Tag: Office of Refugee Resettlement

2009 Annual Report to Congress is now available

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I was just looking for statistics on Afghan refugees coming to the US in large numbers (for years) because of a post I’m writing about Pakistan wanting them OUT of their country when I came across the existence of the missing 2009 ANNUAL REPORT TO CONGRESS on the refugee program.

Here it is!

Now we can see what the program looked like in the first year of the Obama presidency.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement needs to now get cracking on reports for 2010, 2011, and 2012 which they are still LEGALLY required to produce and are breaking federal law every day by not producing them!

I won’t have time to scan the 181 pages chock full of information about how much this program is costing the taxpayer today, but look forward to reading it soon!

Is yours a “preferred community” for refugee resettlement?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars!

Yesterday I opened an alert in my in-box telling me that a new set of grants had been awarded for the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s “preferred communities.”    They intimate that these grants are for communities that are somehow special and welcoming, but they are really communities in refugee overload.

Here are the grants (tax dollars) awarded this week to NON-PROFIT government contractors which give you some hint as to the location of refugee overload.    Note that these grants are not awarded to say local government to deal with some refugee expense, but are administered by contractors who surely must be using some of these funds for office overhead.

Here are the cities:

Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Delray Beach, FL, Atlanta, Wichita, KS, Bowling Green, KY, Malden, MA, Grand Rapids, MI, Lansing, MI, Greensboro, NC, Las Vegas, NV, Buffalo, NY, Cleveland and Cleveland Heights, OH, Dayton, OH, Erie, PA, Philadelphia, Memphis, TN, Nashville, TN and Newport News, VA.

Only contractors need apply!

Here is what the ORR says about its “preferred community” grants (these are grants beyond what the contractors already get on a per head basis for the refugees they resettle).

Since the early 1990s,* preferred communities have provided resettlement services to newly arriving refugees. Preferred communities allow ample opportunities for early employment and sustained economic independence. In addition, they support special needs populations.

Two types of preferred communities programs are available.

*Programs that receive a minimum of 100 new refugees annually.
*Programs that receive a proposed number of cases that will need intensive case management.

These programs require a history of qualifications and experience in serving special needs cases.

Then they go on to make clear that ONLY the contractors who have a monopoly on the program can apply.   That would be THE Nine!   (when you look at the list I linked above, in some cases you will see some of THE Nine listed, but in fact those others listed are THE Nine’s subcontractors).   Again, say you are with a local government agency and need help with your health department because you got an overload of refugee TB cases, forget it, these grants are not for you!

ORR continues:

Applicants

Nine national voluntary agencies** currently resettle refugees under a Reception and Placement Cooperative Agreement with the Department of State or with the Department of Homeland Security. The Preferred Communities program is restricted to the following agencies because placements of new arrivals occur under the terms of the cooperative agreements, and no other agencies place new arrivals or participate in determining their resettlement sites. [Note that these un-elected government contractors are choosing resettlement sites!—ed]

~Church World Service/Immigration and Refugee Program, New York NY

~Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the U.S.A., New York, NY

~Ethiopian Community Development Council, Inc./Refugee Resettlement Program, Arlington VA

~HIAS, Inc. (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)/Refugee and Immigrant Services, New York NY

~International Rescue Committee/Resettlement, New York NY

~Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Baltimore MD

~U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington DC

~U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Arlington VA

~World Relief Corporation of National Association of Evangelicals/Refugee & Immigration Programs, Baltimore MD

Here then is another list of grants (larger grants) received for “preferred communities” by The Nine.  I wonder how much they skim off the top for their office overhead before any grant money flows to a subcontractor or a locality?

Oh good! an annual report!  At the bottom of the list I just re-produced is a link to a PDF document entitled “annual report for 2011.”  As I clicked on it, I thought well maybe we have some serious documentation about how these funds were used in FY2011.  Alas, that is not to be.  It is a less than 2-page superficial (mumbo-jumbo) description of what the purpose of this grant program is, and what they “accomplished.”   Here is how it begins:

The purpose of the Preferred Communities Program is to support the resettlement of newly arriving refugees with the best opportunities for their self-sufficiency and integration into new communities; to support the development of the national voluntary agencies’ capacity to address refugee cases with special or unique needs that require more intensive case management; and to develop new capacity and provide resources for national voluntary agencies to cover the costs of changing community placements so that refugees, including those with special or unique needs, are placed in a particular site where they will have the best chance for integration.

