Tag: federal refugee contractors

A quick primer for new readers: The Refugee Contractors

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It just occurred to me, when writing my post earlier this morning about State Department secrecy, that new readers are probably lost and confused by the many names of local organizations placing refugees in your towns.
First, there are nine major federally funded ‘non-profit’ groups that receive funding (some as much as 98% of their budget) from mainly the US Department of State (Population Refugees and Migration) and the Office of Refugee Resettlement which is in Health and Human Services.  (An aside: it is critical to pay attention to Trump cabinet picks for State and for HHS). Smaller federal grants come from other agencies as well.
Here they are:

Then working for them are hundreds of subcontractors scattered across 49 states.  Go here to the government’s data base of resettlement subcontractors (aka affiliates) working in your state.  Below is a screen shot of the Connecticut page.
See the abbreviation in the left hand corner of each entry. That stands for the major contractor over this particular subcontractor.
Obviously USCCB is the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. CWS is Church World Service. Not so easy to identify is DFMS. That is the other name (don’t ask me why!) for Episcopal Migration Ministries and it is Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (scroll to bottom of page here).  My personal guess for why there are two names is that it has to do with their financial structure (keeping their finances hard to track?).
 
screenshot-66
 
 
But when you look at that data base know three things.  1) the data base is out of date, 2) we are told there are 47 new sites not listed and, 3) see if you live within 100 miles of one of these offices because that means your town is fair game to receive refugees.
Here are some of the new sites being chosen by the US State Department (that we know of!):

Asheville, NC

Rutland, VT

Reno, NV

Ithaca, NY

Missoula, MT

Aberdeen, SD (may have been thwarted as a primary resettlement site!)

Charleston, WV

Fayetteville, AR

Blacksburg, VA

Pittsfield, MA

Northhampton, MA

Flint, MI

Bloomington, IN

Traverse City, MI

Poughkeepsie, NY

Wilmington, DE

Watertown, NY (maybe)

Youngstown, OH (maybe)

Knowledge is Power!

Go to our Frequently Asked Questions in the header. And, check out our category ‘where to find information’ if you are trying to research the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.  Also, our search function is really good so type in a few key words (try your state to begin with) and I am confident you will get an education!

Senator Jeff Sessions: Amnesty is a done deal!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Sessions: The Administration’s actions are breathtaking and without precedent.

The US Senate’s chief critic of efforts by both the Obama Administration and the majority of the US Senate to give amnesty to the 12 million (or more) aliens who are in the US illegally, released a stunning statement yesterday in which he said basically—it is over!

Obama immigration enforcement is virtually non-existent—they are here, they are staying, they are working, they are getting benefits, and more are being welcomed.

Of course he says it’s up to the Republicans to reverse the tidal wave, but I, for one, haven’t much hope of that since Republican leaders (and their campaign funders!) either want amnesty, or want the issue to go away before the 2014 and 2016 election cycles.

Here is what the Senator released yesterday—‘Dramatic nullification of immigration law‘  (Richard Falknor at Blue Ridge Forum has sounded the alarm via twitter):

WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued the following statement today after releasing a statistical analysis of Department of Homeland Security data documenting the Administration’s vast and far-reaching defiance of federal immigration law:

“The evidence reveals that the Administration has carried out a dramatic nullification of federal law. Under the guise of setting ‘priorities’, the Administration has determined that almost anyone in the world who can enter the United States is free to illegally live, work and claim benefits here as long as they are not caught committing a felony or other serious crime. This applies not only to illegal immigrants who entered through the border, but those who enter on a visa and overstay.

American workers and taxpayers are entitled to the protections our immigration laws afford, yet the Administration has suspended these protections, producing lower wages and higher unemployment.

Congressional Democrats have empowered this state of lawlessness. It falls on the shoulders of Republicans to reverse it—and to rescue the rule of law for the American people of today and tomorrow. More information will be shared in the coming days, in light of the administration’s call to expand these unlawful directives even further.”

See the Senator’s chilling report here.  This is the final paragraph:

The Administration’s actions are breathtaking and without precedent. American citizens have both a legal and moral right to the protection our immigration laws afford; those rights have been systematically ignored, resulting in a massive loss of income and wages for the most vulnerable Americans. The Administration has abandoned its duty to faithfully execute the law and protect US sovereignty, resulting not only in a collapse of immigration enforcement but a grave jeopardy to the American system of law and justice itself.

Photo is here at the Heritage Foundation.  Senator Sessions’ lonely crusade!

For new readers of RRW, the Senate-passed so-called ‘Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill’ (if it should become law) will give federal refugee contractors a greatly expanded ‘client’ base and thus the federal grants to “provide services” to the newly amnestied including helping them to sign up for their welfare goodies, just as they do today for refugees and asylees.

The contractors have been busy lobbying Congress to pass amnesty, and surely using some of your tax dollars in their lobbying efforts (most have very little money besides your money!).

You did it! Your testimony flooded State Department hearing yesterday

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Ed Hunter of Maryland testified against bringing more refugees to America in FY2014. Photo from a recent Maryland Thursday Meeting.*

I don’t know where to begin telling you about the State Department meeting yesterday to determine the “size and scope” of refugee admissions for Fiscal Year 2014.

