“Tragically, in the last four years, we have seen this program become politically divisive and a lightning rod for no good reason, except for scoring political points.”
(Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of LIRS)
And, one of their planned new (?) tactics is to tell more refugee stories for media consumption! Hire more communications personnel! Tell more stories!
When I began writing this blog in 2007, that was one of the things that fired me up!
Every time you turned around there were emotional tear-jerking stories in local and national media about how a struggling refugee came to be in America and how great life was now that he/she lived in some American multi-culti slum!
I called the stories, ‘refugees see first snow’ stories when what I wanted was real reporting on the pros and cons of placing refugees in unsuspecting communities.
My refugee alerts these days are filled with articles like this one from Sojourners(a ‘religious’ Left publication):
UNDER A NEW ADMINISTRATION, CAN REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT BE DE-POLITICIZED?
On Nov. 12, at a virtual event celebrating the 40th anniversary of Jesuit Refugee Service, President-elect Joe Biden doubled down on his promise to increase presidential determination for annual refugee admissions to 125,000. That pledge marks a big increase from the record low of 15,000 refugee admissions President Donald Trump had set for the 2021 fiscal year.
[….]
Forty years later [Refugee Act signed into law in 1980 by Jimmy Carter.—ed], the all-time low numbers of refugees resettled in the United States is concerning. But, according to refugee resettlement experts, that number is a symptom of a larger, more alarming problem: Refugee resettlement has become a partisan issue.
You know why it has only in recent years become a hot potato issue? For 30 of the last 40 years no one had any understanding of what the hell these contractors had been doing. I like to think I helped educate the public about the refugee industry!
“Tragically, in the last four years, we have seen this program become politically divisive and a lightning rod for no good reason, except for scoring political points,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS). “… My hope is that we can have a serious discussion that could help insulate the program from the political whims of a future executive branch that would once again seek to use refugees as a political cudgel.”
Watch for it! This is what they want—a refugee floor—so that no future President could dramatically reduce the number of refugees because those refugees represent the contractors’ income. Fewer refugees means less money for their coffers.
“Part of the discussion we need to have in the coming months and years ahead is how do we create a more predictable and bipartisan system that potentially sets a refugee floor, in addition to allowing the president to establish a ceiling,” said Vignarajah, who came to the U.S. with her family as a refugee in the late ’70s.
[….]
LIRS CEO Krish O’Mara Vignarajah previously worked for Michelle Obama, so can we really expect “depolitizing” of the refugee issue?
Along with the eight other organizations that contract with the State Department to resettle refugees in communities across the country, LIRS is taking steps to make bipartisan support of refugee resettlement a reality, in part, by doubling its communications staff in an effort to dispel myths around resettlement.
Think about this! Your tax dollars pay for big salaries so they can tell their “stories” to the media!
“We’re in the business of storytelling so people understand who a refugee is, and why they pick up with the limited belongings they have and come halfway across the world,” Vignarajah said. “In this kind of environment, we need to do a better job of communicating who we are and what we do and who refugees are.”
According to Naomi Steinberg, vice president of policy and advocacy at Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), the conversation around refugee resettlement has become “toxified” over the past four years.
[….]
Among their requests of the incoming Biden administration:
Inform Congress of their intent to welcome 125,000 refugees and deliver a report to Congress that makes a case for increased appropriations for refugee resettlement.
Set the presidential determination with slots allocated according to regional needs, which allows the resettlement effort greater flexibility in meeting refugees’ needs.
Invite experts at the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security into the larger discussion on refugees.
Appoint a senior-level White House coordinator for refugee resettlement.
Immediately signal to the United Nations the intent to resume United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees referrals domestically and internationally so that they can devise a process quickly and efficiently.
It’s been awhile since I checked the income and salaries of the story tellers at LIRS.
Here is a page from the most recent Form 990 I could find (2018). Under Trump they are 87% federally funded (down about $10 million in federal grants since a top Obama year).
To listen to them whine you would think Trump made them find PRIVATE charitable money.
And here is the same page for 2015 (under Obama they were 95% federally funded):
Now have a look at the salaries.
But, first here is a headline of apost I wrote in February 2018. There has never been any adequate explanation for Hartke’s sudden departure.
Lutherans announce departure of CEO Hartke amid claims of financial irregularities, poor management
Former CEO Hartke
You will see here (below) when comparing the salaries reported to the IRS for 2015 and then 2018, that Hartke did exceptionally well in her last year at LIRS.
We do not yet have any record of the salary the new CEO—Krish O’Mara Vignarajah—is getting, but must assume it is in the same pay range as the salary of Ms. Hartke.
Here are the salaries for top execs at LIRS in 2015:
Here are the salaries for those who survived the inner turmoil that shook LIRS in 2017/2018. See that Hartke’s salary jumped about $100,000 in just three years as she walked out the door!
