Tag: Church World Service

Church World Service CEO says Trump is catering to white-supremacists with refugee screening changes

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is one of several statements I’m seeing this morning on the Trump Administration’s latest announcement on more stringent vetting for refugees and others wanting to enter our country.

Editor: When I can’t quite figure out how much Trump is accomplishing on this issue, I can always use a ‘squawk’ gauge—what is the decibel level of the squawking from the refugee industry? It is pretty high today!

And, you know what is too bad, as the House Immigration Subcommittee holds a hearing this morning on the refugee program, there will not be one word of the fact that contractors are working against the very people who fund them—us.

As usual, in his Trump-blast, the CEO of one of nine federal contractors (paid by the head to place refugees in your towns) never once mentions that with more stringent vetting and fewer refugees entering the US, his ‘religious’ charity may have to absorb a huge loss in FEDERAL funding.

Will Rev. McCullough take a pay cut himself?

 

McCullough arrest
Taxpayers help fund his quarter of a $million annual salary! CWS CEO Rev. John McCullough being arrested in Washington, DC protesting in SUPPORT of Obama’s executive AMNESTY. Photo and story here: http://njfon.org/2015/04/08/faith-groups-challenge-fifth-circuit-court-on-presidents-immigration-actions/

 

Washington, D.C. – CWS joins our partners and communities of faith across the United States in decrying the White House’s announcement today regarding changes to the US refugee resettlement program. As a result of these changes, hundreds, possibly thousands of families that have gone through the exhaustive vetting process in good faith and were promised refuge in the United States will see their eligibility revoked and be exposed to even further danger. The disruption to the program will have severe long-term consequences. [Including, but never mentioned, the possible loss of millions of dollars to their coffers—ed]

CWS’ President and CEO, Rev. John McCullough said “today’s announcement makes the pattern undeniable. The Trump administration is seeking to dismantle the refugee resettlement program brick by brick, through any means necessary. This administration is not interested in pursuing our national interest, enhancing national security, upholding the legal frameworks that protect both us and our allies, much less our shared moral obligation to lead as a nation during the world’s largest displacement crisis. The arguments put forward to dismantle the refugee program are all just smoke screens in order to fulfill the Trump campaign’s bargain with white-supremacy.”

Continue reading here.

This past summer, I used Charity Navigator for my source of information on CWS and its income (see all nine contractors here).  This is what I learned.  In the most recent year for reporting (2016), CWS was operating on a budget of just over $88 million.  See how much of that YOU (the taxpayer) supplied.

71% of their revenue comes from the US Treasury! Yet, the good reverend is perfectly comfortable protesting, political organizing against the President, and calling any of you who have concerns about the refugee program a white supremacist! 

This organization could not exist without government grants!

 

Screenshot (1012)

 

See if a Church World Service subcontractor is working where you live, click here.

(It was Church World Service that sent its subcontractor, Virginia Council of Churches, to the county in Maryland where I live over 10 years ago and so CWS is responsible for helping create this blog!  However, I see VCoC isn’t listed as a subcontractor on that list anymore!  Hmmm!)

And here (below) are Church World Services churches (churches representing the religious LEFT).

Is your church one of those supporting the goals of CWS? 

BTW, If your local church is doing a “crop walk” you know you are supporting more refugees being placed in America through CWS.

People ask me all the time what they can do.  If one of these is your church, you need to start speaking up to your local pastors/ministers!

 

 

Lancaster, PA where we are told that the Amish welcome one and all

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update October 16th:  Today I used Lancaster as my example of what you should be doing as a first step locally if you are unhappy with the secrecy surrounding the refugee program where you live. Click here to see what you need to do!  Hold your mayor’s feet to the fire!

We are told that by the big German publication, Deutsche Welle which claims Lancaster is “dubbed America’s refugee capital.”

It is probably written to make Germans concerned about the migrant invasion of their homeland feel bad by encouraging them to think everything is sweetness and light in America (well, except for Trump!).

