Tag: Office of Refugee Resettlement

Pennsylvania Refugee Conference was informative on so many levels

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update June 15th:  Pockets of resistance have developed, here is Part II of my report on Lancaster.

As I mentioned a couple of times yesterday, on Tuesday I traveled to Lancaster, PA (a “welcoming” resettlement city) for the 2013 Pennsylvania Consultation, a joint meeting between the “Commonwealth’s” refugee program and its workers, the national refugee contractors and the federal government.

The Atrium dining area at the lavish Doubletree/Hilton Hotel in Lancaster, PA where “stakeholders” met (at taxpayers’ expense) to learn more about how to help refugees sign up for social services. What is wrong with this picture?

Representatives from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (Health and Human Services) and the State Department’s Office of Population, Refugees and Migration were there to fill in the Pennsylvania “stakeholders” about the latest trends in nationalities they would be resettling, refugee and asylee rights including rights to welfare goodies, the shortage of money for the contractors and the program generally (they had money to give attendees promotional ink pens!) and how to push-back against what they called “pockets of resistance against new arrivals.”   (That last is so good it will require a second post!).

Readers, I know this type of meeting can be boring and so might my reports on it, or at least this one might be boring, but it’s very important to see the kinds of people involved in refugee resettlement, listen to them and to basically become informed about the minutia of this or any government program you might have concerns about.

Your state (except Wyoming) has a Refugee Office (or an assigned state employee/private contractor) somewhere and I recommend that you visit them or their website often or get on a mailing list to receive information about upcoming meetings like this one.  We were told from the podium that Pennsylvania had no pockets of resistance, perhaps no organized pockets, but I learned of a couple of people who have problems with refugee resettlement in Lancaster who didn’t know this meeting was occurring at their grand Doubletree/Hilton Hotel.

By the way, I had several occasions to help put on conferences (not taxpayer funded) at a Doubletree Hotel in Maryland, not as grand a hotel as this one, and I know that use of their facility/meeting rooms and food couldn’t be done for less than $50 a head for a boxed lunch.  Based on the amenities at the Lancaster “consultation” where attendance was ‘free,’ this spread must have cost (state and/or federal taxpayers) about $100 a person.  Fortunately there was no line dancing that I saw.

Here are some nuggets I learned (in no particular order):

* PA resettled 3,022 in 2011-2012.  1,194 have arrived in 2013 so far.

* The largest percentage of PA’s refugees are the Bhutanese (Nepalese), Iraqis and a smattering of Somalis.  There will be Congolese coming to PA to add to their diversity.

* The refugee hot spots in PA are Pittsburgh, Lancaster/Harrisburg, Allentown, Philadelphia (the largest right now) and Erie.

* Major PA contractors are Catholic Charities, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and Church World Service.

* ORR was represented at the meeting by former Ethiopian refugee, Mitiku Ashebir.  That is interesting because the present Director of ORR is Eskinder Negash, also from Ethiopia, who revolved into his government job from his perch as VP at one of the top  nine major federal contractors—USCRI.  Ashebir entered the government door through his former positions with contractors US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Ethiopian Community Development Council.  There really should be a law against the cozy contractor/government employee revolving door.

* There were lots of little nuggets about welfare that I noted.  One statistic of interest was that 2,550 refugees in PA are receiving SSI (Supplemental Security Income).  After all, the US State Department is admitting elderly and disabled refugees who have to live on something—right!

* There was discussion on possible reductions in TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) on the horizon.  And, eeek! drug testing too.

* There was this bit of good employment news (NOT!)—refugee employment increased by 3% over 2011!  It went from 50% to 53%.

* Also considered good news is that 67% of refugees in PA are self-sufficient at 120 days, and 75% at 180 days.  That does not mean they don’t get any welfare benefits—they still get food stamps for sure and likely Section 8 housing.  And, so 25% are in need of all services after 180 days—doesn’t sound so good to me!

* The anticipated national caseload for FY2013 breaks down like this:  70,000 refugees, 28,800 asylees, 21,000 Cubans and Haitians, 600 human trafficking cases, and 4,000 Special Immigrant Visa holders (those are the Iraqis and Afghanis who we are admitting for “helping” America).  The total is 124,400 and as we were told ALL of them are entitled to all the benefits—welfare, housing, food stamps, education, health care etc.

