Tag: North Carolina

Raleigh, NC: Federal resettlement contractor goes into the half-way house business, not enough subsidized housing?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editor’s note:  There are so many stories like this one, warm and fuzzy stories, about how volunteers are jumping in to help third world refugees arriving in America, that I couldn’t possibly post them all.  Nor, do I have time to take every one of them apart for you.  That said, please see this news from North Carolina where apparently local churches have run out of America poor and homeless people and so are doing their Christian charity for third world refugees by furnishing half-way houses for them (and for a multi-million dollar federal resettlement contractor).

Stacie Blake
Stacie Blake, a Washington DC ‘advocate’ for federal refugee contractor USCRI, gushes over new halfway house project in Raleigh, NC. http://www.refugees.org/about-us/who-we-are/our-staff/?referrer=https://www.google.com/

Here are some points to consider as you read through this puff piece (besides the fact that we can only assume there are no more needy Americans/homeless vets in Raleigh):

~USCRI (US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants) is a federal contractor (one of nine) which gets 99% of its “contributions” from you, the US taxpayer. See page 9 of a recent Form 990. They had gifts and contributions in the amount of $35,676,146 and received $35,429,570 from GOVERNMENT GRANTS (that is your money). Salaries are on page 7. They are not a poor and struggling non-profit group, but in reality a quasi-government agency.

~USCRI signs a contract (oopsy an “agreement”) with the US State Department promising to find apartments for refugees, so I am surprised that the US State Department is letting them put refugees in what amounts to half-way houses (described in this article).  Are these contractors in the real estate business now?

~The good Baptists and other church folks helping should know that their volunteer time has a dollar value placed on it for the purpose of USCRI showing the feds that they have made a financial contribution, that USCRI has ‘skin in the game.’

Likewise the donation of furniture and other donations, like clothes, have a dollar value placed on them for the purpose, again, of showing the feds that they (USCRI) are holding up their end of the highly touted “public-private partnership” (which has become a joke) as the public contribution now far outweighs any private donations as you see in their Form 990.

~North Carolina has become one of the top states to ‘welcome’ refugees (don’t ask me how it got that way, except that I think when it was first targeted, the federal contractors found no resistance and there must be labor intensive industries looking for cheap labor). We learn that Raleigh has four of the nine major federal contractors working there and ‘welcomes’ 325 refugees a year.

Read it all.
Serious students of the refugee program might want to watch Ms. Blake in this 20 minute video in which she explains that 35 years ago, before the Refugee Act of 1980, everyone did “immigration work.”  However, when the Act was signed into law it came with “money attached to it” for refugees and thus a division developed between immigration activism generally and those working on Refugees (with a capital R, she says).  Now they are coming together again, reports Ms. Blake.
I think that is obvious when you see the line-up of the big NYC pow-wow, here, to prepare for the 2016 Presidential race.

NC Member of the House wants to curb Obama power on refugees, start by cutting funds

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update September 20th:  NC to get Syrian refugees, here.
Of course I’m wondering if Speaker Boehner will be curbing Rep. Jones?
Interestingly, Rep. Walter Jones has been in Congress for 20 years. Does he know that North Carolina is a prime resettlement state?  NC is one of 12 states that received more than 2,000 refugees so far this year (as of August 31).

stabbing-deaths
Eh Lar Doh Htoo, 18, killed three young brothers ages 1, 5, and 12 in New Bern earlier this year.  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/n-teen-murders-3-boys-machete-attack-cops-article-1.2153935

Do you remember that gruesome machete murder in March when a Burmese refugee killed three small children.  It happened in New Bern (in Jones’ district).  Could that have caused his concern for the huge influx of refugees entering the US and North Carolina?
Come to think of it, could the murderer be a Burmese Rohingya Muslim resettled among Christian Burmese, does anyone know?  We told you about it here when it first happened.
Here is the story by Neil Munro today at Breitbart (hat tip: Richard at Blue Ridge Forum):

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC)-today called on Congress to formally curb President Barack Obama’s legally unlimited powers to invite foreign refugees and migrants into the United States.

