Federal refugee grants to special ethnic groups "to promote community organizing"

03/20/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Community organizing for their group of people gratis the US taxpayer!

This morning, I was going to write about how elder refugees (yes, we admit many over 65 years old) are eligible for SSI, but I stumbled on the $millions in grants taxpayers give to ethnic groups across the country so they can help “their” special ethnic group of people integrate and become civically engaged.

Buffalo Imam Yahye Y Omar is listed as the agent for an ORR community organizing grant. Photo: https://www.hiiraan.com/news4/2017/Jan/140081/trump_crackdown_on_refugees_hits_home_for_somali_community.aspx

These grants previously were gifts to ECBOs (Ethnic Community Based Organizations) for which I had created a whole category a few years back, see here.
I likened them to mini-ACORNS.
Do you remember ACORN which taught poor Americans how to get their stuff (welfare) and then organized them to vote, etc? These groups are like that!
Now they are called Ethnic Community Self-Help groups (not really self-help are they if you are funding them?).
Because many are for specific ethnic groups, I believe they foster non-assimilation as they identify their people as somehow in need of special treatment by the government.
Here is what the Office of Refugee Resettlement says about these grants and groups.

Program Goal

The objective of this program is to support ethnic community based organizations in providing refugee populations with critical services to assist them in becoming integrated members of American society.

General Background

Throughout the history of the United States the involvement of refugees and refugee community based organizations in refugee resettlement has been critical to refugee integration. Today, these organizations continue to enhance the provision and effectiveness of services available to refugees. They allow the refugee experience to flow into refugee resettlement plans and decisions. For refugees, their active participation in resettlement is generally empowering and plays an important role in the integration of the entire refugee community.

Program Description

This program provides assistance to refugee community based organizations and other groups that address community building, facilitate cultural adjustment and integration of refugees, and deliver mutually supportive functions such as information exchange, civic participation, resource enhancement, orientation and support to newly arriving refugees (and other refugees that maybe in need of such assistance regardless of their resettlement date) and public education to the larger community on the background, needs and potential of refugees. In short, the purpose is to promote community organizing that builds bridges between newcomer refugee communities and community resources.

LOL! Building bridges to community resources=finding taxpayer-funded welfare goodies!
I thought the refugee contractors‘ job was to ‘orient’ new refugees and take care of their ‘needs,’ but nevermind, there is a whole cottage industry of non-profit groups sucking from the federal teat for their special ethnic ‘community.’
Here is a screenshot from the 2015 ORR Annual Report to Congress showing the $6,096,190 in grants sent out that year.

Sure hope the Trump team targets these for de-funding!

Homework assignment!
You should find out more about any of these special groups for special people (you fund them!) working near you.
The last one on the first page jumped out at me. I wondered what is Helping Ensure Africa Looms International Inc. I didn’t even find a website or any description of what it does, just this NY state charity profile. There I learned that the principle agent is one Yahye Y Omar of Buffalo.
We assume he is the same Yahye Y Omar who is the imam at the Buffalo Islamic Community Center who is quoted in this Buffalo News story entitled:

Refugees and immigrants reminded of legal rights at Buffalo event

Guess he is busy “community organizing!”
I didn’t have any intention of going farther with this, but be sure to see a recent Form 990 for ‘Helping Ensure Africa….’ Pretty much the only money they take in is from ORR and almost $70,000 went to salaries and $10,000 + went to rent.
But, I was still not ever able to find out what exactly the recipient of $170,103 in 2015 actually does!

Hawaii judge thumbs nose at AG Sessions: yes, my order applies to refugee ceiling/moratorium

03/20/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You probably heard on the news over the weekend that the Department of Justice sought clarification from Obama’s friend, Judge Derrick Watson, in Hawaii and asked if he really meant to include a stop order on the President’s 120-day moratorium on refugee admissions and the FY17 ceiling reduction when he was aiming at the travel freeze.
The travel issue and the refugee admissions issue are two separate things. For the time being, take the so-called ‘travel ban’ from six countries out of your mind. It is not the main subject of this blog or what I want to try to make clear to readers (and the lazy, ignorant press).

A co-plaintiff in the case is Imam Ismail Elshikh. Is he even a US citizen? Photo and story here at a very unusual blog that I had never heard of: http://hlaoo1980.blogspot.com/2017/03/egypt-muslim-imam-suing-trump-for.html

The confusion comes from the fact that the first judge on the original order left the refugee admissions pause and ceiling portion of the EO intact and so did the Maryland judge last week.

