Tag: ORR

ORR: two federal grants available to benefit refugees and their resettlement contractors

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This post falls in my ‘Special deals for special (non-citizen) people’ archive!

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Where is Congress?

I see that although Congress is debating the budget for the remainder of the year, there are still millions of taxpayer funds sloshing around HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement and those have been offered up for grabs starting this week.
We’ve been reporting on the fact that the nine federal refugee contractors,*** which monopolize all resettlement in the US, are paid by the head to place refugees in your towns and that they are hurting financially as the Trump Administration slows the flow of new paying clients.

However, know that those per head payments are not the only federal funding available to them. The Office of Refugee Resettlement has myriad other grants, like these two announced a few days ago.

The first is one of the most outrageous ones we have ever discussed.  It is the ‘Refugee Individual Development Accounts (IDA) Program.’
In a nutshell, to be eligible, refugees must save some money toward a house, a car, a business or education and their savings are MATCHED by you up to a limited amount.  For example, if a family saves $4,000, you, dear taxpayer, will match them another $4,000.
The match-money is managed (and doled out) by middlemen NGOs awarded the grant—the contractors or their subcontractors usually.  Don’t believe me, see here.
Incidentally, one of the side benefits of the Leftwing government contractors/community organizers as middlemen is that it endears the refugees to that local non-profit. I’m sure the refugees think the non-profit group is giving them money!

The Trump Administration is not starving the beast!

This is the grant availability for the coming year for refugee savings accounts….
 
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And, here I went back to look at previous grants for the IDA and it sure looks like Idaho’s Mountain States/Janus Inc. (they are one and the same) have figured out the racket as the organization got a couple of big dips into the federal trough.
 
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Feds help refugees set up licensed childcare facilities for their kids!

The second grant announcement from ORR is the ‘Refugee Family Child Care Microenterprise Development Program.’  See here.
Besides the fact that here we have the middlemen contractors and subcontractors getting paid to help refugees set up businesses that of course will compete with American businesses where the American citizen worked hard to establish her daycare service, we reported here in 2013 that the ORR program touted the fact that the children cared for by refugee day care workers would get “culturally appropriate” care.
So much for assimilating the kids!
And, this will surely steam you—-the money is only available to those not yet US citizens.
ORR, here.

All low income refugees who are not citizens are eligible for services under this program.

Here is the grant announcement:
 
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This post is filed in my ‘where to find information’ category.
***You can bet the nine contractors (below) and their subcontractors will be scrambling for these millions of dollars made available a few days ago.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees, line them up with jobs, and get them signed up for their services!  From most recent accounting, here.

Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement playing hardball with immigration lawyers it funds

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A little background first….
The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services somehow, awhile ago, was tasked with taking care of the Unaccompanied Alien Children entering the US illegally. In fact, their involvement created a huge new money stream to at least two refugee contractors—the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service—which received government grants and contracts to care for the ‘children.’

Scot Lloyd 3
Director of ORR Scot Lloyd had to face some really witchy Congresswomen over the issue of abortion for the illegal alien children. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/10/28/no-borders-left-aimed-at-destroying-orr-director-scott-lloyd/

But, in yet another demonstration of the expanding taxpayer funding to care for illegals, the ORR also has a grant program to provide the ‘children’ with legal services.
Keep in mind, however, that the ‘children’ (mostly teenage boys) are not refugees. Refugees must prove they will be persecuted if returned to their home country.  The Central American lawbreakers may be running from crime and poverty, but those are not criteria for receiving asylum (refugee status).
In recent months a controversy has exploded for ORR because some of the illegal alien ‘children’ claim they have a constitutional right to an abortion and ORR is saying, NO! They do not.

You fund the Open Borders industry!

ORR is warning a large legal aid contractor that they could be removed from the federal dole if they instruct the ‘children’ about abortion rights.

Who knew ORR would have such gumption!
The Leftwing WaPo clearly is disconcerted by this move….