* On top of the 124,400 is an expected jump in unaccompanied minors that ORR is responsible for.  In 2012, 14,700 kids arrived in the US without parents and in 2013 the number is expected to be 20,000. Prior to 2012 the numbers were dramatically lower.  Sounds like an incredible scam on America as probably parents from south of the border are abandoning their children to the government in advance of the amnesty legislation.

* Then here is something I found very interesting and helps answer a question I get often from readers.  How do they decide to resettle refugees to a given town? The contractors and federal government have to continually look for fresh territory in which to resettle refugees and apparently in light of failed attempts to get new seed communities established, the feds are having ORR-PRM joint quarterly placement meetings.  The next one will be in July.     Before any new site is opened (usually because some contractor thinks it would be a good place), ORR-PRM will visit the site together and decide if it will be “welcoming.”

A note of caution:  they will bring in a small number of refugees and see if there is going to be some resistance.  If there is none, then they will proceed with the assumption that yours is a “welcoming” community.  I call this the squawk factor.  I think this is one of several reasons why the contractors resettle refugees in city slums—there will be no organized community resistance from people who don’t know their neighbors anyway and are just trying to survive day to day.

One final thing.  I bet if attendees at the conference were asked to raise their hands if they were there simply as volunteers and not receiving a salary or travel expenses, the number of hands raised would be less than ten, maybe less than five of the approximately 130-150 attendees.  (I’m guessing on the number in attendance).

Lancaster gave birth to RRW!

To learn the role Lancaster played in the birth of this blog, visit this post from 2012—So what is going on in Lancaster, PA?

More later…..”Welcoming America” combating pockets of resistance!

Media on Chechens, manipulating the numbers and twisting the truth

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Steve Sailer has a very good post on Chechens, here (read it), in which he directs us to a USA Today story on Chechen “refugee” numbers.

Here is how USA Today begins (emphasis mine, and when I use red I really mean it!):

Glen Howard looks like a nice guy, maybe I shouldn’t say he is lying. But no city in America gets to pick its refugees!

There are probably fewer than about 200 Chechen immigrants in the United States, and most of them are settled in the Boston area, as many U.S. cities have refused to accept asylum applicants from the war-torn area of southern Russia, says Glen Howard, president of the Jamestown Foundation.

Glen Howard is flat out lying!    First, we really don’t know how many Chechens are in the US (heck, clearly this family was moving back and forth to Russia), but more importantly I am unaware of any city in America given the opportunity to say “NO ” to any particular ethnic refugee group.  Indeed, this is one of the most serious complaints about refugee resettlement (which includes asylees)—states and cities are not consulted in the resettlement process, and once the migrant has a foot in the door, they can move anywhere.

The decision about which cities get refugees and from where is made mostly by unelected federal contractors (the volags) in collaboration with the State Department.  This is a Tenth Amendment States Rights issue that hardly any state has ever raised (except maybe Tennessee).    Only when there has been a complete breakdown in the city due to refugee overload is there ever a hiatus for a city once it’s been deemed “welcoming” by the resettlement industry.

***Update*** A reader this evening sent this comment in response to the above point:

Not only do states and cities not have a choice to say no, but when and if they try to, the federal government simply contracts with a private non-profit to bring them anyway.

Should there ever be any peep of objection by the “native population”, they are then accused of being unwelcoming.

USA Today continued with this:

About 70% of the Chechen immigrants are women, Howard says. Very few men are granted asylum because of U.S. anti-terrorism policies and because Russia often protests when ethnic Chechens try to settle in the U.S., he said. The U.S. admitted only 197 refugees from all of Russia in 2012.

This is how they twist the numbers.  There might have been only 197 from Russia proper in 2012, but that is meaningless!   Go to the Office of Refugee Resettlement Annual Report to Congress for 2009 (published three years late btw) and go to Appendix A.  Note that refugees are listed as from THE FORMER USSR!  (not just Russia).

