USCRI Who? This Refugee Resettlement Agency is Laying Low, and Doing Well

I’ve been noticing the absence of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), one of the top nine federal contractors***, in all the anti-Trump media hubbub and wondered if they were shrinking financially and therefore laying low to stay out of Trump’s line of sight.

So I checked today, and guess what?

USCRI is approximately 96% federally funded, and…..

They are doing financially better under the Trump Administration than they ever did in the Obama years. 

But, before I give you the data, let me tell you how much controversy they stirred over the years.

Memory lane:

Former USCRI CEO Lavinia Limon with Chobani CEO at the Clinton Global Initiative (all you need to know!).

Longtime readers may remember the huge controversy in Twin Falls, Idaho that I wrote about extensively for months that involved USCRI’s subcontractor there.  It revolved around Chobani Yogurt’s hunger for refugee labor and came to a media explosion over the sexual abuse of a child by refugee boys.

Then there was USCRI’s effort to open a new office in Rutland, VT that ended in failure when citizens rose up, protested, and threw out the ‘welcoming’ mayor.

Earlier I reported on the mess USCRI was embroiled in in Bowling Green, KY when Burmese refugees were placed in substandard housing.

(Here I am going to urge readers to use the search window top right at RRW and enter key words to find out more about Twin Falls, Rutland, Bowling Green, Lavinia Limon, Eskinder Negash etc. and save me some work putting in a zillion links!)

One point on the issue of subcontractors: 

Someone knowledgeable about the big nine recently mentioned that local agencies don’t have the same name sometimes as their parent organization.  Exactly right! Whether they do that on purpose I don’t know, but for those of you wanting to better understand how secretive this program is, that is one important piece of evidence.

Hundreds of subcontractors work for the big nine and those nine move federal funding to their subcontractors usually referred to as affiliates.

They have been wailing and moaning about having to close offices in the Trump era, apparently Trump isn’t hurting USCRI.

Go here to see USCRI’s affiliates:

 

Revolving door!

Also, USCRI is notable as a prime example of the revolving door between government contractors and the agencies from which the organization gets most of its funding.

Both USCRI’s previous CEO Lavinia Limon (headed Clinton’s Office of Refugee Resettlement) and its present CEO Eskinder Negash (headed Obama’s ORR) revolved in and out of government.  Both have done very well themselves in the process as you will see below.

First, here is the stunning financial information at USA Spending.  (I told readers how to use the invaluable site in Knowledge is Power V.)

Remember that we are only 4 months into FY2020 and that is why that number is so low. So check back in September.

 

Looking at the most recently available IRS Form 990, we can say that USCRI is 96% federally funded—that is funded by you, the US taxpayer!

That means they are acting like a government agency but without any of the checks and balances of a federal agency. For example you can’t use the Freedom of Information Act to get information out of a ‘non-profit.’

Check out the 6-figure salaries you pay!  Some are higher than US Senators or Supreme Court Justices!

Ms. Limon is gone, but apparently not at the time this Form990 was filed. By the way the next page lists four additional employees making above six-figures. https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2018/131/878/2018-131878704-1108fd6f-9.pdf

 

See all of my Knowledge is Power series.

*** Here are the nine major federal refugee contractors.  I’ve analyzed five so far including USCRI today and only the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has taken a serious budgetary hit under the Trump Administration.  Congress and the Deep staters are making sure these fake non-profits are staying in the black.

So far only the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has seen a significant decline in its federal funding.  In fact the three who recently sued to stop the Trump refugee reform effort—Church World Service, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and HIAS—are doing very well.  Now we know that USCRI is doing exceedingly well.

I will work on the remaining four in the coming days and weeks.

I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.

 

Major resettlement contractor silent about 'retirement' of top official

We told you here a few days ago that Lavinia Limon suddenly retired from the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) in October.  That is about the same time that another major State Department refugee contractor was having internal reshuffling problems as well.

Stacie Blake 2
USCRI’s Stacie Blake did not respond to requests for further information.   http://refugees.org/about/

Michael Leahy at Breitbart ,who has done extensive reporting on the refugee industry, tried to get answers from USCRI to no avail.
Until we have further information that it was a normal retirement, we will assume it was related to the industry turmoil as the Trump Administration attempts to rein-in the refugee program.
These contractors*** which have become almost wholly dependent for their survival on the US Treasury are thus experiencing financial stress as federal payouts are declining.
Here is his story entitled:

Mysterious Retirement of Lavinia Limon at U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants Raises Questions About Federal Program

And, here is what Leahy asked USCRI’s Director of Government and Community Relations:

The unusual circumstances surrounding Ms. Limon’s retirement prompted Breitbart News to ask USCRI communications director Stacie Blake several questions on Thursday about the former CEO’s departure:

1. Why did the announcement of Ms. Limon’s retirement from USCRI not include a statement from her?

2. Why did USCRI not issue the announcement as a press release?

3. Was the employment of Ms. Limon’s brother, Peter Limon, director of business development, also terminated at the same time?