It appears that Judge Derrick Watson believes he has the authority to set the ceiling for refugee admissions each year.

He emphatically does not have that authority. He can’t make the Dept. of State resume overseas processing of refugees. He can’t make the Administration and Congress spend money on refugees.
The President has the explicit power in the Refugee Act of 1980 to set the CEILING (as we said here). In most years the President (Bush and Obama) has been well under the CEILING!
As I have said recently, the big mistake the Trump team made was putting the refugee pause in to an Executive Order.
They have the power to slow the flow and stay under a proposed CEILING without an explicit order. The only thing I can see that they should have done (maybe they did it) was to notify the House and Senate Judiciary Committees that they were lowering the ceiling. However, the original act only gave Congress the power to ‘consult’ not stop the President. (In 1980, Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter put a lot of power in the President’s hands when it comes to refugee admissions!)

If the controversy continues, more taxpaying Americans will be educated!

That said, there could be a silver lining. The Trump State Department can keep the flow low (or at zero) for months to come, and because the refugee ceiling is in Watson’s case (a case that surely will now work its way through the courts), the subject of the US Refugee Admissions Program will continue to be in the national news. Thus more and more Americans will be learning the facts about what they have been paying for since 1980!
(See my right hand sidebar where I will attempt to keep you updated every few days on refugee admission numbers for FY17.)

Bill Frelick of Human Rights Watch: “…there is no requirement that the U.S. resettle a single refugee….”

As for the contractors***, they would have been better off just shutting up and taking the 120-day (16 week) pause because 7 weeks have already passed since the original EO was announced on January 28th and they would be on their way through the slowdown.
Before you read the latest news about the Judge sticking by his original decision last week, see what refugee advocate and longtime expert Bill Frelick (Human Rights Watch) said in November after Trump was elected and the refugee industry went in to shell-shock:

“In the U.S., there’s not a quota that has to be filled. The U.S. has a budgeted amount of money to do refugee resettlement, but there’s no requirement that the U.S. resettle a single refugee, and there’s no legal obligation to do it.”

Here is one of many stories (this one at Fox News) this morning about Judge Watson telling the DOJ—no way, not changing a thing!

The federal judge in Hawaii who halted President Trump’s new, revised travel ban denied the administration’s request for him to limit the scope of his ruling Sunday so that the United States can immediately stop taking in refugees worldwide.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order on Trump’s order that prevents travelers from six mostly-Muslim countries entering the U.S. and suspends the United States’ worldwide refugee program.

Justice Department attorneys argued in a motion Friday that Watson’s temporary restraining order was essentially based on the argument that the ban appears to unconstitutionally target Muslims.

They questioned whether his ruling was limited to the part of Trump’s March 6 executive order that temporarily bans visas to travel from the six countries into the U.S., and not to the temporary refugee ban.

Watson responded Sunday by saying there was nothing unclear about the scope of his order and that the ruling remains unchanged.

More here.

As I said above, keep it up! The more public controversy surrounding the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program the better because then more American taxpayers will be educated!

For a laugh, don’t miss the news that Hawaii has taken only a tiny number of refugees for the last 14 years!
*** Here (below) are the nine major federal refugee contractors who now will see their budgets slashed (because they are largely funded by you, the taxpayer). They know this judge is on thin ice on the President’s power to determine the number of refugees being admitted to the US.
Are they hoping that Watson can bully his way through and singlehandedly re-write the Refugee Act of 1980 turning a ceiling in to a target/goal—something the refugee industry has wanted for a long time!
By the way, for new readers, you need to know that your local resettlement agency will be a subcontractor of one of the nine fake charities that monopolize the federal refugee contracting system listed here:

Trump may increase funding for refugees in FY18 budget…..

03/18/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….but before you panic, as I did when I read Breitbart’s headline (‘Trump Budget Includes ‘Significant Funding of . . . Refugee Program’), some of the funding proposal likely involves humanitarian help abroad and development of the ‘safe zones’ (abroad!) concept.

President Donald Trump salutes after laying a wreath at the Hermitage, the home of President Andrew Jackson, to commemorate Jackson’s 250th birthday, Wednesday, March 15, 2017, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Here is Michael Patrick Leahy with an inside look at Trump Administration funding plans:

The blueprint for the Trump administration’s FY 2018 budget released on Thursday “allows for significant funding of humanitarian assistance, including food aid, disaster, and refugee program funding” in the State Department.

“This would focus funding on the highest priority areas while asking the rest of the world to pay their fair share,” the blueprint states.