From 1983 to 2009 we resettled 526,308 from THE FORMER USSR which includes Russia AND all of those countries that split off—all of the ‘stan’ Muslim countries.  Someone at the State Department might be able to tell us how many are Chechens, and indeed how many are Muslims!

In 2005 we resettled:  11,272

In 2006: 10,452

In 2007: 4,583

In 2008: 2,390

In 2009: 2,022

After that the numbers are hard to find (and I’ve got other things to do today!).  But, if the ORR wasn’t breaking the law by not providing annual reports to Congress for 2010, 2011 and 2012, we could easily find numbers.

And, then this!  We are expected to assume the US has only 200 Chechens when Austria has 30,000.  Last I checked you could come to the US easily from Europe once you were in the EU.

That contrasts with many European countries, especially Austria, where many Chechens who want to leave difficult conditions at home settle. Austria has about 30,000 Chechen immigrants, Howard said.

For additional edification, readers might want to search RRW for all the problems poor Austria is having with its large and ever-growing Muslim population.  Just type ‘Austria’ into our search function and see if you want that here!

Moratorium!

ORR kills national consultation due to budget cuts

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Eskinder Negash (Director of ORR): We can’t afford the DC party this year.

Your tax dollars!

This is no great loss to any of you who have concerns about refugee resettlement and the ability of your city or state to afford more refugees on public assistance, because you don’t get invited to the big annual party anyway.  You are NOT a stakeholder!

Eskinder Negash, formerly a Vice President of federal contractor US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, now head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (which hands out grants), has sent a letter to “stakeholders” (stakeholders do not include you!) telling them that (boo-hoo) no “consultation” this year.

Here is Negash yesterday:

To all ORR Stakeholders:

One of the key priorities of the Office of Refugee Resettlement has been to increase ORR’s communications and outreach to refugees, service providers, partners and other stakeholders.  Only by creating a platform for refugee voices to be heard can we ensure that we support refugees’ best interests, and meet the needs of those we welcome to the United States under this exemplary humanitarian program.

The ORR National Consultation is one way in which this office has traditionally sponsored such discussions [Read:  US taxpayers sponsored the feel-good event–ed].  This annual event, however, does not come without cost; therefore, given the current challenges we are facing with regard to budget, coupled with our commitment to maintaining current programs as a top priority, we have made the decision not to hold a National Consultation this year.

Read it all here, if you feel like it.

Waste of money anyway!

Christopher Coen writing at Friends of Refugees, here, in 2010 tells us that the annual event is nothing more than a huge lobbying project where contractors bring in their best examples of successful happy refugees (you pay their travel expenses!) and parade them around the Hill to ask Congress for more ‘moolah’ for the contractors.   Refugees critical of the contractors’ care of refugees are persona non grata!

Here is Coen in 2010:

Is this the type of conference marking the 30th anniversary of the refugee resettlement program that will really benefit the refugees, the average citizen, and the nation? Or is this whole thing a set up to help the refugee resettlement contractors and their revolving door friends in government?

For new readers:  See my Sequestration savings suggestions for ORR, here.

Come and get it! Free government money for “culturally appropriate” child care

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars!

We have a sequester.  The federal government is shortly going to lay off large swaths of its workforce, including the military, yet the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is still sending out announcements for applications for micro-enterprise grants to non-profits so they can further distribute your tax dollars to refugee ‘entrepreneurs’ who truth-be-told want to get paid to care for their own kids and a few others (of their own kind) in their own homes.  What! they can’t use existing American child care facilities?

Here is the announcement I received last week from ORR (applications are due in May):

Funding Opportunity

(Lewiston, ME) Candidates for micro-enterprise loans from the federal government—“culturally appropriate” home-based daycare for special groups of people. Photo: AP

Title: Refugee Home-Based Childcare Microenterprise Development Project

Description

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is pleased to announce the availability of funds for Refugee Home-Based Child Care Microenterprise Development Projects. These projects are aimed at assisting primarily refugee women in becoming economically self sufficient by providing home-based child care services. Thus, recipients of grant awards through this announcement will teach refugee women about local, state, and federal child care laws, regulations and licensing requirements and about cultural norms [wouldn’t their kids learn cultural norms more quickly in American-run day care centers?—ed] concerning child care and child care development. Also, they will assist refugee women in English language acquisition, advance educational attainment (GED) and improve economic opportunities through application of acquired job skills in a market where there is a shortage of childcare providers. Through this grant, mentors [non-profit groups–ed] will help primarily refugee women establish agreements or contracts with State or county child care offices so they may qualify for State/county childcare reimbursement as childcare service providers.