A major legal services group for immigrant children told its lawyers nationwide not to discuss abortion access, even if minors in custody ask for help understanding their legal rights, for fear it would jeopardize a multimillion-dollar contract with the Department of Health and Human Services.

The constraints on what government-funded lawyers can say to young detainees was contained in an email from the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice, which said it acted after a phone call with an HHS employee. Vera’s instruction to lawyers comes as the Trump administration has tried in court to block access to abortion procedures for undocumented teens in federal custody.

“We know for a fact that there is a very real risk to the entire legal services program for children in [Office of Refugee Resettlement] custody if issues other than immigration are addressed in consultations or representation, the abortion issue in particular,” a Vera official cautioned in a Feb. 2 email obtained by The Washington Post.

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In an internal e-mail someone forwarded to the WaPo, Mulcahy says that VERA does not want to risk losing the millions of dollars taxpayers give them to represent the Unaccompanied Alien Children.

The government pays $57 million a year under a five-year contract to Vera, which works with 38 organizations in six regions to provide legal help to minors who have crossed the border illegally and without their parents.

In the email, Vera official Anne Marie Mulcahy said she was sending it after a conversation with the government analyst who manages the program within the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at HHS.

During the call, the employee “directed us to ensure that Vera’s legal services providers are not talking to children in HHS custody about abortion,” wrote Mulcahy, who is the director of Vera’s unaccompanied minors program.

Mulcahy instructed lawyers to immediately strip references to abortion from “Know Your Rights” legal pamphlets and said lawyers could refer children with abortion-related questions to other attorneys.

[….]

The office is responsible for the care of approximately 7,700 minors in custody, nearly 70 percent of whom are boys, according to HHS. The minors are facing possible deportation to countries such as El Salvador and Honduras…..

There is much more here at the WaPo.
Below is a screenshot page of a recent Form 990 for VERA, note that the vast majority of their income comes from you—US taxpayers.  In order to view the 990, go to ProPublica here and follow links. If you visit their Form 990, don’t miss the salaries page!

vera form 990
You paid VERA lawyers $41.5 million in 2014 to represent the illegal alien children. Obviously VERA could not exist without federal funding!

 

Immigration is big business in America, not just for the global corporations greedy for cheap labor, but for the extensive industry the federal government runs through its grants and contracts like those to VERA—Institute of Justice.

Go for it! ORR should cut off their taxpayer-funded money stream.

University of Utah researchers: there is no US data system to estimate financial and social impact of refugee resettlement on states/communities

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, I think the refugee industry wants to keep it that way! (Think about the enormous stonewalling going on in St. Cloud for instance!).

How many times over the years have I struggled to try to answer your questions about how much all of this is costing state and federal taxpayers? Now, I have a better understanding of why the facts are so elusive thanks to some researchers who sound like they do want to resettle refugees, but want answers too!

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Frost and her fellow researchers are clearly not right-wingers. They are on to something, but will Trump’s ORR listen?

Before you read know that “service providers” is the polite word for resettlement “contractors.”

Opinion from The Salt Lake Tribune:

Resettling refugees has become harder to justify, but not for the reasons you may expect. Lost in the passionate rhetoric of lobbyists, politicians and humanitarian agencies are statistics and evidence.

Appeals to forestall resettlement efforts speak to fears of terrorists infiltrating refugee flows, notwithstanding evidence that suggests otherwise. Advocates of resettlement reference duty, morality and hospitality, but don’t provide compelling evidence to justify the financial and social strains resettlement places on host communities.

Proponents on both sides struggle to support their reasoning with evidence, and this is the real issue. The absence of consistent data collection and measurement by service providers and government agencies has impaired policy makers’ ability to craft effective policy. Furthermore, resettlement data is full of holes and redundancies because service delivery agencies do not coordinate their data collection efforts. Additionally, service providers are unable to answer basic questions about the effectiveness of their programs and current resettlement trends because their data are not structured in an analyzable format.