It is the same old story line….

Welcoming people

Welcoming mayor

Refugees supposedly contributing to economy

Kind-hearted ‘Christian’ resettlement agency

Worries that the flow is slowing

Evil Donald Trump

Yawn!

But, I am posting it as background for my next post (either later today or tomorrow).

Deutsche Welle:

As the US isolates itself under President Donald Trump, one rural town in Pennsylvania keeps rooting for refugees. The Amish and Mennonite communities of Lancaster County say “refugees welcome.”

[….]

Mayor Rick Gray
Mayor Gray has presided over the huge refugee build-up in Lancaster since 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Gray_(Pennsylvania_politician)

Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray explains that welcoming refugees by supporting religious freedom and tolerance “is in [Lancaster’s] genes.”

[….]

Stephanie Gromek, who works for Church World Service***, one of nine refugee resettlement agencies in the US, says that in the past year alone, the organization has resettled almost 700 refugees here. The Amish “worked so hard to keep their culture, and that’s what we hope for with our refugees,” she says. [Islamic ‘culture’ too?—-ed]

[….]

Gromek deals with cases from around the world in her work and says that in recent times there has been an influx of people from Syria, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

[….]

But changes in US policy doesn’t bode well for the countryside community. President Trump’s push to put limits on the number of refugees admitted into the US will likely leave its mark on Lancaster, says Jonathan Charles. [Charles is just some local guy they quoted. Bet you could find a local guy with the complete opposite view—ed]

Stephani Gromek
At least Gromek is being honest! No new refugees means no federal money for her non-profit ‘Christian charity.’

“This current president is not a person we are very fond of. We haven’t had any new arrivals since [Trump] became president. And it will take a few years to see how much it impacts us. But I’m sure that it will.”

Fewer than half as many refugee resettlements are expected this year as compared to last year, says Stephanie Gromek. Still, she remains optimistic: “If we don’t get any refugee arrivals, our organization doesn’t get funding. However, the reasons for what the administration is trying to do are not holding. There’s no weight, no justification for what Trump is trying to do.”

Mayor Gray, however, is worried there might be more at stake and is paying attention to what the migrant community has to say about the political developments in the US. “Some refugees I spoke to are now afraid of what’s going on a national level. They say they’ve seen this kind of thing happening before in their own countries.

“I really hope they’re wrong.”

More here.

See my archive on Lancaster.  There are a lot of posts there.  Don’t miss the one where I attended an Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) meeting in Lancaster a few years ago and first learned that the feds were referring to communities (where citizens were asking questions) as ‘Pockets of Resistance.’  They reported happily that Lancaster and PA generally had no such resisters.

*** Church World Service is the federal government contractor whose subcontractor, Virginia Council of Churches, sent the first refugees to the county where I live in Maryland beginning in about 2006. We were told we were getting spillover from Lancaster of Meskhetian Turks (Sunni Muslims) because there had been some problem in Lancaster. (We never learned what that was, but we heard that from our sheriff at the time.)

You can learn more about CWS’s finances here.

They are 71% funded by the US taxpayer.  So much for Christian charity!

 

Refugee resettlement contractors get platform to complain at Christian Post, but….

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Christian Post reporter Samuel Smith interviewed several leaders of fake charitable organizations to get their take on Trump’s refugee ceiling for the new fiscal year that begins today.  It is the anticipated wailing and moaning about that mean Donald Trump—45,000 is not enough poor people to put on the taxpayers’ backs in one year.

However, lo and behold, two tiny mentions (you have to read carefully!) are made, that are rarely (never?) made by the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post.

One is that the federal contractors (the big nine)*** are paid out of the US Treasury to do their religious charity and that the numbers of refugees admitted have dipped as low as the 20,000s in the past. I’ll count this as a media breakthrough!

When the big media (including Fox News) investigates and reports on the multi-million dollar industry resettling refugees has become, then ten years of work will have been worth it!