Thirty or so people who attended the meeting at the D.C. office of the State Department each received a voluminous stack of testimony, and it will take me a few days to find enough time to go over it all.  Suffice it to say, on a quick glance, it looks like 90% of those testifying oppose bringing tens of thousands of third-worlders into the US next year.

Will it amount to anything more than a speed bump for the federal agencies and their non-profit contractors, only time will tell.

It is important that anyone concerned about high refugee numbers from countries that have a track record of producing terrorists, or are concerned with the fiscal cost of importing impoverished people, must let your Senators and Members of Congress know how you feel.  That is especially so right now because the Gang of Eight plus Grover bill in the Senate (S.744) will make it easier for more refugees and asylum seekers to get here, and it will grant more $$$ to non-profits!

Only about ten people actually testified verbally.  And, it was pretty much evenly split between those who want more refugees and those who said stop this program now!

Testifying for more refugees were contractors:  Mark Hetfield for Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Anastasia Brown for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Erol Kekic of Church World Service (doing double-duty** because he testified for the Refugee Council USA as well. RCUSA is the lobbying arm for the non-profits), someone they all seemed to know, but I didn’t get his name from the Ethiopian Community Development Council, and not from a major contractor Pary Karadaghi from the Kurdish Human Rights Watch (who brought along two refugees to speak).

There is testimony in our packet from Duncan Breen of Human Rights First, but honestly if he testified he made no impression on me!

Where were the other five major contractors?  Where was their testimony?  Who knows, maybe they didn’t want to make it public. Maybe they didn’t want you to know what refugees they wanted for their collection in 2014. They probably have their own back-channels at the State Department.   Heck, Anne Richard, the Asst. Secretary of State for Population Refugees and Migration, revolved into the State Department door from the International Rescue Committee.

Here is the list with links for all nine major resettlement contractors.    The International Rescue Committee was not represented, nor was World Relief, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services,  Episcopal Migration Ministries, or the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.

The hearing was presided over by:  Laurence Bartlett, Director of Admissions US State Dept,  Ken Tota, Deputy Director Office of Refugee Resettlement (that is in the Dept. of Health and Human Services), and Barbara Strack, Chief, Refugee Affairs Division, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland Security.

Those testifying to rein-in this program were Ed Hunter, testimony here, Anne Turner, Jim McDonald, Mark Tenney (here), and myself (I’ll post what I said in a separate post, just haven’t gotten to it yet).  Critics focused on security concerns, fiscal impact, community disruption and the cultural degradation of America.

This does not conclude my discussion of this meeting.  I need to now go back and review the written testimony.  Watch for more news later.

For new readers who don’t know what this is all about, go to our category set-up to report on this hearing, here. (Scroll down through 14 posts prior to this one.)

* Maryland Thursday Meeting website.

**Double-duty!  So next year some of us can request to get more time to speak for other groups—help me remember that!

VDARE publishes definitive piece on Bishops funding and asks a question?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Could the US Conference of Catholic Bishops be using federal funding for the settlement of sexual abuse cases?

It isn’t such a farfetched question.  Remember in early 2010 we posted charges by a man closely connected to the Episcopal Church who alleged that it is the federal funding for refugee resettlement that is keeping that cash-strapped church afloat.  See those posts here and here.

As I said at the time and still say today—there needs to be a regular annual financial audit (available to the public) of each of the nine major federal refugee contractors.   Their hundreds of subcontractors should also be audited (financially!) on some regular schedule.    They will tell you they are audited, but its largely a “programmatic” audit that looks at how well they are doing getting the refugees jobs or hooked up with social services.

And, here is a question that continues to perplex me especially at the Christmas season when groups like the ACLU come alive and demand that there be a separation of church and state, why are they silent on federal funding of the Catholic Church?

Here are some key points from Thomas Allen’s definitive post on funding for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops entitled, Is The Refugee Racket Helping Pay For The Catholic Church’s Child Abuse Settlements?

~2011 revenue for Migration and Refugee Services, USCCB’s refugee contracting arm: $72.1 million.

~[I]n fact USCCB independently raises only about 2% (two percent) of its $72.1 million total revenues. The rest comes from contracts, grants and earnings from federal programs.

~“Affiliate funding” does not mean voluntary donations. This is not charity. The USCCB and its Catholic Charities affiliate assist refugees only when paid by the U.S. government.

~Even volunteer time and donated items given by local community members turns into money for USCCB. It imputes a dollar value to all volunteer activity and gives the bill to the feds under the misnamed Federal Matching Grant program.

On this last point, I gotta laugh. I knew a young man who volunteered at one of the major refugee contractors here in Maryland. He received no pay (as I said he volunteered) and used his own old car (got no repayment for mileage) to be the one-man “welcoming committee” to pick up newly arriving refugees at the airport.  Often one will read about the lavish welcome refugees get upon landing in the US, not so in large numbers of cases.   Little did this young man know that his hours and his mileage were being turned into the federal government for repayment to the contractor from the US taxpayer.

Read the whole VDARE article and save it!

Oh, and one final outrage—word is that the US State Department pays for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Washington, DC office!  And, they use your money to lobby for things like Obamacare and Amnesty for illegal aliens, here and here.

Don’t cry now for the Catholic Churches predicament with Obama.  Apparently they haven’t learned the lesson well enough yet—when you take Caesar’s money, Caesar owns you!