Preferred Communities are proposed for selected localities that have excellent opportunities for newly arriving refugees to achieve early employment and sustained economic independence without public assistance.  Preferred Communities should have a history of low welfare utilization by refugees.  In addition, refugees should have the potential for earned income at a favorable level relative to the cost of living and to public assistance benefits.

Does your community have these amenities for the new immigrants?  If not, too bad for you then because your community will not be “preferred!”   I especially thought #5 was really important!  And, the way things are going, you better have “excellent medical facilities” (#8).  And, come to think of it, how is your labor market?

Characteristics of these communities include:  (1) A moderate cost of living; (2) excellent employment opportunities in a strong, entry-level  labor market; (3) affordable housing and transportation accessible for employment; and (4) low secondary out-migration rates for refugees; (5) communities that meet the religious needs of arriving populations; (6) local community support and positive reception for the refugees; (7) receptive school environments; and (8) other related community features that contribute to a favorable quality of life for arriving refugees, such as excellent medical facilities.

There is no actual accounting of how your money was used, just a glowing list of “accomplishments.”

* The redistribution of your wealth started way before Obama!

** It is still funny to me that they call these contractors voluntary agencies (VOLAGS for short) when in fact they are mostly now funded by you, the taxpayer.

Suicide rate high in US Bhutanese refugee communities

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I told you about Director Eskinder Negash’s year-end review for the Office of Refugee Resettlement here and here recently.  There was one paragraph in his report that I noted to follow up on.  It was this:

ORR has been working with CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) to try to understand what is triggering suicides in Bhutanese refugee communities, undertaking an Epi-Aid study focusing on eleven communities in four states: (1) Arizona (Phoenix and Tucson), (2) Georgia (Atlanta Metropolitan Area, including Atlanta, Clarkston, Decatur, and Stone Mountain), (3) New York (Buffalo, and Syracuse) and (4) Texas (Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston). Results of the study were shared with ORR in October, and ORR is following up on CDC recommendations and next steps.

Here is the report from the CDC dated October 2012.  Sixteen newly resettled Bhutanese/Nepali refugees killed themselves in a three year period alarming the social engineers at the ORR in Washington DC, and within a year of getting to the US.   Researchers had data on 14 of those and interviewed family members to try to ascertain why they killed themselves (13 by hanging).  The reasons were in order of importance:  language barriers, worry about family back home, separation from family, and difficulty in maintaining cultural and religious traditions.

You will have to go to the report for the CDC’s recommendations which include more mental health screening for refugees, building support in communities among families etc, and expanding mental health facilities for refugees.

Just a reminder to readers that there was much angst and consternation in the refugee camps in Nepal where these refugees had lived for going on two decades about coming to the US in the first place.  We wrote about it on several occasions as the great emptying of camps began in 2007.  We reported last month that in the ensuing years we have resettled over 60,000 Bhutanese/Nepali people, so that meatpackers would have some more good docile workers, the contractors could get your taxpayer dollars, the Dems could get more voters and Americans could feel all warm and fuzzy about giving them this opportunity (I just threw that last part in there because I’m so cynical now!).

And, just so you know, some Bhutanese are doing well. Here is one glowing report from Pittsburgh, PA.   But, oops! it is the location of one of the suicides as we reported here in 2010 (Sheesh, I googled Pittsburgh Bhutanese and my own post came up!).

More from the Office or Refugee Resettlement’s year in review

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Did you know that we pay for day care centers offering “appropriate cultural competency!”  What happened to the idea that refugee kids should assimilate into our culture?

A week ago I reported that the Director (Eskinder Negash) of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Department of Health and Human Services had sent out a 5-page e-mail report on how the ORR fared in 2012.  Here is more from that letter.

Do you have day care centers in your town?  You know! the small entrepreneurial ones run by a stay-at-home mom or maybe an older woman whose kids are grown.  Wouldn’t putting immigrant kids in those day care programs help integrate the kids into American culture?

And, do you think those small American home-based day care centers get FEDERAL GRANTS AND MICRO-LOANS to get started?  I doubt it!

