Sobia Siddiqui, communications coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations Texas Chapter, said the cuts are discriminatory.
“Our president ran his campaign and one of his strongest and most vocal points is that he called for a ban on all Muslims,” said Siddiqui.
She said there are refugee families in Houston who can’t be reunited with family members facing dangerous situations abroad because of the ban.
“There’s a lot of anxiety and uncertainty about if people will be able to have their families rejoin them back here in the United States or even in Houston,” said Dan Stoecker, CEO of The Alliance, which offers refugee services in Houston.
The Alliance is a subcontractor of the Ethiopian Community Development Council, the smallest, and likely most vulnerable to a federal budget cut, of the nine refugee contractors that monopolize all resettlement to the US.
In 2016, I excitedly reported that the State of Texas withdrew from the US Refugee Admissions Program, but you can see that without a follow-up legal challenge by the state it was a meaningless move. The contractors now run the program in the state!
When I first began writing this blog in July 2007, one of the issues that attracted my attention was the puzzling decision by the Virginia Council of Churches, working for major resettlement contractor Church World Service, to place refugees in one of the worst buildings in the worst section of Hagerstown, MD.
But, here we are 11 years later and Church World Servicehas placed Congolese refugees in Greensboro, NC in housing that is managed by a company that has a record of many years of troubling business practices.
I’m sure CWS rejoinder is—well give us more taxpayer money and we will get them nicer apartments.
Call home Paul Ryan! This outrageous “savings” program is one of many, you as Speaker of the House, need to investigate! Speaker Paul Ryan has shown zero interest in reforming the Refugee Act of 1980. I wonder could we suggest Janesville (his home town) as one of the many new resettlement sites in America!
I’m guessing this is not an isolated case.
For new readers, Speaker Paul Ryan has not allowed any serious Refugee Act reform bills (he allowed one sham bill because he knew the Senate wouldn’t pass it anyway) to move forward in the House during his tenure as speaker and for that matter neither has Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
These so-called ‘Individual Development Accounts’ are an abomination and potentially rife with fraud. When taxpayers learn about them (we have mentioned them on many occasions) they are shocked.
The federal government actually gives grants to non-profit refugee agencies to administer a program which allows refugees to get matching funds when they save money for four things (Education, business, home or car).
How would you like to get such a deal:
For every dollar a refugee saves, he/she is matched a dollar out of the US Treasury (your pocket)!
But, again the program is managed by a resettlement contractor (with no accountability to the taxpayer) like this one in Milwaukee. Financial audits/investigations of the contractors are rare.
From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (hat tip: Joanne):
A Milwaukee nonprofit that offers after-school programs for refugee children and other assistance for refugees is under investigation for alleged misuse of federal funds.
The Pan-African Community Association gave money to at least 32 people who were not eligible to receive funds, investigators with the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement have found, according to records obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Ethiopian Community Development Council is one of nine federally funded refugee contractors that could not exist without your tax dollars. Go to this link to see if they have an office near you: http://www.ecdcus.org/Where_We_Work/affiliates.html
In addition, the organization violated terms of federal grants by spending more than 35% of its annual budget on administrative costs and paying individuals in the form of money orders, rather than paying vendors directly for items purchased, the reports state.
The association received more than $440,000 in federal funds from 2012 to 2015 to help refugees from Africa and around the world buy cars and houses and to open businesses in Milwaukee. Using Individual Development Accounts, the program was designed to offer matching grants to refugees who, for example, saved at least $2,000 of their own money to go toward the purchase of a car or $4,000 toward a house.
[….]
The Pan-African Community Association is contracted through the “preferred communities program,” with the Ethiopian Community Development Council. The council, in turn, is one of about 10 [nine actually—ed] national organizations— mostly faith-based — that the federal government contracts with to provide services to refugees.
Continue here for more of the gory details and denials.
I haven’t written about “preferred communities” since here in 2014. But, you might have a look and see if your city is one of them. They don’t change often.
Call Congress!
Time to listen to ‘Mom for Trump’ (I am not going to quit trying to persuade you that right now there is only one place to put pressure to slow the flow of third worlders to your towns—Congress!):
Ann, could you tell all your readers on a daily basis to call our useless Congress @ 202 224 3121 and have them say DEFUND REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT PROGRAM. I call daily and if enough of us do so, we can make a difference.
If you have problems getting a live person on the phone when you call Washington (like I did when I called my Congressman John Delaney (D-MD) the other day), then find out the locations and phone numbers of their district and state offices and call those. When you have someone on the phone on Tuesday (they surely won’t be there on Monday), in addition to telling them to defund the program, find out where your member or Senator will be in the coming weeks and be there! Ask (in person, in front of an audience) if he or she will Defund the Refugee Resettlement Program when they get back to DC after the election.