Not to be exclusionary, men can get this money too!

Although the focus will be on refugee women, all services provided to refugee women under this project are available to refugee men who are able to benefit from these services.

I told you about this “culturally appropriate” daycare in January, here, when the Office of Refugee Resettlement reported on their ‘success’ with the program, and I said this:

We trained hundreds, paid out millions of dollars and got 79 refugees off public assistance all the while assuring the kids were cared for by appropriate culturally competent caregivers.

It’s not just day care centers we are encouraging.  Micro-enterprise loans flow out of the US treasury and then through a bunch of non-profit groups and fund all sorts of businesses that then compete with existing businesses in an already stressed economy.  Go to the Annual Report to Congress for 2009 (beginning on p. 43) to just get an idea of who is getting these grants from the Office of Refugee Resettlement.  And, could someone direct me to a site where we can learn how many of these “loans” to start a businesses are repaid!

For new readers:  See my previous posts on where we can save millions of dollars by cutting out grants to non-profits involved in setting up refugees as a special class of people, here (refugee unhealthy marriage grants), here (ethnic community based groups that create division), and here (federally funded savings accounts for special people—refugees—but not for you low-income Americans!).

Iraqis still lined up in Jordan in hopes of getting to the US, and getting a job!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This week there have been a bunch of stories in which the news hook is the tenth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, and although we supposedly gave them a democracy and supposedly things have calmed down in Iraq—tens of thousands are still waiting in Jordan to come to your town in hopes of getting a job and finding the American dream.

Here is one such story from the Jordan Times.

Jordan took refugees from Iraq and now from Syria, but Saudi Arabia takes NO REFUGEES and nary a word is mentioned because the UN and its cabal of “human rights” agitators is scared of Saudi Arabia.

We applaud this refugee man’s wish to work, but I sure hope the IOM has him adequately informed:

While the US might be seen as the land of opportunity for many, Abu Sufyan is mindful of the various challenges awaiting him.

He is “scared of the future” in a country where he does not know many people or speak the language.

But if there is one thing he can do, it is to find employment.   [Not so much! See below—ed]

While his sponsor will help him get on his feet, Abu Sufyan says, “I will depend on myself. Of course I am going to need help in the beginning, but I will avoid asking people for help. I don’t like to sit still. I would like to get a job and feed my family.”

Perhaps Abu Sufyan’s determination was cemented after his cultural orientation organised by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

Daryl Morrissey, an emergency response project manager at the IOM, explained that a lot of effort has been put into designing the resettlement orientation programme, whereby participants could come to their own conclusions on what life in their new country of residence will be like.

“We try to give them a very realistic perspective. We let them know how difficult it is to get jobs; even if they have professional qualifications these may not be accepted in the US and it may take them several years to be recertified, so that means they may have to take entry-level jobs.”

Let’s have a look at his chances of finding a job—based on the 2009 Annual Report to Congress on the refugee program (the most recent summary we have since ORR has not released more recent figures).  So, if things have improved for Iraqis in the US, we don’t know it because ORR hasn’t reported since this 2009 report came out only last month.

The Annual Report (beginning on p. 113) tells us that the US unemployment rate for Iraqis is at 46%.  The average hourly wage is $8.80!    The average number of weeks worked was 25!   37% took 7-12 months to find the first job.

(BTW, isn’t the gang of eight in the US Senate telling us that we need more immigrant labor as they craft an amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens?)

89% of the surveyed Iraqis are on Medicaid or a special Refugee Medical program (also paid for with tax dollars), 86% get some sort of taxpayer-funded cash assistance, and 95% are on food stamps.

We have some sympathy for Jordan.  Surely they want to move the Iraqis out, because as we reported the other day, here, masses of Syrians are now moving in!

For ambitious readers!  We have 563 previous posts on Iraqi refugees in our special category on the subject.