4. Was Ms. Limon’s retirement forced by the USCRI Board of Directors, as sources have told Breitbart News?

5. Was Ms. Limon’s retirement caused by concerns or ongoing investigations–either internal or external–over financial irregularities at USCRI?

Ms. Blake has not responded to our inquiries.

Go here for the whole Breitbart story.
By the way, after 11 years of following the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, it is no surprise to me that they don’t answer media questions.
These quasi-government agencies are notoriously secretive and frankly it is their greatest failing and what keeps me continuing to write about them. They use our tax dollars for big CEO salaries while treating the general taxpaying public arrogantly!
***The nine federal refugee contractors that must be undergoing enormous financial stress as the number of refugees (paying clients) decline.  The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income involuntarily supplied by you, the taxpayer.

 
 

Long time refugee advocate and refugee agency CEO is gone

This isn’t exactly breaking news!
Lavinia Limon stepped down as head of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) last October according to a statement by the head of its board of directors. However, it may not have been a voluntary retirement. Someone recently reported to me that she was “forced” out during a period of growing “panic” among the nine federal contractors who are seeing their budgets shrink as refugee arrivals slow.
USCRI is presently being led by her longtime sidekick, Eskinder Negash.
This is a portion of the statement (about her ‘retirement’) from Board Chairman attorney Gene DeFilice:

Message from the Chairman of the Board of USCRI

Dear USCRI staff and partner agencies,

Lavinia Limon, CEO and President of USCRI has decided to retire from USCRI effective October 13, 2017. The Board appreciates Ms. Limon’s over four decades of service to refugees and immigrants, and her contribution to USCRI, thanks her, and wishes her the best in her future endeavors.

lavinia-and-chobani
A picture worth a thousand words. Limon was Bill Clinton’s Director of ORR and here she is with Mr. Chobani Yogurt. USCRI is the agency bringing refugee labor to Twin Falls, Idaho which benefits globalist Chobani!

The Board of Directors has appointed Mr. Eskinder Negash as acting Chief Executive Officer. The Board is currently in the process of conducting a national search, which includes the consideration of Mr. Negash.

Mr. Negash, a refugee himself, has devoted his entire distinguished career to addressing the needs of refugees and immigrants. Mr. Negash brings nearly 40 years of experience working on behalf of refugees and immigrants and managing non-profit social service agencies. Prior to joining USCRI, Mr. Negash served as Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), within the Administration of Children and Families, at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 2009-2015. With a budget of over 1.5 billion, the ORR is the largest government-funded refugee resettlement organization in the world. During Mr. Negash’s tenure, the ORR provided essential services to more than 850,000 vulnerable people through its Resettlement Program, Rescue & Restore anti-trafficking campaign, and the Unaccompanied Children’s Program.

Additionally, Mr. Negash served as Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer of the International Institute of Los Angeles for 15 years, and the Chief Operating Officer of USCRI from 2002-2009.

[….]

As we thank Lavinia for her service, say good-bye, and wish her well, please join me in congratulating and supporting Eskinder as he assumes the position of acting Chief Executive Officer of USCRI.

Sincerely,

Gene DeFelice

Chairman of the Board of Directors of USCRI

(There was no mention of retirement party or farewell gala.)
If you are a longtime reader of RRW, you know that both Lavinia Limon and Eskinder Negash have been gracing our pages for years.

Lavinia-Eskinder-Full-e1450277904628
Negash and Limon in happier days!

Click here for a huge archive on Limon and here for Negash.   I don’t have the time (or patience) for a rundown on their whole careers.
However, just a few key bits of information on Limon.
She was Bill Clinton’s Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and I believe a key player in promoting the idea of refugee labor for BIG MEAT (and eventually BIG YOGURT) that began with Clinton admitting large numbers of Bosnian Muslims for his friends in the Iowa beef industry during her leadership of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in HHS.
It is actually a clever scheme: Bring in cheap captive labor ($$$) for your industry pals and wear the white hat of humanitarianism as you do it!
Michael Leahy at Breitbart chronicled Limon’s career here (a must read!).
As for Negash, he left his post as Director of the ORR (note both of them revolved in and out of government) under strange, never explained, circumstances, see here.

Again, I have no idea why this shakeup at USCRI, but it is more evidence that Donald Trump’s refugee policies are breaking up old alliances and power structures in the swamp.

USCRI’s finances….