And, on your taxpayer dime!!!
Doing well by doing good! Tell your kids to grow up to be charitable execs at ‘religious’ non-profits funded by the US taxpayer!
That is the type of headline I’ve seen often in recent days as the Trump Administration works to protect Americans from further spread of the Chinese virus by blocking and immediately returning illegal border crossers.
Editor: By the way, don’t miss my post on Friday at ‘Frauds and Crooks’ about former refugee Rep. Ilhan Omar’s fraudulent marriage and the decision by the feds not to pursue a case against her.
What these stories, about so-called “unaccompanied children,” won’t tell you is that the vast majority—72% (FY19 numbers)—are “children” ages 15-17 years old. 66% of the those little darlings are teenage males, according to data at the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.
In FY19 (there isn’t any FY20 data available) we admitted 69,488 “children.”
Therefore over 50,000 were over the age of 15! At age 18 they are free to go!
So don’t get ideas that little frightened five-year-olds are held alone in hotel rooms waiting for big bad Don to send them packing as the legacy media wants you to believe.
Migrant kids to be expelled under virus order not entitled to attorneys and other safeguards, DOJ lawyers say
The Trump administration is arguing that migrant children set to be expelled from the country under an emergency coronavirus order are not entitled to legal safeguards guaranteed to all minors in U.S. immigration custody.
In a court filing on Tuesday, Justice Department lawyers argued that migrant minors processed under a public health order meant to curb the coronavirus’ spread are not in the “legal custody” of the U.S. immigration officials who physically detain them. Instead, the government lawyers said, the children are in the “legal custody” of public health officials they never interact with while on U.S. soil.
Citing that distinction, the Trump administration says these children are not covered under the landmark Flores Settlement Agreement, which guarantees minors access to lawyers, safe and sanitary housing facilities and prompt release from U.S. government detention.
During the pandemic, Department of Homeland Security officials have been relying on a directive issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to bounce most border-crossers off U.S. soil. More than 109,000 of these expulsions were carried out in July, June, May, April and the last 11 days of March.
Like adults, most migrant children who arrive at the border unaccompanied or with their families have been processed and expelled under the CDC order. Despite a federal law generally requiring their transfer to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, only 162 migrant children were transferred to the agency’s state-licensed shelters in April, May and June — a time period in which more than 3,300 apprehensions of unaccompanied minors were made by officials at the southern border.
The exact number of children who have been expelled under the CDC order is unknown, as the Trump administration has declined to disclose figures. There are fewer than 800 unaccompanied minors in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which has the capacity to care for more than 13,000 children at a time.
There is more here. And, another story at ABC blasting the Trump administration too.
I was most interested in the fact that so few were placed with contractors. We know that Catholic Charities and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) have lucrative contracts to not only resettle refugees, but also to ‘care’ for the kids.
So, of course, I figured those contractors were hurting for payola as the numbers of refugees and unaccompanied alien children were both way down.
Lutherans rolling in bucks!
I checked USA Spending to see how LIRS is doing under the Trump Administration because four years ago contractors like LIRS were crying the blues about how their mostly federal funding would dry up.
Well, it hasn’t! LIRS was granted by you, the taxpayer, $71 million in the last twelve months to take care of the children. 72% of that money went to take care of the mostly teenage boys, and for several months there were very few of those allowed to even stay in the country.
They are getting as much or more in funding from the Trump Administration as they got under Obama! They will be able to get right back to full steam ahead if Biden wins in November!
Note these bars represent fiscal years that run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30th.
Because it is all over the news these days, I figured this might be a good time to repost some stories that you might not have seen or have long since forgotten. Like this one from 2017 (sure is good we were able to recover RRWwhen it was removed from the web last summer!):
Foreign-owned Big Meat hires Lutherans to help them find and retain refugee labor
That is the crux of this story and not in my wildest dreams did I think that money was directly changing hands between the meat industry and a federal refugee contractor, in this case Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Serviceheadquartered in Baltimore, MD.
I always assumed it was an informal relationship where the largely federally-funded ‘religious’ charity (LIRS is 96% funded by you and not via the collection plate) just happened to be bringing immigrant workers to small town America.
Now we learn that there is a formal (secret!), contractual arrangement planned for pilot projects in four states with JBS USA a Brazilian-owned company.And, it makes me wonder if this isn’t new and whether similar arrangements are being made with others of the nine federal refugee contractors.***
For those of you in places like St. Cloud, MN frustrated that you can’t get local elected officials to listen to you, remember their seemingly illogical resistance to slowing the flow of refugees has nothing to do with humanitarianism and everything to do with changing America for the almighty dollar!