See readily available financial data on how much of your money the nine  contractors devour in a year, go here.

Christian Post:

Christian Aid Groups Say Trump Lowering Refugee Ceiling to 45,000 Is ‘Absurd’

Erol Kekic, executive director of the Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program, one of nine organizations that receives funding from the State Department to resettle refugees in the U.S., said in a statement that the 45,000 limit is “absurdly low” ….

[….]

Bishop Michael Rinehart, chairman of the Board for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod, said in a statement shared with CP that the cut to the U.S. refugee ceiling comes at a “a time when the world needs us desperately.”

bishop Reinhart

“[I]t seems we are shutting the door on the Statue of Liberty,” Rinehart said. “I pray that America does not lose its heart and soul.”

Rinehart should learn the facts about the statue, here.

Although they give them lots of column inches to complain, the CP is actually being honest here:

Even though 45,000 would be the lowest U.S. refugee ceiling in a fiscal year set by a president since 1980, there have been years since then when less than 45,000 refugees have been resettled into the U.S., especially in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.

According to the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Center for Immigration Studies, a total of 28,286 refugees were resettled in 2002, and there were only 41,223 admissions in fiscal year 2006.

Read it all here.

*** Below are the nine contractors that monopolize all refugee resettlement in America (they have hundreds of subcontractors working for them). The ‘religious’ groups listed below are Leftist social justice, community organizing, activist organizations awash in taxpayer dollars!

Readers ask me all the time what they should do.

Here is an idea: Find out if your local church is affiliated with any of these nine quasi-government agencies and start speaking up in your local churches and synagogues, and if possible in your local newspapers. If you are Catholic, see this.

If we can’t get Washington to make any effort at reform, it is time to focus closer to home.

 

Buffalo, NY refugee contractors jumping for joy as refugee arrivals pick up

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…and they seem especially pleased to announce that they are getting them from those terror-producing countries—a flow that the Trump Administration was trying to curtail.
From Buffalo News:

WASHINGTON – President Trump’s promise to cut in half the number of refugees coming to America – and therefore Buffalo – has turned into a dream unfulfilled.

Buffalo offers proof of it. State Department figures show the city welcomed 376 new refugees between Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration and last Wednesday. That’s a 32 percent reduction from the 554 who arrived a year before, but nothing close to a 50 percent reduction.

Yippee! More refugees coming to Buffalo from Africa and the Middle East. Ms. Scott works for a subcontractor of Church World Service. http://www.jersbuffalo.org/index.php/news/entries/journeys_end_refugee_services_announces_new_executive_director

What’s more, 149 of those new arrivals come from Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan or Syria – nations subject to Trump’s travel ban before the federal courts ruled it was unconstitutional.

And now, the city’s refugee resettlement agencies are gearing up for a growing wave of refugees under a new State Department announcement that further undercuts Trump’s promise.

“We had a very busy May, and we will have a very busy June,” said Karen Andolina Scott, executive director of Journey’s End Refugee Services, one of Buffalo’s four refugee resettlement agencies.***

Church World Service, the national refugee agency affiliated with Journey’s End, “was able to send us more people than we thought,” Scott added.

[….]

Now Buffalo stands poised to welcome a growing number of refugees in the next few months. That’s because the State Department last month quietly abandoned the weekly refugee admission quotas that had been in place earlier in the year.

[I’m highlighting this (above) because I have readers who still don’t believe this happened.—ed]

Congress fully-funded refugee resettlement for the remainder of FY17 and Trump signed it!

Budgetary constraints previously limited the number of refugees coming to America in the current fiscal year. But a State Department spokesman said the temporary budget bill that Trump signed on May 5, which funds the government through Sept. 30, includes full funding for the nation’s refugee resettlement program.