You can imagine that they are hurting.  They are one of the nine federal contractors*** that is almost completely federally funded.  See a discussion of their finances here from last March. I put them (at that time) at about 94% funded by the government (you).  Limon was making a largely federally funded salary/related income of over $300,000!
And then see here when I analyzed all nine contractors a few months later, I put them at 98% government funded.  I was using facts provided by Charity Navigator which told me that this agency could not be evaluated because:

This organization is not eligible to be rated by Charity Navigator because, as a service for individual givers, we only rate organizations that depend on support from individual contributors and foundations. Organizations such as this, that get most of their revenue from the government or from program services, are therefore not eligible to be rated.

Go here to find an USCRI subcontractor office near you.

And, this reminds me, speaking of CEOs leaving, I wonder what is happening over at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service that was undergoing a shake-up at about the same time, see here. 
Did Hartke survive?
*** These are the nine federal contractors largely funded by you. In parenthesis, after each, is the percentage of their income funded by Congress out of the US Treasury.  They are paid by the head to resettle refugees, so as the Trump Administration slows the flow into the country, their budgets are being strained to the breaking point.

Chobani Yogurt update: plant expansion planned for Twin Falls, Idaho

Idaho Republican governor Otter praised the yogurt tycoon.

Here is the story from the Utica, NY Observer-Dispatch:

The founder and CEO of Chobani has no regrets about moving part of his Greek yogurt company to south-central Idaho, a region embroiled in the national debate over refugee resettlement that spread to company boycotts by far-right bloggers and conspiracy theorists. [So there were boycotts—who knew?–ed]

lavinia and chobani
Not a conspiracy, they are now out in the open about cozy relationships between refugee agencies and companies looking for immigrant labor. That is Hamdi Ulukaya on the right with the head honcho of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants Lavinia Limon (Bill Clinton’s former Director of ORR). USCRI is the major contractor placing refugees in Twin Falls.  It is 98% funded by taxpayer dollars. Limon makes over $300,000 a year in salary and benefits for changing America by changing the people (and finding Chobani Yogurt its laborers)!

“I hear the conversations here and there, but it’s a peaceful community that we all love,” said Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant. “It’s the home of Chobani.”

Ulukaya spoke to The Associated Press before a Thursday announcement of a $20 million expansion of the company’s facility in the city of Twin Falls — the world’s largest yogurt plant — to serve as its global research and development center tackling how yogurt is made and consumed.

[….]

The company employs 2,000 workers, including 300 refugees.

However, Chobani’s time in Idaho also has taken a darker turn as anti-immigrant advocates have seized on the company’s open stance on refugees. Fringe websites have falsely claimed that Ulukaya wanted to “drown the United States in Muslims.” Other websites, like Breitbart News, falsely attempted to link Chobani’s hiring of refugees to an uptick in tuberculosis cases in Idaho.

 

To counteract the hateful rhetoric, Chobani sued right-wing radio host Alex Jones earlier this year, saying that Jones and his InfoWars website posted fabricated stories linking Ulukaya and the company to a sexual assault case involving refugee children in Twin Falls. Jones originally promised to never back down in his fight against the yogurt giant but eventually retracted his statements in a settlement. [We are aware that Chobani lawyers threatened other news outlets as well—ed.]

Ulukaya declined to comment on the Jones lawsuit but said the rise in anti-refugee sentiment has never delayed a project he wanted to pursue. And he says he is committed to being a welcoming company.

chobani with cup
Messy!

[….]

During Thursday’s expansion launch, Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter praised Chobani’s impact on the community.

More here.

See my entire Twin Falls archive by clicking here.

See what is messy here!

Refugee resettlement is driven by a desire for cheap compliant labor, not humanitarianism

“….these are really good workers. They show up on time. They say ‘yes’ when they are told what to do. They do what is necessary for their survival.”

(Lavinia Limon, CEO USCRI)

 

Ten years ago, when I first started writing this blog, NO ONE ever said a word publicly about refugee admissions being desirable for big business, especially for BIG MEAT, so it is gratifying to see stories like this one at the LA Times (even if it’s spun to sound like a good thing for the struggling refugees) that tells us the truth.

(See Bloomberg earlier, here. And, the NYT here.)

It is past time for the truth!

If we need laborers willing to work cheap, just say so!

I want to say to the refugee resettlement contractors—cut the c***! Stop propagandizing that refugees, like these Muslims in the story, are here out of the goodness of your hearts (and America’s heart!).

This is about money and the reason that there is no real effort by the Republican establishment to reform the US Refugee Admissions Program is because BIG MEAT (BIG CHICKEN AND TURKEY TOO!) is lobbying and surely contributing to the campaign coffers of RINOs (and Democrats!).

It is also about reliable Democrat (Union!) voters.