Global meatpacking giant goes all in for refugee labor
A Lutheran resettlement agency that places United Nations refugees into dozens of U.S. cities and towns is working with the world’s largest meatpacking conglomerate to train refugees for work in four American states while also softening up the local natives to be more “welcoming.”
JBS Headquarters in Greeley, CO Photo credit: me
The secretive pilot program between Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and the U.S. subsidiary of JBS Swift aims to pump more refugees into Georgia, Texas, Iowa and Michigan to work in the company’s meat plants. If successful, the pilot program could be renewed for a second year and replicated at JBS meat plants across the U.S., WND has learned.
JBS Swift, the Brazilian-based global meat-processing giant, has agreed to pay Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, or LIRS, $155,000 to implement the pilot program over the next year in the four states, according to a draft of the partnership agreement obtained by WND from a person with inside knowledge of the deal.
“The shock here is to find out that a religious agency is being paid by a foreign global corporation to train refugees and ultimately transform the demographics of small towns in America’s heartland,” said Ann Corcoran, an expert on the international movement of refugees and the nine volunteer agencies that resettle them for the U.S.
The deal between the global meat producer JBS and the Lutheran agency has been dubbed “Rebuilding Dreams,” and is described in the draft document as a “grant and collaboration agreement” between JBS USA and LIRS in the four states.
“The primary goal of this agreement is to improve the capacity of JBS USA and local resettlement agencies to support and improve the hiring and retention of refugee employees at four pilot sites in Michigan, Texas, Iowa, and Georgia,” according to the document.
The following are the cities in those states where JBS has meatpacking plants:
Iowa – Council Bluffs, Marshalltown and Ottumwa, mostly pork production
Michigan – Plainwell, mostly beef
Georgia – Elberton, Douglas, Athens, Ellijay, Canton and Carrollton, mostly chicken
Texas – Waco, Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Pittsburg and Mount Pleasant, mostly chicken
“Rebuilding Dreams will achieve this goal by creating customized trainings and resources for key stakeholders, building stronger relationships through communications and technology platforms, enhancing the collection and evaluation of data, and improving the overall quality and culture of the workplace experience for refugee employees,” the agreement states.
The agreement also calls for improving the local “welcoming culture” in the cities where the refugees will be placed.
Part of United Nations agenda for sustainability
JBS is a transnational, global corporation that beats the United Nations “sustainability” drum on its website, and it also cashes in on the globalized “labor mobility” concept pushed by the U.N.’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Read more here.The story is a detailed must-read about how a global corporation and a supposedly religious charity are changing America by changing the people.
And as a side reading project, see this 2006 articlefrom the Greeley Tribune involving Swift (JBS bought Swift) explaining how the meat industry went from being a desirable place for Americans to work to their model today that is increasingly reliant on the global movement of labor—-middle America be damned!
Don’t miss Bloomberg: Big Meat worried about Trump’s reduced refugee flow,here.
For Republicans it’s about money!
We know the Dems are pushing refugee resettlement in order to boost the number of Democrat voters, and if you are wondering why the Republicans aren’t doing enough to get the program controlled—look to the Chamber of Commerce and GLOBAL Corporations that have convinced the Republican leadership that the free flow of cheap and captive (uncomplaining) labor across borders is the future.
The jig is up!
Big Meat gets cheap labor, the Dems get voters, and you, the taxpayer, get to subsidize it all (including welfare for workers paid insufficient wages!). If you complain you are a hater, a racist and an Islamophobe!
LIRS is headquartered here in Baltimore. This is their own description: The Lutheran Center (LIRS headquarters) is a six-story structure constructed in 1999 on property owned by Baltimore’s historic Christ Lutheran Church. The building is located near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in the historic Federal Hill neighborhood, a charming area rich with history and an eclectic array of eateries and shopping venues.
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Serviceis the lead federal contractor for the following list of subcontractors.
Making it clear!
LIRS, in Baltimore, is not a separate group from the others on the list!
LIRS is the lead contractor that deals directly with the US State Department and divvies up incoming refugees between the agencies below—LOL! it is the ‘mothership’ to the following:
(Update: Since this post is from 2017 some of the subcontractors listed may no longer exist. I didn’t bother checking. See if the one near you is still up and running and let me know!)
So what do you do? Go tothis postI wrote earlier this month and get to work where you live!
For more on meatpackers and cheap immigrant labor, go here.
*** For new readers, these are the nine major federal refugee contractors largely funded by you, the taxpayer. Refugee resettlement is not first and foremost about humanitarianism so don’t let them shut you up!
Presumably because global warming (they say) is producing more refugees, or, because the Left has complete control of old line traditional conservation groups, or is it simply because the CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is married to the CEO of the National Wildlife Federation.
When I saw this story with a small mention of a joint video between the Hindu CEO of LIRSand the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) it got my attention.