Standardizing refugee resettlement data collection could revolutionize the resettlement process. It would facilitate analysis, enabling service providers and those interested in refugee statistics to more easily understand what is happening in real time. This information would also enable service providers to better serve refugee communities and educate policymakers on current trends, potential issues and policy gaps.

[….]

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Without meaningful data standards, agencies and organizations may struggle to evaluate their work and share information. Because funding is typically tied to defined performance or outcome measures, evaluation is a crucial element of program design. The absence of data standards makes evaluation problematic and makes comparisons across programs nearly impossible. The University of Utah’s Center for Research on Migration and Refugee Integration’s recently attempted to evaluate Catholic Community Services’ refugee case management program but was stymied before it even began because the case data were not collected in an analysis-friendly format; moreover, it is impossible to track refugee outcomes as individuals pass from one agency’s stewardship to another’s. Service providers and policymakers across the country face similar challenges.

[…..]

Data standardization can only happen if the United States’ Office of Refugee Resettlement takes the lead on this issue. Access to federal funding is already conditional on reporting to the office. The simple solution is this: tie federal funds to data standardization and formatting.

So why isn’t it being done?—surely reform doesn’t require the lazy lunks in Congress. ORR can require this before it throws more of your money at the US Refugee contractors. So why aren’t they doing it? I think I have a guess!

NO Borders Left aimed at destroying ORR Director Scott Lloyd

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is over the issue of abortions for illegal alien teens in the care of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement that Lloyd oversees.   Apparently Lloyd is not approving those abortions and the leftwingers want the young girls to have a Constitutional right to kill their babies here in America (they could go back to where they came from and kill their babies at home!).

Scott Lloyd at hearing
Deer in the headlights! ORR Director Lloyd at the House hearing. He should have been ready for the harangue from three Democrat women. 

I don’t know enough about Lloyd to get into this fight***, but I just want you to know what is going on.

Frankly, I don’t know how it came to be that the Office of Refugee Resettlement got so deeply involved with the care of tens of thousands of so-called ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ in the first place.  They are NOT refugees! They are here illegally!

It might be because at least two ‘religious’ refugee contractors working for ORR get paid to take care of some of the ‘children’ —-US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Note the big jump in the latter’s federal funding—was it more contracts for the kids?

You can see what I said about Lloyd trying to defend himself here at the House hearing that was supposed to be on the refugee program, but turned into an attack on Lloyd (then they didn’t have to talk about the malfunctioning US Refugee Program!).

Here is Slate in a story entitled:

Scott Lloyd Must Be Stopped

You can read it yourself. Lloyd will have to be one tough hombre to take what the Left has aimed at him.

I’m guessing when it comes to anchor babies (as these teens’ children would be) versus abortion rights, the Left comes down on the side of the “right” to  kill the babies (with your money!).

***As Director of ORR, Lloyd would normally have the refugee contractors backing him, including the Catholic ones, but on this I don’t see where even the Bishops are going to help him. I could be wrong, but they will be more worried about angering their groupies on the Left and possibly jeopardizing their federal payola.  We will see.

And, if Trump wants to succeed, he needs to be putting some mean (and loyal to him) SOBs in these top jobs.  Nice guys finish last as the saying goes….

“Ethnic self-help” groups still getting boodle from Trump ORR

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t mentioned the taxpayer-funded subsidiary industry beyond the resettlement contractors much lately, but a story from Rochester, NY reminds me to tell you about it again.

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Ethnic self-help groups that you fund are just little ACORNs!

I call these ‘ethnic self-help organizations’ little ACORNS. 

Do you remember the community organizers of ACORN where they ostensibly helped the poor get their services (aka welfare), but also made sure they were properly indoctrinated, registered to vote and were voting for the Dems.

If a problem cropped up, they were also the advocacy media arm for THEIR people!

Well, these ethnic non-profit groups, just for refugees (funded by you), are doing the same. The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement shells out about four million of your bucks every year for this.