An aside: I wish him only the best, but surely you noticed that one of those injured on the baseball field that day with Rep. Steve Scalise was a lobbyist for Tyson Foods (huge consumer of refugee labor).  Do average Americans who are concerned about disruption to their hometowns and their security, and taxpayers concerned about the US Treasury have that kind of access to members of Congress—NO!

Here is the LA Times (hat tip: Richard @highblueridge):

Al Souki [Syrian refugee star of the story makes $10.50 and hour—ed] needs the work—and employers in the meatpacking industry say they need workers like him. Refugees have increasingly become vital workers in an industry with high turnover. And the growing unrest and bloodshed in the Middle East and elsewhere have readily supplied them in places like the Central Valley. [So for those of you wondering if we are purposefully creating refugees through our aggressive foreign policy, maybe so!—ed]

Tom Super, a VP at the National Chicken Council: refugees a big part of our workforce for decades.

The refugee and immigrant populations ”certainly have been a significant part, an integral part of our workforce for decades,” said Tom Super, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council.

It’s difficult to know exactly how many refugees work in this occupation but roughly one-third of workers in the industry in 2010 were foreign-born, according to a peer-reviewed article in Choices, a publication of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Assn., a nonprofit that serves those who work in agricultural and broadly related fields of applied economics.

Mark Lauritsen, director of the food-processing division at the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union, estimates that nationwide tens of thousands of refugees are part of the roughly 250,000 unionized meat and poultry plant workers.

Holy cow! Here we have the International Rescue Committee (one of nine federally funded NGOs***) admitting they are finding laborers for a chicken plant.

In 2010, Foster Farms in Turlock began hiring refugees placed by the International Rescue Committee, a refugee resettlement agency, said Christine Lemonda, deputy director of the IRC’s Northern California offices. Since then, the agency has placed more than 150 refugees at the poultry plant. In the last six months, 15 have been hired—an uptick—at Foster Farms, Lemonda said.

[….]

Immigrants have long been integral to the meatpacking industry, but refugees surfaced as a key labor force starting in 2006, according to experts who study the phenomenon.

Queen of Refugee labor procurement, Lavinia Limon of USCRI (98% taxpayer funded!), isn’t exactly telling the full story. Bush might have sped things up, but it was Bill Clinton (she was Bill’s director of ORR) who latched on to the concept of refugees for meat companies when he admitted tens of thousands of Bosnians for his buddies in the meat industry in Iowa. See here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2008/05/17/bosnians-iowa-meatpackers-and-more/

That year the George W. Bush administration directed immigration enforcement agents to raid meat processing plants in six states. Operation Wagon Train—the largest single work-enforcement action in U.S. history—led to the arrest of an estimated 1,300 people working in the country illegally.

Though it did not stop the industry from completely cutting off the hiring of unauthorized workers, the raids had a chilling effect.

The growing unrest and bloodshed in the Middle East and elsewhere provided a refugee population from which to fill the labor vacuum, said Lavinia Limon, chief executive officer and president of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a resettlement organization.

“What the meatpacking industry knows is that these are really good workers. They show up on time. They say ‘yes’ when they are told what to do. They do what is necessary for their survival,” Limon said.”It works really well for employers.”

[….]

The meatpacking industry has become so reliant on refugees that the North American Meat Institute, an industry lobby group, released a statement stating their concerns after President Trump issued an executive action restricting citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries and all refugees from entry into the United States. [If Trump, the businessman, squishes-out on the refugee issue, you know that globalists wanting the free flow of cheap labor got to him!—ed]

And, here (below) we have an answer to a question I have had for a long time—Do resettlement contractors have formal relationships with BIG MEAT and BIG CHICKEN?  Will the IRC make money supplying the slave refugee laborers? (BTW, we know  the meat industry paid great wages decades ago before they found the cheap immigrant labor!)

There is no formal arrangement between IRC and Foster Farms, but that may change soon.

The resettlement agency and Foster Farms are looking at possibly extending their relationship and formalizing a partnership in the next few months, Foster Farms spokesman Ira Brill said. He declined to talk more about the issue.

Continue here, there is much more!

Again, if we want to debate low-skilled labor needs, let’s do it, and cut the ‘humanitarian’ sob stories.

I have a huge archive on ‘meatpackers’ changing America, click here, and last summer I traveled over 6,000 miles around America to see some of those changed towns.

 

***The Federal contractors/middlemen/employment agencies/propagandists/lobbyists/community organizers? paid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities are below.  Under the nine major contractors are hundreds of subcontractors.

The contractors income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, but they also receive myriad grants to service their “New Americans.”

If you are a good-hearted soul and think refugee resettlement is all about humanitarianism, think again!

These federal contractors act as employment agencies for big companies in need of low-skilled workers and that is why the Republican establishment is loathe to abolish or reform the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.

The only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove these contractors/globalist head hunters from the process.