Tag: Office of Refugee Resettlement

As predicted by ORR, the number of illegal alien “kids” skyrocketed this year

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Note: Apprehensions data are from United State Border Patrol, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and represent the number of children apprehended in the United States. Referrals data are from Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and represent the number of apprehended children referred to ORR for detention.

Back in June we attended a refugee pow-wow in Lancaster, PA where an official representing the Office of Refugee Resettlement predicted the number of “unaccompanied minors” would reach 20,000 this year.  Sure looks like he had a crystal ball, or knew this latest world-wide trick of separating children/teens from parents and sending them across borders to seek asylum was being pushed hard by open borders activists.

Here is Fox News on how Obama’s policies toward “Dreamers” is acting like a magnet for the children.

Mentioned here is the fact that many of the asylum-seeking kids (abused by Mom and Dad?) are given over to the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.  Not mentioned is that ORR in  turn pays the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services to care for them until they are 18 and released into America.

The number of children caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has surged over the last two years, raising questions about whether the Obama administration’s changing immigration policies are creating a magnet.

Statistics released late last week show 24,668 “unaccompanied alien children” were placed last year in the care of the federal agency that, by law, is responsible for them. That’s nearly double the number from 2012, and nearly quadruple the number in years past.

As is often the case with immigration statistics, it’s unclear what is driving the increase. The surge could be driven in part by better enforcement, and immigration officers doing a better job catching border crossers.

But critics point to other factors. A federal judge in Texas claimed earlier this month that the Department of Homeland Security has been delivering children smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border to their illegal immigrant parents. In June 2012, the administration decided to give a reprieve to young illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.

Though the latter would not apply to people who just arrived, critics say these policies send a clear message south of the border: The rewards of trying to cross into the U.S. outweigh the risks.

[….]

According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, most of the minors come from Central America — largely Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

The stats show a big spike over the past two years. The office recorded an “unprecedented increase” in 2012, with the number jumping from an average of 6,775 to 13,625.

You are paying for their housing through grants to the Lutherans and Catholics:

Most of the children are housed through a network of federally funded care centers. But as the traffic increases, those are becoming over-burdened.

Now, can you imagine what a racket it will become if every kid in the world who is “abused” by his or her parents is eligible for asylum or legal status in some other country!

Some of the children who cross illegally into the U.S. can petition for legal status. According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, those seeking asylum or who can demonstrate they were abused or abandoned by their parents in their native country can be eligible.

The truth is that very few (none most likely!) are returned to their home country.  At 18 (or sooner to “relatives”) they are simply released into America and make up the “Dreamer” population where some legal clinic takes up their case (so you can pay for their college educations too!).

There is more in the Fox News story, it is worth reading the whole thing.

By typing ‘unaccompanied minors’ into our search function, you will find all of our previous coverage of the subject.

The graph is from The Migrationist website.  It is not clear to me exactly where are all the thousands of kids who are “apprehended” but not in the care of ORR go—are they all just released to relatives?

Tampa: Could you make 6 acres productive if you had an $85,000 gift?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Diversity wheelbarrows! Do you think the Tampa refugees will get these through their federal grant?

Maybe, maybe not!  I know a little about farming and I’m not sure even with an $85,000 grant from the US government, refugees in Tampa will be able to support and maintain much food production on 6 acres of land.

This is yet another feel-good story about refugees with no work “finding” satisfaction and “community” by growing foods they are familiar with back home inspired by none other than Michelle Obama’s pronouncement on refugee gardens—“It’s a model for the nation, for the world.” 

Go here for the Refugee Agricultural Partnership Program and see if your city is getting gardening grants. The Tampa project is first on the list.

From the Tampa Bay Times:

Pastors Joseph Germain and Berhanu Bekele started the garden 3 1/2 years ago. Germain led a congregation filled with refugees and noticed that many were leaving the state because they couldn’t find a livelihood.

He wanted to find a way to help them settle and find community, something often missing in resettled immigrant populations.

A little helpful background for new readers on what refugees in Tampa receive from the feds:

About 9,000 refugees live in Tampa, said Janet Blair, Community Liaison for the SunCoast Region Refugee Services Program offered through the Department of Children and Families. They come from countries including Burma, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan.

Refugees must prove to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that they are unable or unwilling to return to their home country because of fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in social groups. They come to Tampa with legal status and a small set of benefits — cash assistance, Medicaid and food assistance for eight months — provided by DCF.

The goal is to enable refugees to find employment within the first eight months, Blair said. After a year, they become eligible to apply for citizenship.

At first there was admirable private Christian charity!

Nearly four years ago, Pastor Germain attended a meeting of people who work with refugees. He mentioned what he had seen in his congregation. Bekele, pastor of St. Mary’s Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Tampa, said he had 6 acres of land.

Most of the people from his congregation came from agricultural backgrounds, Germain said. It was a perfect marriage of resources. The refugees could tend a garden and plant any crops they chose, including plants from their native lands if the soil was right for it. Refugees could do what they wished with the crops, even selling them on the side if they had extra.

Bekele and Germain received $10,000 from the Allegany Franciscan Ministries, enough to buy plants, tools, chickens, sheep and goats. But foxes got to the chickens, and the grant ran out. The pastors had been essentially sustaining the garden on their own.

Who needs private charity when here come the feds!

Now the group has received almost $85,000 from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, which has stepped up funding of community gardens across the country.

If any of you live in the Tampa area, or any other community garden getting federal grants (here), keep an eye on this project and let us know how it’s going.  BTW, I wonder if this counts when immigrant advocates claim refugees are more entrepreneurial than Americans? (The latest hot open-borders talking point!)

