It is extremely rare for an entire month to pass with no refugee admissions and needless to say the refugee industry spokesmen are not happy.
No refugee arrivals means no per head payments for the contractors!
We reported earlier that two different dates were given for resumption of taxpayer-funded flights of refugees to arrive in the month of October. CNN is now reportingthat the first refugees of FY2020, which began on October first, might not get here until November 5th.
No refugees will be resettled in the US in October, leaving hundreds in limbo around the world
Washington (CNN) The United States is on track to not admit any refugees in October, after already canceling around 500 flights this month, CNN has learned.
A pause on admissions that was expected to lift on Tuesday will now extend into November, leaving those who expected to resettle in the US in limbo. It also means additional travel will need to be canceled and re-booked at the expense of federal taxpayers.
That previous line gave me a chuckle—they are worried about taxpayer expenses! Since when? And, by not bringing any refugees in October taxpayers were spared at minimum a quarter of a million to a million dollars in just the cost of resettlement, let alone the initial cash handouts and social service (aka welfare) expenses the refugees incur upon arrival.
CNN continues….
Danielle Grigsby interim Director of the refugee industry’s DC lobbying office and PR firm, Refugee Council USA, told CNN that the delay was “unconscionable.”
The moratorium will run through November 5, according to a State Department spokesperson. “We will work with our implementing partners to plan for a resumption of refugee arrivals, including rescheduling travel for those affected by the extension,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
It’s the third time this month that the State Department has delayed refugee admissions. Travel for refugees who were told they could come to the US was postponed through October 21, and then later to October 28. There’s usually a pause in arrivals the first week of October.
The Trump administration has proposed capping the number of refugees allowed into the US at 18,000, a historic low. But in order for refugees to be admitted in the new fiscal year, President Donald Trump has to sign off on the refugee ceiling. The consistent delays in travel suggests Trump has not signed it yet.
The latest travel delays come as the humanitarian crisis in Syria worsens.
I never got a chance to post it, but this seems like a good time.
Trump gave a speech on October 23rd about the US pulling back in Syria and here is what Rush Limbaugh saidabout Trump and his comments.
Right on!
He gave a mini-barn-burner here. He ripped into Obama. He ripped into previous presidents for a bunch of basic dishonesty in committing American troops around the world. He pointed out that the Middle East has become more unstable as more troops have been deployed. The wars have never ended.
And he made a great point, that as we have continued to send troops to these areas of the Middle East and as the chaos in these areas has ratcheted up, guess what else has happened at the same time? We have opened our borders to more refugees and more immigrants. And Trump says these days are over.
We’re not gonna go sponsor chaos and then say out of compassion, “Well, come here,” and open our borders. We’re not falling for this anymore.
This is exactly why Trump got elected.
He made it very clear what the game has been.The State Department, the permanent Washington establishment commits American troops to little skirmishes here and skirmishes there, and nobody ever wins because they never end. We recycle troops. We sell more ammunition and more weapons. The areas become war-torn and unlivable and the people that live there flee, and they go to Europe and some want to come here.
At the same time, we open our borders, we open our borders to more illegal immigrants, and we open our borders to more refugees, and he said these days are over, this is not gonna happen any longer in announcing this permanent ceasefire.
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (aka HIAS), as if on cue, sent out an appeal this week to their followers to pressure their governors to support refugee resettlement via a letter to the President.
We just reported two days ago about how the Trump Executive Order , that ostensibly provides for local input in the decision-making process of where to place refugees (decisions right now are made by the US State Department in conjunction with the nine federal refugee contractors), will do almost nothing and is already serving as another means for the contractors to bash Trump.
The governor of Pennsylvania, where HIAS is a lead resettlement agency, has already fired off his letter to the President. No surprise that he says PA welcomes more refugees. See where else HIAS has affiliates, here.
Building on that success, HIAS is now urging its followers to pressure other governors.
Here is what they say in an e-mail yesterday:
Dear friend,
Ask your Governor to to Stand Up for Refugees
On September 26, the White House issued an Executive Order that, for the first time, allows states and municipalities to veto refugee resettlement in their communities. This order, the latest in a series of attempts to dismantle the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, is in effect a state-by-state, city-by-city refugee ban.
Refugee resettlement is lucrative work. As Senior VP at HIAS, Nezer in 2018, according to HIAS Form990, had a compensation package that included $183,498 in salary and an additional $68,836 in related compensation. If this were a truly private organization, salaries would be none of our business, but as a quasi-government organization that received over $20 million from taxpayers that same year, it becomes our business.
Call your Governor now to urge them to continue welcoming refugees to your state.
If the Executive Order goes into effect, it could drastically reduce — or entirely stop — the resettlement of refugees in your community. We need the help of HIAS supporters in every state to make sure that refugees continue to be welcomed to our country.
While the administration is still working out how this order will be implemented, we expect that it will create chaos and confusion about where refugees can be resettled.
[Note how they are helping create chaos by urging governors, ahead of any formal process being put in place to support a continuous flow of paying refugee clients to American towns and cities.—ed]
Already a number of Governors have communicated that they will continue to support refugee resettlement in their states. We need to let all Governors know where the Jewish community stands on resettlement and work together to ensure our states publicly declare welcome for refugees.