“Taken together with the executive order, it looks like the president will keep the refugee program with a lower annual number, like the 50,000 limit specified in Executive Order 13780, and when the annual determination is released, identify countries of concern in a way that excludes Somalia, and other countries of concern that are known to harbor terrorists,” a source familiar with the federal refugee resettlement program tells Breitbart News.

[….]

“As long as he keeps the refugee program going, we are going to get more people from countries related to real security issues and regardless, the program needs to be legislatively reformed and regulations that have caused Constitutional violations repealed before restarting in FY 2018,” the source adds.

So, the Trump team is aware and is aiming to “legislatively” reform the program which we have been insisting is the only way to permanently fix (if possible!) the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.

Otherwise, if there is no legislative fix, then in 4, or 8, years the whole huge, uncontrolled, flow could begin again with a new president. (See ‘Where is Congress?’ here)
Reform of “regulations” is the Administration’s job!
Regulations do not need “repeal” (implying Congress gets involved), they need only be trashed or re-written by Trump’s people. (Could they trash the “regulations” that were written for the Wilson-Fish amendments? As I understand it, those regulations wrongly authorized a non-profit group to run a refugee program in a state that had withdrawn from the program.)
Leahy continues….

The language of the blueprint, however, could be interpreted to suggest that the Trump administration’s “significant funding of . . . [the] refugee program” defines the program broadly to include safe zones in other parts of the world in addition to the federal refugee resettlement program. As such, a further reduction of refugees resettled in the United States in FY 2018 could be entirely possible.

Leahy goes on to discuss the recent court decisions in Hawaii and in Maryland, noting that the judge in Hawaii did place a restraining order (we believe completely illegally) on Trump’s reduction of the Obama PROPOSED CEILING (see ceiling discussion here).
Then at the end of his informative piece, we get a laugh! Leahy wraps up with this….

As to the number refugees who will be resettled in the United States during the balance of FY 2017, President Trump may take a page from President Andrew Jackson, whose tomb he honored during his visit to Nashville on Wednesday.

“John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it,” President Jackson said of an 1832 Supreme Court decision unfavorable to his policies issued by the Marshall Court.

President Trump’s attitude to the unfavorable decision issued by Judge Watson regarding a president’s Constitutional and statutory authority to limit the number of refugees arriving in the United States, a decision Judge Chuang [in Maryland case—ed] may agree with on March 28, may well be something like this:

“Judge Watson has made his decision; now let him pay for it.”

To read more and follow links, continue here.
See my FY17 and FY18 timeline here. See my proposed areas to cut funding, here, yesterday because FUNDING IS POLICY.
All of my posts relating to the USRAP and President Trump’s efforts to restrain and reform it, are posted in my Trump Watch! category.
And, don’t miss Tennessee sues the feds! over Wilson-Fish program.

Flow chart for refugee admissions shows where Trump team could downsize program with funding cuts

03/17/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editor: This is a post (updated for today) that I wrote nearly two years ago, but yesterday when a reader needed some information, I was reminded of it. I think it is very useful for our thousands of new readers.
I found this flow chart (below) this morning (April 11, 2015) while researching my earlier Texas post and thought it might be useful for all of you asking what the steps are for refugees to enter the US.

President Trump and Sec. of State Tillerson have several ways to ‘skin the cat’ on refugees through funding cuts!

Pay attention to the fact that the ORR chart lists war as a reason one could be a refugee, but in fact war itself is not a trigger for the internationally understood definition of “refugee” which says one must be PERSECUTED (and prove it!). Here (below) is the definition of refugee (the word “war” is not mentioned).

Obama bastardizing the refugee definition!

It should be noted that ‘economic migrants,’ or people fearing crime in their home country, are also NOT refugees, but Obama is further bastardizing the definition to include the “children” from Central America! ***Update*** we have admitted over a thousand phony ‘refugees’ from Central American countries in only the first 5 months of FY2017.
From Geneva Academy:
The Definition of a Refugee

International legal protection of refugees centres on a person meeting the criteria for refugee status as laid down in the 1951 Refugee Convention. Under Article 1(A)2, the term “refugee” shall apply to any person who:

“…owing to 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.”

Thus, according to this provision, refugees are defined by three basic characteristics:

* they are outside their country of origin or outside the country of their former habitual residence;

* they are unable or unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of that country owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted; and

* the persecution feared is based on at least one of five grounds: race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.

It is important to stress that the term “asylum seekers” refers to persons, who have applied for asylum, but whose refugee status has not yet been determined.