According to Director Negash, refugee women do get federal (your!) money and support to set up their businesses.  This is from his year-in-review e-mail:

At the inception of the Microenterprise Development – Home-Based Child Care program in FY 2011, ORR awarded 13 grantees in 13 states grants totaling $2.225 million per year for two years. The primary goal of the program was to assist women refugees to become economically self-sufficient and integrated into the mainstream. A secondary goal was to expand home-based child care business options for other refugees, to enable them enter the workforce with confidence that their children are being cared for by individuals possessing appropriate cultural competency. ORR is pleased to see the overwhelming successes achieved by this new program thus far, encouraging continued support and expansion of the grant: in FY2012, ORR increased funding to the program, raising it from $2.225 million to $5,752 million, and offering grants to a total of 34 agencies.
During the first year of the project, the original 13 grantees have collectively:

* Enrolled 879 refugee women in the program;

* Trained 745 refugees;

* Helped 172 refugees obtain business licenses;

* Assisted 160 refugees to start home-based child care programs

* Created 1,061 childcare slots for children;

* Paid $249,000 in grants to partially cover business startup costs, and assisted the home-based child care owners to obtain an additional $208,000 in subsidies;

* Helped 207 refugees find and secure jobs, and

* Taken 79 refugees off public assistance.

Wow!  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.

End of the year greetings and review from the Office of Refugee Resettlement

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement headed by a former VP of a federal contractor (USCRI), Eskinder Negash, recently sent out a very informative end of the year review for 2012.  They were busy, busy, busy in Washington, but still no time to get the three missing annual reports to Congress completed.   The ORR is legally required to send Congress an annual report about the program within three months of the close of the previous fiscal year.  They are now in violation of the law for all of the years of the Obama Administration!

Here is Director Negash’s greeting that came to me in an e-mail (it is actually 5 pages long so more analysis will follow in subsequent posts).  Emphasis below is mine:

Two thousand twelve was a very busy and productive year for the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), with an astonishing level of accomplishment made possible through the exceptional collaboration of agencies and volunteers who make the United States Refugee Program a true public-private partnership. On behalf of ORR and the people it serves, we thank you for your support and look forward to continuing this good work and collaboration in 2013.

While we got off to a slow start with overseas refugee arrivals last year due to changes in clearance procedures for refugees, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and its partners ultimately served more than 115,000 new arrivals in Fiscal Year 2012, including over 62,000 refugees and Special Immigrant Visa holders, more than 40,000 asylees and Cuban/Haitian Entrants and Parolees; nearly 500 Victims of Trafficking, and an unanticipated doubling of the number of Unaccompanied Alien Children over last year.

The United States welcomed refugees from more than 80 countries across the globe this past year. The highest number of overseas arrivals mirrored those of the past few years, with Bhutanese (15,000) and Burmese (14,000) comprising more than half of all arrivals, followed by refugees from Cuba, Iraq, and Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia rounding out the top ten arrival groups.

Highlights of ORR’s activities and achievements for Fiscal Year 2012 are included here; for additional information about these and other issues, please visit the ORR website, or contact ORR directly.

Sincerely,
Eskinder Negash
Director

Readers take note that the “clearance procedures” referenced above involve security screening for refugees after the revelation that Iraqi refugees in Kentucky turned out to be terrorists, here.

Also, pay attention to the fact that the asylee numbers are growing as the refugee numbers decline.  Asylees got into the US and then asked to stay.  They don’t come with the more rigorous screening we are told refugees are subject to.

The newest racket!

As for those unaccompanied kids,* illegal aliens have now figured out that racket.  Get your kid (teens! but younger as well) across the border, abandon them, and the federal taxpayer will care for them until they are 18.  At that point they simply become part of the US population (and LOL! demand instate college tuition rates).  Here is one egregious story we heard from Texas earlier this year, and here is Governor Rick Perry on what that program is doing to Texas.  By the way, the kids are not technically refugees but this is just one more effort to bring immigrants (mostly economic migrants) of all sorts under the “refugee” umbrella in a perversion of the original definition of a refugee.

* Update!  Here Negash says it was 13,000 illegal immigrant kids in 2012 that the ORR took care of!