Call your Governor now and ask them to take a stand by declaring their support for refugee resettlement in your state.
Thank you for taking action,
Melanie Nezer
Vice President,
Public Affairs
P.S. We recently started using a new system to make calling your elected official simple and effective. All you need to do is click the link in this email and pick up the phone!
The refugee industry is organized and well-funded. I’ll have more to say about HIAS’s IRS Form 990s in a few days, but check out their system to make it even easier for their followers to quickly fire off a phone call to their governors.
Those of you concerned about your state and community (whether taxpayers can afford more impoverished people and the societal upheaval that comes with them) have no such system to make your voices heard on the issue of refugee resettlement and the unfairness of the whole placement system.
Frankly, no major immigration-control group has made refugee resettlement a priority.
Church World Service , as I reminded everyone just last week, is one of nine federally-funded refugee contractors. Its most recent political agitation stuntwas to join with the Council on American Islamic Relationson the steps of the Capitol and see its CEO arrested.
Now we hear they have given awards to their great defenders in the House and Senate—Marco Rubio among them!
Just so you know, CWS has received nearly half a billion of your tax dollars over the last ten years,see here.
And, in addition to placing refugees throughout small-city America they oppose the President by promoting open borders, and supporting the continued entry of illegal aliens into the US! Does “little Marco” know that?
Marco Rubio, Mario Diaz-Balart Honored by Church World Service for International Aid Efforts
On Wednesday night, two members of the Florida delegation were honored for their work on international humanitarian issues.
Church World Service honored U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., and eight other members of Congress for “their leadership on humanitarian and poverty-focused international aid and protecting the U.S. refugee resettlement program.”
Diaz-Balart was one of 16 members of the House to tell the President they wanted more than 18,000 refugee admitted this year.
Other honorees included U.S. Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and James Lankford, R-Okla., and U.S. Reps. Jim Clyburn, D-SC, Kay Granger, R-Tex., Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Nita Lowey, D-NY, and Chris Smith, R-NJ. Church World Service President and CEO Reverend John McCullough and Board of Directors Chairwoman Reverend Patricia de Jong presented the awards.
[….]
“I am honored to receive this award from Church World Service. I will continue to work to support and uplift communities across the globe, ensuring that all people have the opportunity to fulfill their God-given potential,” said Rubio who sits on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
LOL! We should be glad that government contractors give awards like this because it helps us identify who exactly is working against the principle of America First!
For new readers, thank Church World Servicefor this blog since they were the federal contractor which was quietly placing refugees into my county in 2007. So frustrated by the local paper which refused to give the citizens in our rural Maryland county any information about CWS or its subcontractor, the Virginia Council of Churches, I decided to investigate myself and publish what I learned.
CWS is a hard Left (taxpayer-funded) political organization (masquerading as a ‘religious charity’) that is changing America by changing the people.
Does Church World Service represent your church, go here and find out! If your church is doing a “crop walk” then you are sending money to CWS.
By the way, surely Senator Rubio sees this award as a political freebie! If you live in Florida take a minute and tell him that you don’t agree with him on refugee resettlement (by taking this award he signals where he stands!).
Editor’s note: Concerned about growing assumptions that the recent Trump Executive Order will solve the problem of no local or state say about refugee admissions, a long-time observer of the program with legal expertise, David James, has explained for us that the EO does not do what it purports to do.
Although grateful that the President has signaled his concern for a major flaw in the program, we must set the record straight.
For new readers, VOLAGs (short for Voluntary Agencies), is the refugee industry title by which the federal refugee contractors refer to themselves.
(Emphasis below is mine)
Decisions made by federal agencies and the VOLAGs (voluntary agencies) they pay, about where to place arriving refugees, along with secondary migration, have created Minneapolis’ “Little Mogadishu”, Nashville’s “Little Kurdistan” and Ft. Wayne’s “Little Burma” to name just a few of the refugee ethnocentric enclaves.
While the EO suggests that the federal government will not resettle refugees in communities unless both the state and local governments consent, that may not be what happens at the end of the day.
Putting secondary migration aside, Section 2(b) of the EO specifically preserves the authority of the three agencies which administer the refugee resettlement program (State, HHS and DHS), to override any non-consent to refugee placement by either the state and/or local government.
With the exception of the lowered cap of 18,000, the EO is more a restatement of consultation requirements with state and local governments which are already in statute and regulation. Not only is the concept of “consultation” nowhere defined, but the outcomes of any consultation are not binding on federal agency decisions on refugee placement. And the EO doesn’t make any non-consent binding either.
The U.S. Code sections referenced in the EO mean that non-consent for resettlement won’t stop family reunification or the participation by the VOLAG federal contractors in deciding where refugees are placed.
VOLAGs whose operations are almost wholly dependent on the flow of federal dollars, are paid for each refugee they resettle. As noted in a 2012 GAO report, local VOLAG “affiliate funding is based on the number of refugees they serve, so affiliates have an incentive to maintain or increase the number of refugees they resettle each year rather than allowing the number to decrease.”