See that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees controls the intake! By cutting funding for the UNHCR, President Trump can moderate that intake.
Besides the UNHCR, the federal contractors (VOLAGs), which monopolize the program, also control one of the steps. By cutting their many ridiculous grants—like hundreds of thousands of dollars for refugees to plant gardens—the Trump Admin. can also shrink the program. The VOLAGs simply can’t raise enough private money to function well—to function at all! Why is that? Because the public isn’t interested enough to open their private wallets!
They could also limit the number of USCIS officers sent out around the world to do the in-processing.
The bottomline is that I don’t know why on earth Trump had to flag the Refugee Admissions Program in the travel pause Executive Order. So much more could have been done behind-the-scenes. (See also my discussion yesterday on the ‘ceiling’ here)
From the Office of Refugee Resettlement:
(Be sure to see that mention in last step about timing, “varies by circumstance”! No mention of 18-24 months!)

Hawaii: Muslim Brotherhood-backed imam dictating US refugee policy

03/17/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

… instead of banning the Brotherhood, the U.S. is letting a Brotherhood-backed imam dictate U.S. refugee and visa policy.

(John Guandolo)

The Hawaiian judge (a personal friend of Obama) might have issued the order, but the drive to stop Trump’s travel and refugee admissions pause comes from Egyptian imam Ismail Elshikh.

Egyptian imam Ismail Elshikh is a co-plaintiff in case blocking Trump’s refugee pause.

See our previous two posts on Hawaii, here and here.
This is a must-read story from Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily:

The main plaintiff in the Hawaii case blocking President Trump’s revised temporary travel ban is an imam with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The irony is hard to miss: Trump has talked about declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, and now it is a Brotherhood-backed imam who is playing a key role in blocking his executive order on immigration.

Imam Ismail Elshikh, 39, leads the largest mosque in Hawaii and claims he is suffering “irreparable harm” from the president’s executive order, which places a 90-day ban on travel to the U.S. from six countries.

One of those six countries is Syria. Elshikh’s mother in law is Syrian and would not be able to visit her family in Hawaii for 90 days if Trump’s ban were allowed to go into effect.

Hawaii’s Obama-appointed federal judge, Derrick Watson, made sure the ban did not go into effect, striking it down Wednesday while buying Hawaii’s claim that it amounts to a “Muslim ban.” The state’s attorney general, along with co-plaintiff Elshikh, claims the ban would irreparably harm the state’s tourism industry and its Muslim families.

[….]

The vast majority of Hawaii’s roughly 5,000 Muslims attend Elshikh’s mosque, the Muslim Association of Hawaii, which is located in a residential area of Manoa, Honolulu. The mosque, despite its ties to what many believe is an extremist and subversive organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, may now hold the key to whether the Trump travel ban passes muster in the federal court system.

Elshikh was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, the home base of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose stated goal is to spread Shariah law throughout the world.

The proof that his mosque is affiliated with the Brotherhood is found in the court records for Honolulu County, which lists the deed holder as the North American Islamic Trust.

John Guandolo spoke at MDCAN in Maryland a few years ago. I was there. Guandolo’s website is here: https://www.understandingthethreat.com/

John Guandolo, a former FBI counter-terrorism specialist and now private consultant to law enforcement at Understanding the Threat, said all mosques under the “Muslim Association of” moniker are typically affiliated with the Brotherhood.

But the clincher in this case is that the mosque property is traced to NAIT, “confirming it is a Muslim Brotherhood organization,” Guandolo told WND in an email.

The Trump administration has said it is considering banning the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. by including it on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Hohmann continues…..

… instead of banning the Brotherhood, the U.S. is letting a Brotherhood-backed imam dictate U.S. refugee and visa policy, Guandolo said.

Judge Watson, who was a Harvard law classmate of Barack Obama’s, issued an injunction halting Trump’s executive order from going into effect, agreeing with Hawaii’s claim that the temporary ban, 90 days on visa travelers and 120 days for refugees, would irreparably harm the state’s tourism industry and its Muslim families.

As for refugees, Hawaii takes very few. Of the 49 states participating in the federal refugee resettlement program, only Mississippi has taken in fewer refugees than Hawaii since 2002. Only 127 refugees have been sent to Hawaii since 2002, and nearly zero have been Muslims from the six nations on Trump’s list. The vast majority sent to Hawaii have been from Burma and Vietnam.

For more, and to follow links, continue reading here.

Tag: Donald Trump