From time to time I hear from people who have some waste, fraud, or abuse they want to report involving the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program (RAP).
You do know that both the US State Department and the Dept. of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Office of Refugee Resettlement, have Inspector General Offices. Those offices have hotlines where you can report something you think is illegal/wasteful or flat out a fraud. I am told by people in government that those OIGs are decent watchdogs and shouldn’t be feared.
But, we need something more!
Someone (maybe the new Trump Administration) could create a hotline that would address many other concerns, for reporting things like the following:
~For reports of waste, fraud or abuse of taxpayer dollars relating to the RAP witnessed in local communities when it is not clear if it is federal or state/local funds being potentially misused.
~For whistleblowers who work, or have worked, for a resettlement agency (public or private) and have witnessed something that they feel must be reported, but fear for their jobs.
~For unhappy refugees who might want to go home.
Just a thought!
In the meantime, if you have unearthed something potentially fraudulent as you investigate your local refugee program, try the following Inspector General Office hotlines:
US Dept. of State ishere(the DOS does the initial work of hiring the contractors and distributing the refugees).
And, HHS fraud hotline, is here (the Office of Refugee Resettlement distributes millions in grants to non-profits which pay for much of their office/staff etc.). Endnote: I had to make a new tag, I had all sorts of frauds (food stamps, immigration etc), but needed a general ‘fraud’ tag.
Readers here at RRW know that the Dept. of Health and Human Services isn’t just about Obamacare. For us, it is the agency that does most of the spending on refugees and those so-called unaccompanied alien children we just told you about in the previous post. Rep. Tom Price, Trump’s pick for HHS Secretary
Here isTheSeattle Times educating its readers about HHS’s role involving immigration via its sub-agency the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The examples given here of Trump nominee Georgia Rep. Tom Price’s (a medical doc btw) earlier positions on the subject of refugees doesn’t look very reassuring to me. So, if any of you know things about Price that would give us confidence he might draw in the reins on the RAP, let me know!
And, correct me if I am wrong!
Inmy earlier post this morning, I noted he did not back Rep. Babin on his bill. The Seattle Times:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The congressman named by Donald Trump to oversee the country’s health care system would also have an impact on another top issue: immigration.
It’s an area where Georgia Republican Tom Price has been at odds with the Obama administration.
If Price is confirmed by the Senate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he would head an office responsible for both resettling refugees in the United States and caring for immigrant children caught trying to cross the border on their own.
The five-term lawmaker has joined his Republican colleagues in objecting to President Barack Obama’s immigration enforcement policies, including those at the border. He co-sponsored a bill that sought to let states block Syrian refugees from settling in their communities. (I’m assuming they mean McCaul’s toothless bill, mentioned here at Breitbart)
Continue here.
And, again, if anyone has anything that would give us confidence that Price would be willing to dramatically decrease the budget at HHS for the Refugee Admissions Program and turn off its giant grantmaking machine, send it my way!
On the grants: There are millions of dollars of grants that ORR hands out to contractors that have no basis in the law—crazy stuff like those grants for planting refugee gardens for example!
The timing of this $500,000 grant announcement from the Office of Refugee Resettlementto a local non-profit group for refugees from the DR Congo is so interesting—days before North Carolina could choose the next President of the US. (See yesterday’s post about North Carolina, here.) Raleigh Immigrant Community Inc. Motto: Unity, Justice, Work (for special people, but not Americans). Community organizers have received a $500,000 federal grant. http://ricinc.org/
It has been awhile since I’ve written about ETHNIC COMMUNITY SELF-HELP GRANTS.
Think about this, besides the fact that the federal grant encourages ethnic separation and non-assimilation by being geared, in this case in NC, to refugees from the DR Congo, your money is used to give special refugees (make work!) jobs and if this one operates as others have in the past, it encourages political involvement for their ethnic group.
I look at these non-profits as little ACORNS (remember ACORN). They purport to be helping the poor (in special ethnic groups) and then they help them vote and become politically active for ‘their community.’ If you have ethnic community organizers working where you live, find out if they are being funded by you.
There is absolutely no need for this grant program from the Office of Refugee Resettlement. And, I wonder under what legal authority the feds have to pass out your money in this discriminatory fashion.
They already hire the nine major contractors and their hundreds of subcontractors to get the refugees settled. There is no need for spin-off non-profits being run with your money! Imagine the firestorm (!) if we wanted federal bucks (community organizing money) to organize a European-American ethnic support group! Or, how about North Carolina Trailer Park Redneck Residents for Justice! (I love rednecks and ‘deplorables’, why not organizing bucks for them/us?)
Before I get to this one from North Carolina, see this list of $millions in grant money for special groups of people (no wonder African Americans notice that immigrants are getting more stuff than they are).
Here is the news about the Raleigh Immigrant Community (LOL! timing of grant announcement is amusing!) from the Daily Tarheel:
The Raleigh Immigrant Community (RIC) started a program to help immigrants in the Triangle area after receiving a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The RIC began as a community adjustment support group for refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congothat met through the UNC Refugee Mental Health and Wellness Initiative. They started meeting in January 2015 and became an official nonprofit in April 2016.