“We need to determine how much this program is costing taxpayers, and we need to make sure the people we are letting in aren’t radical Islamic terrorists,” said Jones, a conservative elected from North Carolina.

“Until then, the program ought to be suspended,” Jones said.

“We are over 18 trillion dollars in debt [and] we don’t even have money to fix roads and schools for Americans who pay taxes and already live here,” Jones said.

“Instead of taking in thousands of immigrants and refugees from countries that breed radical Islamic terrorists, we should be focusing our efforts on urging stable Middle Eastern countries to allow refugees to resettle closer to their homeland,” he said.

The only practical way for the GOP to limit Obama’s authority is to include restrictions in the annual spending bills, due for completion this fall.

For example, the Congress can include limiting language in the appropriations bill that is used for the refugee program.

Reporter Munro has more, continue reading here.
Glad to see that some House Members are doing something, so far as I know, nothing from the House Judiciary Committee that has jurisdiction over the refugee program and has some say over Obama’s determination for FY2016.

In refugee-saturated North Carolina, Burmese refugee kills Burmese children in his neighborhood

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update March 19th:  See refugee agency “disturbed” and quick to say refugees have criminal background checks before arriving in the US.  So what about mental illness screening?  The victims had only been in the US for just a little over 4 months.

He was described as crazy and people feared him.

So the next time a resettlement contractor tells you that refugees are screened before entering the US, remember that mental illness is obviously not a bar to admission.

The accused murderer, 18 year old Eh Lar Doh Htoo is believed to be Karen (Christian).

Although this creep doesn’t appear to be a Muslim as was the Burmese child murderer in Utah, Esar Met, he should never have been allowed into the US.  His mental problems were likely apparent to his interviewers as were Met’s.

From the Charlotte Observer (hat tip: Cathy):

NEW BERN, N.C.

A Burmese immigrant accused of stabbing three young brothers to death had scared a different neighborhood family by knocking on their door several times in the middle of the night.

“He’s crazy,” neighbor Ner Wah said Wednesday. “I told my wife: ‘Be careful. Don’t answer the door.'”

The suspect, identified as 18-year-old Eh Lar Doh Htoo, attacked a Burmese family in their home Tuesday night with a knife, killing the brothers — ages 1, 5 and 12, police said. When officers arrived, he was still holding the knife, New Bern Police Chief Toussaint Summers Jr. told The Associated Press.

Htoo also wounded the brothers’ mother and their 14-year-old sister. Police said they don’t know a motive for the attack and a language barrier hampered their investigation.   [Expensive interpreters will be called in and you, the taxpayer, pay for that service—ed]

[….]

New Bern is a coastal town and home to about 1,900 Burmese refugees, who resettled in the area after fleeing persecution from the country once called Burma.

[….]

Susan Husson, executive director of the Interfaith Refugee Ministry in New Bern, said the victims’ family and the suspect’s family likely came through her office before settling in New Bern, but she didn’t know them personally.

20,581 refugees were resettled in North Carolina since January 2005. 7,432 of them were Burmese.

Interfaith Refugee Ministry

On this last point (above) two comments:  First, interesting that they must resettle so many refugees in New Bern that the director doesn’t even know the people she has brought to the city.  And, then reader Cathy pointed out that maybe people are catching on and someone directed this reporter to the agency responsible for bringing them to New Bern— Interfaith Refugee Ministry.  It used to be very rare for reporters to figure out there was an agency involved when refugees ‘find their way’ to this town or that town.

Checking a recent Form 990 for Interfaith Refugee Ministry, we learned that they took in $1,138,222 one recent year and $1,054,809 came to them from you—via government grants.  They are 93% funded by taxpayer dollars, therefore they are an arm of the federal government, not a charitable ‘church’ group!

How many Burmese Muslims are entering the US?

Again, the accused killer is being described as belonging to the Karen ethnic group which are Christians.