Back in the day, the NWF, as the largest of the politically active national groups working to supposedly protect the environment, was about as far right as you could get on the Enviros spectrum of groups working in Washington. I know, I was there.
(The Nature Conservancy was the largest financially, but NWF had a greater grassroots network of activists that were often hunters and fishermen concerned with true conservation of wildlife and who could be counted on to call their Congressmen and Senators.)
Apparently like all of the groups, starting with the Sierra Club, NWF is now thoroughly immersed in the promotion of Leftwing political goals. See what Influence Watchhas to say:
The National Wildlife Federation is one of the nation’s largest and highest-profile environmentalist organizations. In recent years, along with its associated NWF Action Fund advocacy organization, it has transitioned from being a conservation organization representing the interests of hunters and outdoor recreation enthusiasts into a left-leaning pressure group focused on global warming advocacy and promoting left-wing social causes.
Like refugees!
You’ve got the picture.
Now here is the story about Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the former Michelle Obama staffer and former gubernatorial candidate in MD, now CEO of LIRS, arguing that Trump is hurting national security with his refugee and immigration restrictions that have been tightened since the Chinese Virus ‘crisis’ arrived.
How Blocking Immigration Hurts U.S. National Security
President Donald Trump’s new executive order barring broad categories of immigrants from entering the country may bring real harm to U.S. national security.
“The pandemic has highlighted for us that national security also involves the assets that we can harness and put against an invisible enemy,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah during an interview with Ploughshares Fund podcast, Press The Button. “And that includes the health care providers, the nurses, the doctors, the aides who are serving in assisted living facilities. So many of them are made up by refugees and other immigrants.”
Vignarajah is the president and CEO of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, one of nine resettlement agencies working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide advocacy and support for immigrants and refugees. She argued that the central justification for the immigration clampdown – the Trump administration’s claim that a faltering US economy cannot absorb any more foreign workers – is based on a myth.
“Saying this order is needed to protect American workers plays into the patently flawed idea that American prosperity is a zero-sum game,” said Vignarajah. “We see consistently that immigrants are essential workers. They’re entrepreneurial, they’re tax paying, they’re job creating members of society.”
Far from being a threat to the United States in its fight against COVID-19, immigrants are providing vital national services, explained Vignarajah, particularly in a time when experts are redefining traditional notions of national security.
Vignarajah is advocating for a pro-immigration united front.
Last year, her organization partnered with the Hispanic Heritage Foundation “around a campaign responding to threats of mass deportations from the administration.” [LIRS is almost completely taxpayer funded!—ed]
Vignarajah is also joining with some non-traditional allies. Just last week, she recorded a video with the National Wildlife Federation on how the climate crisis is affecting immigration. “Two thirds of the migrants that we see today are actually a result of climate displacement,” said Vignarajah. “This is only going to get worse going forward.”
As I have said before, tell your kids to grow up to be Leftwing/Democrat non-profit CEOs! As head of an approximately $80 million a year organization O’Mara makes just over $350,000 a year. (Seerecent Form 990)
In their usual knee-jerk response, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service came right out of the box on Monday (before anything is even on paper) to blast the President over a reportedly non-existent ban on immigration to America during the Chinese virus crisis.
Never mind that the President’s draft plan is pablum (see my commentsat Frauds and Crooksearlier). You would think by now the President should know that walking down the middle on an issue of great importance—in my view the most important issue for the future of America—he would understand that the middle of the road means you are road kill (targeted for death from both sides).
He is getting it from the Right and from the Left on the immigration ban issue.
[By the way, if you think this group is financially suffering during the Trump years, you are wrong. The ‘religious’ charity which is 85-90% federally funded is doing just fine. See here. It is insane that you pay their salaries as they denigrate the President and us!]
Lutheran Group Has Condemned Trump’s Plan to Suspend Immigration During the Pandemic
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah is a former staffer of Michelle Obama
One group pushing back is the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which called on the White House to continue to welcome asylum seekers and refugees during the pandemic. “America has always been able to respond to crises while upholding its obligations to the most vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers,” wrote LIRS President Krish O’Mara Vignarajah. “How can we shut our borders at the same time as our leaders openly encourage protests and the reopening of businesses like gyms and bowling alleys? To imply that immigrants are a threat to the vibrance and prosperity of America’s workforce is a xenophobic talking point — proven false time and time again.”
Ho hum, what else would you expect. Free speech, right!
She can blast the Prez all she wants on her private dime. The maddening thing is that you, the taxpayers of America, pay her salary. Three years ago Trump should have figured out how to shut down their funding.
By the way, I expect some of you are reading this now and saying—well who the heck are you going to vote for other than Trump?
Of course there is no question I still support the President, but Trump and all politicians need to know that in order to have an energizedbase they need to take strong positions—no one is going to go out and knock themselves out campaigning for middle-of-the-roaders.