The photo is from a post back in May where we learned that similar refugee gardens had gone bust in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.  No one wanted to work!

2010 Annual Report to Congress is out (more than two years late)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Longtime readers know that the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is required by law to produce an annual report to Congress about the status of the Refugee Resettlement Program within three months of the close of the previous fiscal year.  ORR is chronically late—over two years in this case.   The report should have been made available to Congress by January 31, 2011.

The last we checked for an annual report was back in March.  I’m not sure exactly when the 2010 was submitted to Congress because they don’t put dates on them.  Dates disappeared back in the Clinton Administration, here.  Prior to the reign of Lavinia Limon as director of ORR, the reports were done on time.

These annual reports are a treasure-trove of information on the entire program.   Although bear in mind when you look at stats on welfare use by refugees etc., remember that they haven’t a completely accurate way of getting that data because they hire someone to call refugees and ask them what social services they receive and one has to wonder if they get completely truthful answers in the small sampling they do.

Here is the 2010 report, it is 139 pages, so it might be awhile before I say more.

Ethnic-based groups are taxpayer-supported “community organizers”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They are ethnic supremacist groups using your tax dollars to get government goodies to THEIR people and getting those same people politically involved.

Note below that the feds only talk now about “integration.”  “Assimilation” is banned from the lingo.

This morning I wrote about Mayor Sarno and Springfield Massachusetts’ refugee overload and the local Ethnic Community Based Organization (ECBO) was mentioned.  It’s my view that taxpayer-funded ECBOs represent the very worst in unfair and wasteful government spending.  (I did not find government funding going to the Springfield group/one-man project—yet).

One of the many Ethnic groups your tax dollars support! Among other things they do job-training so refugees can compete better against poor unemployed Americans. I’m citing the Nile Sisters because I liked their logo, not because they are any worse than the others!

ECBOs are like ACORN except they are organized around certain ethnic groups.  Before the critics jump in here, people in America can form, and associate with, any private group they wish (unless it’s a criminal activity of course).  But, when groups are funded by the taxpayer and then engage in really what amounts to ethnic-supremacist practices and political organizing they become an abomination.

Simply put groups with such names as Somali Community Center, Iraqi Mutual Aid Society and Burmese Advocacy Center Corporation are doing a couple of things—finding all the social services they can find for THEIR people and then using those people for their political advocacy.  That is the ACORN model!  And, it’s ‘community organizing 101!’  How this helps them “assimilate” (oops! integrate) is beyond me, except that they learn how to take advantage of the people who pay taxes.

Most importantly these politically-active groups could not survive without your tax dollars!

Here is the Office of Refugee Resettlement (Health and Human Services) description of their (your!) ETHNIC COMMUNITY SELF HELP program (they stopped using the ECBO label at some point a few years ago).

This program provides assistance to refugee community based organizations and other groups that address community building, facilitate cultural adjustment and integration of refugees, and deliver mutually supportive functions such as information exchange, civic participation, resource enhancement, orientation and support to newly arriving refugees (and other refugees that maybe in need of such assistance regardless of their resettlement date) and public education to the larger community on the background, needs and potential of refugees. In short, the purpose is to promote community organizing that builds bridges between newcomer refugee communities and community resources.

LOL!  Not bridges between the newcomers and Americans but bridges between newcomer refugee and resources (code for public assistance)!

Do you have federally-funded ECBOs in your city?

Check out the 2011 Ethnic community organizing grantees here.   2012 is here.  If you find some in your home town, you need to begin to follow their activities and take every chance you get to spread the word that they are taxpayer-funded mini-ACORNS.

The galling thing is that when one of these ECBOs blasts critics by calling them “racists” they are doing it with the financial funding of the critics (aka racists)!

US deporting minors by the thousands? Don’t believe it

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Huffington Post had a story a few days ago that I didn’t get around to posting because it seemed really too incredible to be true.   Upon reflection, I think it’s a complete fabrication.

We learned from the ‘horses’ mouth’ in June that the Office of Refugee Resettlement was expected to be in charge of over 20,000 “unaccompanied minors” this fiscal year (it was over 14,000 in 2012).  So, unless the ORR was seriously shopping in camps abroad for kids*, it’s hard to believe we sent a large portion (“the majority”) of the 13,454 cited in this story back to Mexico.

This is the Lutheran’s logo for its unaccompanied kids program. Most of the “kids” are teens, not cute little tykes like this one.

HuffPo (with a hat tip to a source called Latino Rebels, which says it all!):

U.S. immigration authorities apprehended 13,454 unaccompanied Mexican minors last year, the majority of whom were swiftly deported to their home country, news site Animal Político reported last week.

The figures, provided by Mexican consulates in U.S. border cities and submitted to the country’s lower house of Congress last month, highlight the increasingly common problem in the United States of unaccompanied minors crossing the border illegally.

Unaccompanied minors are normally repatriated within three days of being detained by Border Patrol, or taken in by the Office Refugee Resettlement. ORR often releases the minors to family members in the United States while they go through deportation proceedings.

The kids (LOL! the Dreamers!) aren’t deported.  The US taxpayer pays refugee contractors like the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services to find places for the kids.  The illegal alien youths are released into America when they reach their late teens/early 20’s.

Update (sort of!):  Be sure to see this history of the unaccompanied minors scam, at VDARE in 2006.

*Sheesh, I sure hope we are not shopping for boys at Zaatari with the excuse of keeping them from becoming child soldiers!