However, I was recently shocked doing some numbers research to learn that the US admitted 1,439 Burmese Muslims to the US in 2014 alone.

North Carolina is not in the Top Ten resettlement states, but falls just short of making the list, here, at number twelve.

More on those Syrian refugees going to North Carolina

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update:  First Syrian family to arrive in Greensboro living in hotel, here.

This is follow-up story to our post of a few days ago where we learned that Syrians are arriving in the Triad area of North Carolina.  Resettlement contractor World Relief/Evangelicals expects 30-100 this next year (the fiscal year begins October 1).

The Triad area of North Carolina—a major resettlement site.

Our top post for the last six days is this one about the State Department spokesperson’s comment that thousands of Syrians had been selected by the UN for resettlement to the US.  The largest percentage will be Sunni Muslims.

Refugees are not self-sufficient in 90 days as World Relief says below, but have been connected to “services.”  See our fact sheet for the list of social services (aka welfare) available to refugees.  They will be deemed self-sufficient even as they remain on most forms of welfare.

From the Winston-Salem Journal:

Organizations such as World Relief and Church World Service work with the U.S. State Department to resettle refugees from around the world.  [Both “church” organizations are actually federal contractors.–ed]

Timbie said World Relief High Point typically resettles 400 to 450 refugees in the High Point and Winston-Salem area each year. He expects to assist anywhere from 30 to 100 refugees from Syria in the next year.

The government provides money to help these families make it through their first few months in the United States. World Relief employees provide job skill and language training and help the refugees find jobs with local companies and connect to services.

“Our job is to make them self-sufficient within 90 days,” Timbie said.

That does not mean that they are on their own, Timbie said. It just means they are not relying on that upfront money.

Greensboro, NC: First Syrian refugees on the way there this week

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Our post of late last week where we reported that the US State Department is saying that thousands of Syrian refugees have been chosen by the UN to be resettled to your towns and cities went through the roof with thousands and thousands of readers passing it around.

They are probably flowing into other small cities as well, but the Triad offices of contractors Church World Service and World Relief-Evangelicals (two of the big nine!) seem especially adept at getting news stories planted. (Just last month see World Relief here and Church World Service in North Carolina, here.)

By the way, back in 2010 there was a huge controversy in this part of North Carolina about too many refugees with lousy care.  We wrote a three part story about the problem, which begins with this post. Local churches asked that the flow be slowed.  LOL! the series showed what a dog-eat-dog-world the world of federal refugee contracting can be!

From the Winston-Salem Journal:

GREENSBORO — The first in the current wave of Syrian refugees will arrive in the Triad this week, representatives with the organizations helping to resettle them said Friday.

Sarah Ivory, Church World Service director in the Triad, says they are working with the local Islamic Center. Photo: http://cwsgreensboro.org/2012/03/05/40under40/

A Syrian family of seven will arrive on Tuesday and will settle in Greensboro, said Sarah Ivory, the director of refugee and immigration services with Church World Service in Greensboro. The family includes five children, the youngest just 5 months old, Ivory said. The oldest is 10 years old.

Andrew Timbie, the office director for World Relief’s High Point office, said his organization is helping to resettle a family in Winston-Salem. That family also will arrive next week, although he would not provide the exact date.

“This is the first of many that we anticipate,” Timbie said of Syrian refugees.

Church World Service and World Relief work with the U.S. State Department and the United Nations to resettle refugees.

Ivory said the family coming to Greensboro is currently living in Jordan. Timbie said on Friday that he did not have a lot of background information about the family his office is assisting.

The organizations receive government money to help give refugee families fresh starts, but the goal is to help the families become self-sufficient, with the help of other community agencies.  [At least they are admitting they do it with government money, something we never saw reported in the early years of writing RRW.—ed]

[….]

Ivory said Church World Service is working with the Islamic Center of Greensboro, the Greensboro Jewish Federation and the local Syrian-American community to provide other resources to the family, such as hot meals upon arrival, clothing and diapers.