 2013 which of course makes it hard for Congress (they don’t seem to care) and for you to see what is going on in your state.
In 2012, Kentucky got 1,452 refugees. Go hereto see where they came from.
Kentucky is a Wilson-Fish state. We told you about that herein a FAQ on W-F.
As a Wilson-Fish state, the federal government (the US State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement in HHS) has chosen, in this case, Catholic Charities to administer the program for the state.
That means that state resources are being used to care for refugees, to educate the kids, to provide housing and healthcare, etc. with NO OVERSIGHT or no control from elected officials in Kentucky!
Catholic Charities is the Kentucky Office for Refugees. According to a recent Form 990 (2011, most recent available at Guidestar) the ‘Kentucky’ office received $13.1 million in revenue that year and $11.3 million came from you, the taxpayer, in the form of Government grants. About 86% of their funding comes from taxpayer dollars.
To learn more than you ever wanted to know about Kentucky’s program go here(Kentucky Wilson-Fish Policy and Procedures Manual).
But, Catholic Charities isn’t alone in bringing refugees to Kentucky, according to the ‘Manual,’ five of nine major refugee contractors operate in Kentucky. They like to call themselves “Voluntary Agencies,” VOLAGs for short. They are anything but! Most of them receive as much as 90+ % of their funding from government sources, they are paid by the head to resettle refugees and thus have no incentive to slow the flow to cities and towns they have deemed “preferred.”
In Kentucky right now the “preferred resettlement sites” are Louisville, Lexington and Owensboro. Bowling Green used to be “preferred” but has had too many problems with refugee overload, crime and even terrorism so the feds have likely stopped highlighting it as a fabulous place to send refugees at the moment (other than family reunification cases that is).
The nine contractors that monopolize the program, along with their hundreds of subcontractors, have America carved up and turf wars are not uncommon!
But, I had to laugh when I saw the list of contractors operating in Kentucky, heck! five of the nine are there and I bet competing and squabbling among themselves. The five helping supply Kentucky industries with cheap labor (chicken plants perhaps?) are: Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (helping build Kentucky’s Muslim population?), the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (they all bring Muslims, not just HIAS!).
Before we get too far into the weeds of this thing, let me tell you about some news involving Kentucky’s claim to fame in the refugee resettlement world.
This is so ironic! Our first mention of Kentucky here at RRW was in 2007when then Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, Ellen Sauerbrey (Bush appointment) went to Louisville and said we need to bring refugees to America to keep them from becoming terrorists! I think you know where this is going!
Then in 2008, we had the hot news from Bowling Greenthat a Bosnian refugee teen was shot in the head by a homeowner who was awakened by the kid breaking in. Thankfully, the homeowner was not prosecuted having every right to protect himself and his property.
In 2009 we learned from a reader who actually went to meet with the Burmese refugees of Bowling Green in their slum apartments about the deplorable conditions in which the International Center there (a subcontractor of USCRI) had placed scores of Burmese families. We wrote many posts on the controversy at the time and those can be found by going to our Bowling Green archive. See also ‘Friends of Refugees’on the International Center’s mismanagement of refugees there.
The most stunning refugee news to hit Kentucky and the Nation in 2011 was the arrest of two Iraqi refugees on terrorism charges. They have since been found guilty and are in prison. Think about it, US taxpayers paid an enormous sum to bring them here and now we get to care for them for life behind bars. We wrote extensively on the news as it developed, click hereto see all of our mentions of the KY Iraqi refugee terrorists.
So what do you think Ellen Sauerbrey would say now when it appears we did bring Iraqi refugees to America and they still wanted to be terrorists!
Senator Rand Paul
Initially we were surprised and grateful that Senator Rand Paul took an interest in the refugee program that had brought those Iraqis to his home town of Bowling Green. The Senator spoke up several times demanding to know why we were bringing Iraqis and other refugees to America. Here (in June of last year) he was roundly criticized for saying (correctly!): ‘we bring’em in and sign them up for welfare.‘
In the nearly seven years we have written about refugees, he is one of only a handful of Senators or Members of Congress to question the program, but unfortunately we haven’t seen much from him on the subject lately. Gee, I wonder why?