That returns the annual cap for refugees coming to America the same as the one Obama set: 110,000 for the year ending Sept. 30.  [This part is still up in the air, however, a reminder that this number—110,000—is a ceiling not a target!—ed]

Refugee resettlement advocates doubt the nation will receive that number. They said it appears the Department of Homeland Security, which vets prospective refugees, slowed down that process in several countries in wake of Trump’s earlier actions, which in turn could slow refugee arrivals in the United States.

Still, local resettlement agencies expect the pace of new refugee arrivals to grow in the coming months.

Yippee! Their paying “clients” are arriving!
More here.
I have a fairly large archive on Buffalo (here) and its problems (similar to Utica).
*** Go here for the list (not sure if it is complete) of resettlement contractors working near you.

Update:  Refugee admissions picking up in Twin Falls, Idaho too!  See here.

 

Pipeline disruption? LA Times adds a bit more information to the Trump refugee admission reversal

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Go here to see what the LA Times is reporting about the stunning reversal on Thursday by the Trump State Department on refugee admissions where we learned that by September 30th we could see 70,000 refugees admitted to the US, in a year Trump initially said we would see a MORATORIUM. 70,000 is a number higher than five of Obama’s eight years!

Worried about not enough paying ‘clients’ in the pipeline to America! See how much of your money they get here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/11/05/refugee-contractor-church-world-service-could-not-exist-without-your-tax-dollars/

Be sure to take note that it is Congress that is shoving money (your money) for refugees down the throats of the Administration.  I contend that the Administration has the power (but no will!) to reject it and tell Congress to rescind it (but that is a story for another day).
This is the bit of the LA Times story I wanted you to see. The refugee resettlement contractors are complaining that the “pipeline” abroad has been so severely interrupted that they might not get even 50,000 in FY18. Only urgent cases are being interviewed! Isn’t that what should be done?  Why are US taxpayers responsible for non-urgent cases?

“I worry the damage has been done internationally,” said Erol Kekic, executive director of the immigration and refugee program at Church World Service. “Agencies that do refugee processing have been so severely cut [including] staff laid off that even if the money is made available, it will take time.”

[….]

Experts are also concerned about the near-complete halt in interviews and screenings by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, which is required for refugees to complete the application process.

“Only people with urgent cases are being screened and interviewed,” Kekic said. “Unless we continue to add people to the pipeline, we aren’t certain if we will be able to even meet the level of 50,000 refugees entering the U.S. for fiscal year 2018.”

There is more here.

This entire system of refugee resettlement set up by the Refugee Act of 1980 should be scrapped.  Contractors like Kekic’s Church World Service are worried because they are paid by the head and must build their entire budgets (since it is largely funded by you) around the number of refugee clients in a “pipeline” to America.

There is never any incentive to moderate the flow when nine contractors are ‘bidding for bodies!’

My disappointment at the news, that Trump’s State Department has apparently caved to pressure and is opening the spigot wide for the remainder of the fiscal year, is primarily because this move signals that the Administration has no plans to lead a reform of the program in Congress.
Congress is never going to review, in any serious way, the program and change it significantly without leadership from the White House.
What can the White House do? The White House could have continued on its earlier course. A MORATORIUM placed on the program would be a strong incentive for Congress to finally, after 35 years, review the original law and scrap or re-write it.
And, remember this in the first EO, see here?

It is Section 5 (g):

(g) It is the policy of the executive branch that, to the extent permitted by law and as practicable, State and local jurisdictions be granted a role in the process of determining the placement or settlement in their jurisdictions of aliens eligible to be admitted to the United States as refugees. To that end, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall examine existing law to determine the extent to which, consistent with applicable law, State and local jurisdictions may have greater involvement in the process of determining the placement or resettlement of refugees in their jurisdictions, and shall devise a proposal to lawfully promote such involvement.

There is no longer any mention of impact on communities, states rights, cost to taxpayers, public health concerns, crime, security concerns, transparency, nothing!—nothing that motivated voters to work their butts off for Trump.
Sadly, we have been dragged into a debate framed solely on numbers.  Will it be 50,000, 60,000, 75,000, 100,000, more?