Last fiscal year when the refugee admission cap was lowered to 30,000, the State Department managed to fund all nine national resettlement contractors. Admittedly, the lowered ceiling of 18,000 for FY20 may prove challenging for some in the resettlement contractor industry to remain viable.
However, as Ann Corcoran reminds us, the refugee cap has not included other categories of entrants such as the Special Immigrant Visa holders from Iraq and Afghanistan who receive the same access to public benefits, such as state Medicaid programs, as refugees. The same goes for any successful asylum petition.
And once on the ground, refugees can and do go anywhere they want, nullifying any state and local non-consent per the EO.
Seeing one more opportunity (the announcement of the EO) to take a whack at the President, PA Gov. Tom Wolf (D) says Pennsylvania welcomes refugees. Was there any consultation? Did concerned citizens of PA get to weigh-in before the Governor shot off a letter? NO! PA borders West Virginia (a state that gets few refugees). Anything to stop refugees from arriving in PA and immediately moving to WV? NO! https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/466091-pennsylvania-governor-tells-trump-his-state-will-keep-welcoming-refugees
Governors in Oregon and Pennsylvania have already issued consent to receive refugees and New Jersey’s governor has announced the state’s intention to get back into the resettlement program.
While some refugee arrivals may stay put at their initial resettlement site, for others, consenting states will be nothing more than ports of entry for movement to non-consenting states and local communities.
The EO does not directly address the status of states which previously withdrew from the resettlement program for purposes of non-consent. It’s possible that this question will be answered by the “process” to be developed by the State Department and HHS as required by the EO.
States like Tennessee which withdrew from the refugee program over 10 years ago, have since had their state refugee program administered by an ORR (U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement) selected NGO which just happens to have its own federally contracted refugee resettlement program.
When the Refugee Act was passed in 1980, Congress authorized reimbursing states 100% for three full years of the state cost of providing Medicaid for each refugee brought to a state by a federal contractor.Sen. Ted Kennedy, the chief sponsor of the Refugee Act was pushing for four years of refugee support as opposed to the House proposed two years of support:
“[i]n my judgment, it is essential that we continue to receive the full support of State governments for our refugee programs; I believe that we would jeopardize that support and cooperation if we were to transfer the resettlement burden to the States after the refugees have been in this country for only 2 short years.”
The House and Senate subsequently agreed to three years of reimbursement to states.
Feds shift cost to the states
Five years into the program, due to cuts in federal spending for refugee assistance, ORR began to reduce the three years of authorized reimbursement to states and by 1991, eliminated it altogether. Three years later in 1994, the federal regulation permitting a state to withdraw from the program and be replaced by an ORR state replacement designee, was added.
Beginning in 1990, various federal reports have admitted to shifting costs associated with the refugee program to state and local governments. State governments continue to incur these costs, even after withdrawing from the federal refugee program because federal contractors are enabled by ORR to continue initial resettlement in these states.
It remains to be seen whether these ORR designated state replacements which operate independently of the state government, will also have authority to consent for the state per the consent process required by the EO.
Tennessee has sued the federal government because of its Constitutionally impermissible taking of state funds for the federal refugee program by virtue of the cost shifting. The admissions to shifting federal program costs to states stand in stark contrast to the claims of the federally funded and financially dependent contractors that the program is “100% paid for by the federal government.”
President Trump’s EO fails to address the multiple layers of dysfunction in the resettlement program and Constitutionally suspect policies. Nor is there any reason to think that Congress will find its way to straightening out the mess they helped to create and continue to foster.
Endnote: It is vitally important that you send this detailed analysis to everyone you know. We can support this President while at the same time pointing out where he might be going wrong on an issue that many of us believe is paramount to putting America First!
Mark Krikorian at the Center for Immigration Studiesaddressed many of our concerns about the EO in his piece at National Review yesterday, see it here.
I’ve been writing here for so long (12 years) that I forget that new readers come along all the time who have never heard that there are nine federally-funded refugee resettlement contractors with a few hundred subcontractors*** working under them.
Here are the nine (we thought we might be down to seven by now, but the Trump Administration funded them all for another year even as the number of arriving refugees is dropping):
DFMS is Episcopal Migration Ministries. They have two names. Note the drop in revenue after Obama was gone!
RRW builds on itself, so I recommend that if you really want to know what is happening, either visit every day or subscribe, because it is hard (and boring!) for me to continuously repeat old news. Reporting on juicy new news is much more fun!
You might want to check my category ‘Where to find information‘ where I post most stories about, you guessed it, where to find information! However, there are at the moment 665 post archived there!
See all categories located in a drop-down in right hand side bar on my home page. (If you just read posts in e-mails or on your phone, you are missing important information.)
*** If you have an agency resettling refugees where you live and its name doesn’t match any of the nine major contractors, then know that you have a subcontractor of one of the nine because your taxpayer dollars flow through the nine and down to a local subcontractor. If you search that local agency’s website you will most likely find out who its mothership is!
The nine contractors work with the US State Department to decide where to place (with which subcontractor) the incoming refugee cases.
A reader asked me just the other day to post about how much money each gets to change our US towns and cities.