Congolese human trafficker?
And, as we run out of steam on Kentucky, we can’t forget the news last month about accusations that a Congolese refugee could be charged in a human-trafficking case. Sifa Ndusha’s alleged victim has filed a lawsuit claiming that she was trafficked by Ndusaha. This is happening in Lexington (a preferred community!). Read all about it here.
A recommendation to readers in Kentucky and every other state:
If you are troubled by what you see with this federal program, a program we obviously believe has gone completely off track by becoming a money-making scheme for the religious right on the backs of US taxpayers when we have our own poor people in need of “services” and is bringing large numbers of culturally incompatible people to targeted cities, please take the initiative and find out what is going on in your city or in your state.
And, by he way, when you begin following the activities of your local resettlement contractors, they aren’t just using your money for the “refugees,” they also use it for “advocacy” for political issues locally and nationally. They are all advocating for the Obama amnesty plan. So do your sleuthing and then…..
….. PUBLISH YOUR FINDINGS so that others may learn from you because the mainstream media is either too lazy or in the tank for the program. Take some lessons from the political Left and begin agitating your elected officials starting on the city and state level to do something about it. Some aspects of this program are, we suspect, being administered illegally, so be sure to let your local elected officials know that and perhaps you will find a few of them with some guts willing to fight to protect Americans first. You might even get really lucky and find some pro bono lawyer willing to take them on.
Don’t let the contractors trap you in their humanitarian do-gooder mumbo jumbo pitch either—remember this is a business they are in and the only difference is that their product is moving immigrants around and finding them “services” with money from you! They are also busy turning red states blue.
Let your representatives in Washington know too what you have learned, but don’t hold your breath that your solution rests in DC. We have visited Congressional aids there who tell us they are too scared to take this one on. Why? Fear of being called racists? Fear of the lobbying power of entities like the Catholic and Lutheran Churches? Fear of the loss of campaign donations from big corporations looking for cheap legal labor? Maybe all three?
Ho hum! Another refugee lied to get into the US, wasn’t properly screened. What else is new?
Editors note: Readers I have not forgotten that I have to give you more information on how to send in comments to the US State Department on the “size and scope” of the US refugee program for fiscal year 2015. I promise to get to it soon. You have until May 29 to send in comments.
Your friendly refugee next door! Diversity is strength—right?
From CBS Minnesota (Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’ and Robin):
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota man was charged Wednesday with immigration fraud for allegedly lying on his immigration documents by concealing war crimes he committed during the Bosnian war in the 1990s.
Zdenko Jakisa, 45, appeared in U.S. District Court in Minnesota on one count of possessing unlawfully obtained documents. He was ordered detained, and another hearing was set for Monday. He will be appointed a public defender, according to court documents.
Authorities say that when he was filling out refugee and legal permanent resident applications, he didn’t disclose that he had served in the armed forces of the Croatian Defense Council in Bosnia-Herzegovina and had gone to prison.
[….]
According to a June 6, 2012, article in the Forest Lake Press, Jakisa and his wife applied to come to the U.S. in 1998 through the U.S. Embassy in Croatia. They were approved through a lottery system and sponsored by Catholic Charities and a local church.
[….]
Jakisa has a lengthy criminal record in Minnesota, including multiple convictions for driving while impaired, disorderly conduct and obstructing the legal process.
I would bet anything that some of the people who “sponsored” him knew very quickly that he was a bad apple. Did they remain silent? Did Catholic Charities alert anyone in the State Department at some earlier date?
Another Bosnian refugee made the news recently as well, but it’s a sad case of a Bosnian gay man living in Philadelphia who was found brutally murdered in nearby Chester, PA.
We have many posts on Bosnianshere at RRW. One of our favorites is the one from 2008 when we learned it was Bill Clinton who was responsible for bringing tens of thousands of Bosnians to America to work in meat packing.
I was born and raised in South Jersey so this news from Catholic Charities interested me. But, it also serves as an opportunity for me to discuss something that I’ve found troubling of late.