I contend that this activity of the ORR actually fosters division, setting certain groups of people up as somehow special and separate. Why should any class of immigrant be given special attention and federal grants?

Notice for all the yakking about Trump switching out the word ‘integration’ and replacing it with ‘assimilation,’ the ORR hasn’t gotten the message.

From the Office of Refugee Resettlement website:

(Emphasis below is mine)

The Ethnic Community Self-Help program supports ethnic community-based organizations in providing refugee populations with critical services to assist them in becoming integrated members of American society.

General Background

Throughout the history of the United States, the involvement of refugees and their community-based organizations in resettlement has been critical to integration. Today, these organizations continue to enhance the provision and effectiveness of refugee services. For refugees, their active participation in resettlement is empowering and plays an important role in the integration of the entire refugee community.

Program Description

The Ethnic Community Self-Help program provides assistance to refugee community-based organizations and other groups that:

[Check out this list! They are so good at making it all look and sound so benign!—-ed]

Address community building
Facilitate cultural adjustment and integration
Deliver mutually supportive functions
Information exchange
Civic participation
Resource enhancement
Orientation and support to new and established refugees
Public education to the larger community

Ethnic Community Self-Help programs connect newly arrived refugees to community resources. Ethnic Community Self-Help programs target all ORR populations, and all U.S.-based governmental and certified non-profit organizations are eligible to apply. [Community resources is code for welfare, but isn’t that the job of the contractors we pay millions to each year, for that very same work!—ed]

There is a list of grantees at the ORR website, but it is old. It is not the new list that includes the payola to a Rochester, NY ethnic community group. Why can’t these federal agencies keep websites up to date?

Rochester ETHNIC self-help group gets $200,000 crows Congresswoman! (Take that Donald!)

Here is the news from Rochester, NY where a former Somali group, now supposedly open to all refugees, has been awarded a $200,000 renewable grant to put former volunteers on a taxpayer funded salary!

House Cmte Meets On Formulating Rules For The Repeal of Obamacare Act
Sticking it to ‘the man.’ I guess (nearly 90-year-old) Rep. Louise Slaughter’s message to Trump is that she and her fellow Dems can still get money out of taxpayers’ pockets to fund community organizing activities for refugees to be sure they become good voting Democrats.

From the Democrat & Chronicle:

The Rochester nonprofit agency Refugees Helping Refugees has received a $200,000 federal grant to support the various services it provides for newly arriving refugees, Rep. Louise Slaughter announced Monday.

The grant comes from the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Refugees Helping Refugees was founded in 2002 as the Somali Community of Western New York, but since has expanded its reach to help all refugees, not just Somalis.

[Many of the specifically Somali ‘ethnic’ groups (and there are boatloads of them) have had to expand their base because it was becoming unseemly that taxpayer dollars were being directed at one very special group of refugees.—ed]

It offers English classes, job training, benefits assistance and activities for senior citizens, among other things.

The grant will allow the organization to pay salaries for several positions that, until now, had been handled on a volunteer basis, including a case manager and coordinators for its various programs, director Meredith Keller said.

The $200,000 grant is renewable for three years, meaning it could total $600,000. Until now, the agency’s annual budget has been about $150,000, Keller said.

[….]

In a statement, Slaughter, D-Fairport, used the funding announcement to get in a dig at President Donald Trump, who has pushed for policies to trim refugee arrivals and services.

“This federal award for Refugees Helping Refugees is a testament to the inclusive, important work happening right here in our community,” Slaughter said in the statement. “This funding will help further that critical mission at a time when the Trump administration continues to use travel bans and shortsighted policies to prevent refugees from finding safety in our country.”

More here.

I have a category, not used lately, called ‘Ethnic Community Based Organizations.’ That was the official name for them at the Office of Refugee Resettlement when I first started writing about them, but now they call them Ethnic Community self-help groups.  This post is filed here.

You should look around where you live and see if you have a community organizing group where you live specifically for refugees.