The RIC received the ethnic community self-help grant from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. The grant will give them half a million dollars over three years. [get that federal money out now before a possible Trump Admin comes in!—ed]
For more go to our category ‘Ethnic Community Based Organizations.’ They were previously called ECBOs. I haven’t written much about them in recent years, but when you hear about the over a billion in tax dollars that ORR wants to run their programs, know that grants like this (for special people) are why it is so costly.
This is the same hearingthat the Dept. of State said they couldn’t attend last week because they were too busy hobnobbing at the United Nations. One of those scheduled to testify is Bob Carey the Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHS). Carey came to his government job from a major refugee contracting job at the International Rescue Committee. He had previously served as chair of the Refugee Council USA, the lobbying arm for the refugee industry. (Revolving door!) http://www.acf.hhs.gov/about/leadership/bob-carey
The hearing in Sessions’ subcommittee ‘Immigration and the National Interest’ will be this coming Wednesday, the 28th.
Go herefor details. I’m thinking that maybe you should tell your US Senators on Monday and Tuesday to take the time this week to attend Sessions’ hearing so they won’t be so ignorant about this program that is changing (and endangering!) America. It is a good excuse to call them.
Heck, you could even tell your House Members to walk across the Hill and stop in since the House Judiciary Committee (Rep. Trey Gowdy is Sessions’ counterpart in the House) isn’t doing anything.
Again, check out the Senate Subcommittee website here. I expect they will be live-streaming the event.
For a reminder of what happened at this same hearing last year, go here.
And, by the way, until Sessions’ hearing last year, Congress had not been doing its legally required hearing on the Presidential Determination. I believe that hearing was the first since 9/11. Here is what I saidlast year about the law! LOL! I wonder if there is anyway to sue the House Judiciary Committee for breaking the law?
Two stories I want to bring to your attention were posted over the last couple of days that call in to question whether the resettlement industry (both the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and its NGO contractors) is even taking proper care of the migrants they are responsible for.
So the next time you hear the pleas of government-funded bleeding heart humanitarians saying that we need to bring more poor souls to America, remember these reports and know that some refugees are very sorry they came!
[Congress could tweek the Refugee Admissions Program if it had the will! see below!]
The first story is at World Net Dailyabout how the federal Office of Refugee Resettlementhas LOST some of the so-called unaccompanied alien children they claim are refugees—one little boy in particular—but reportedly thousands.
After telling the story of ‘Missing child W,’ reporter Leo Hohmann reports on comments from Jessica Vaughan, an immigration expert at the Center for Immigration Studies:
Sadly, the case of missing child “W” is not unique, says an expert in federal immigration policy.
10-year old Walter was supposedly placed in this South Carolina home, but no one there knows anything about him.
‘Asking as few questions as possible’
The problem has become endemic under the Obama administration’s slack procedures for dealing with unaccompanied minors from Central America, said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. And local communities often end up getting stuck with the problem – and the cost.
“From the beginning, instead of putting the welfare of the kids first, the priority of the Obama administration has been to turn over the kids to anyone who would claim them, asking as few questions as possible, and deliberately oblivious as to whether the child was being placed in a safe environment,” Vaughan told WND.
For the sake of political expediency, she said the government wants a rapid turnover, and is willing to sacrifice all checks and safeguards to ensure the safety of the kids.
“The contractors [this includes the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service—both receive millions of tax dollars to care for the children.—ed] who were awarded public funds to handle the kids admit that they have lost track of most of them, and a U.S. Senate investigation has found that some were turned straight over to indentured labor camps or to abusive adults,” said Vaughan, who in February testified before a House subcommittee on the problem of child migrants being swept up into human trafficking networks.
“The Obama administration wants the public to believe that we are saving these kids, but in reality their policies are enriching human smugglers and traffickers and resettlement contractors, while putting too many of the kids in more danger,” she said.
Continue reading here.
Then there is this story by Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart which chronicles some of the horror stories from refugees placed in the care of nine major federal resettlement contractors—stories, some of which, we have reported on these pages over the years.
Leahy begins:
When Eritrean refugee Mulugeta Zemu Mana was recently arraigned in a courtroom in Twin Falls, Idaho, on charges of aggravated battery, he told the presiding judge, “The only guilt I have is the day I decided to come to this country.”
Refugee Mulugeta Zemu Mana wishes he never came to America!
Mana’s lack of gratitude and anti-Americanism is a painful revelation of the social turmoil and economic pain among the 70,000 refugees, half of whom are Muslim, who arrive in the U.S. every year.
But it is also the predictable outcome of the lucrative, federal taxpayer financed refugee resettlement industry which is now headed by former Clinton and Obama administration appointees. The industry rejects America’s traditional policy of assimilating refugees into the country, and instead treats refugees more as revenue-generating opportunities that boost their income and political power.
One fix that Congress could quickly make is to set up a repatriation fund so that unhappy ‘refugees’ (and other immigrants too) could tap into it for a plane ticket home.
And, I don’t want to hear any squawking about the cost—it would be much cheaper than incarcerating them or keeping them on welfare!
The true humanitarian do-gooders should have no objections! Right?
LOL! There is one other side benefit: such a plan would help sort out the resettlement contractors by helping to identify which are doing the best job of taking care of the refugees they have acquired in their federal contracts.