For several years (RRW began in 2007) it was easy enough to find statistics on how many refugees and from what country were being placed in what towns and cities during a given time period. Those data bases are impossible to find now. Maybe not ‘impossible’ if one has enormous time to search, but I do believe the federal government is making it more challenging for citizens to find information on the numbers and nationalities of refugees being resettled in specific locations.
Justice for the taxpayers too?
So, it was interesting to me to see what Catholic Charities is saying about the demographic/social/economic changes they are bringing to South Jersey.
New readers!
We have so many new readers just starting out on their quest to figure out how refugee resettlement (aka placement) works. And, although we have been over this many times through the years, every day new people start their own investigations and of course never saw the story we might have posted in say 2008. So, first check our fact sheet by clicking here.
Then, here is a list (at ORR) of the resettlement officials in every state (it should mostly be up-to-date). The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is located in the US Dept. of Health and Human Services and after the initial resettlement paid for by the US State Department, it is ORR that doles out the additional cash to the contractors, who in turn funnel the money (your money) to subcontractors.
The first step (after reading our fact sheet) in your quest to figure out how the program works is to contact your state coordinators (on this list). Be pleasant and polite and ask for the data for your state—who is coming, who has come, how many, from where and most importantly what towns and cities have been chosen? And, don’t forget to find out which contractors they are using (then research the contractor and its finances).
We can’t emphasize enough that you must get your facts together.
Now for anyone, other than me, interested in South Jersey, here is Catholic Charities:
From January 2009 through September 2013, 760 Refugee Newcomers were resettled by Catholic Charities, Diocese of Camden’s Refugee Resettlement Program. At the time of their resettlement, the Refugee Newcomers joined South Jersey communities from twelve Countries of Origin: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Myanmar (Burma), Pakistan, Sudan, Vietnam.
In the last program year (October 2012 to September 2013), Refugee Newcomers from eight different countries were resettled in South Jersey. Refugees were placed in market-rate apartments and houses rented from private landlords in a variety of towns, based on the availability of safe, affordable housing and proximity to shopping, employment and public transportation. The towns are: Atlantic City, Audubon, Barnegat, Collingswood, Haddon Heights, Haddon Township, Moorestown, Oaklyn, Palmyra, Pleasantville, Sicklerville, Somerdale, Trenton, Turnersville, Wildwood Crest, Willingboro, Woodlynne.
Of the 110 refugees who arrived in the last year, 32 children were enrolled in nine local public school systems:
In April 2013, Catholic Charities was awarded the Refugee School Impact Grant to assist and increase the support to refugee students and families in being academically successful. [Note that the grant for school impact went to Catholic Charities not the school systems themselves.—ed] Catholic Charities’ Refugee School Based Family Support Specialist focused on the Somerdale and Oaklyn school districts, which had twenty-eight and twenty-two refugee students enrolled, respectively. This program worked in these schools one day per week and provided enrollment and support services to other students and schools as needed and continued into the 2013-2014 school year.
Catholic Charities continues to work in collaboration with social service and medical providers, school systems, landlords, employers, churches and volunteers to assist refugees in becoming self-sufficient.These partnerships have resulted in over 75% rate of employment for employable adults within the first three months of arrival in 2012 and 2013.*** Through employment and on-going programs, Refugee Newcomers have become stable, productive contributors to South Jersey.
*** Watch out for the employment data trickdescribed in a post at Friends of Refugees in January. Blogger Chris Coen is a critic of resettlement contractors (as are we), but he comes at it from another angle.
Here is what Coen said in a critical post about a Tennessee resettlement contractor (Hat tip: Joanne):
A former case manager also sent us information about the agency and pointed out that the refugee employment figures are dishonest as most of the refuges have only temporary employment that does not help them to pay rent and be self-sufficient.The nature of the temp jobs also means that the refugees will be unemployed just a short time after the agency reports them employed to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at 90 days and 180 days.(This, however, is a problem throughout the refugee program, and it doesn’t seem that the the ORR has much of an interest in requiring that resettlement agencies report if refugees are working at temporary or non-temporary jobs.)
This post is archived in our ‘where to find information’ category, here.
