Office of Refugee Resettlement finally gets around to releasing 2014 report to Congress

03/23/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Back to our daily grind (after yesterday’s record-breaking day)—working to educate you about the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program….

The law says that the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement must get their Annual Report to Congress out by January 31st of the year following the close of the fiscal year. The fiscal year closes on September 31st, so the Annual Report for 2104 was over a year overdue when it was released a few days ago.
Their flagrant lawbreaking is nothing new and at one point a few years ago they were THREE years behind. Until recently no one in Congress said boo!
Senator Jeff Sessions and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (and others) here in December 2015 did write to the Secretary of the Dept. of Health and Human Services demanding the 2014 report. But, you should know that ORR is now behind (as of January 31, 2016) in producing 2015!
There are only a couple of reasons for the lawbreaking—incompetence, or they are hiding information until it is out of date.
Go here to read about the 2014 Report and follow links to the entire report. (Hat tip: Joanne) If you take the time to review it, you will see it is a treasure-trove of information for anyone wishing to learn more about how the refugee program effects you and your city (and the nation!).

That is the Director of ORR Bob Carey (on right and responsible for the report) campaigning on the prevention of refugee suicides. He came over to ORR from a lucrative job as a federal resettlement contractor. Photo: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/orr/resource/national-suicide-prevention-month-social-media-campaign

I haven’t had time to open it, but the best sections are the statistics on refugee welfare use etc. (always shocking!).
Go here to see the list of annual reports going back decades.
For energetic researchers: Do you know how the interactive data base, here, only goes back to 2002? Well, using these reports you can go all the way back to the first one for 1980 and get statistics on who came to your state, etc. I wrote this 2008 post on how many Somalis the US admitted every year by going back through those annual reports.

Are you a new reader?

For all of the new readers who arrived here this week, we have a category entitled ‘where to find information’ with hundreds of posts where we cataloged reports and documents and so forth. I also recommend our fact sheet (a little out of date) and our Frequently Asked Questions both of which are linked in our header.
About the photo: Why are refugees committing suicides? They have found out that America’s streets are not paved with gold. Some have a very tough time transitioning to American life and they miss their culture, their homes. I wonder if the do-gooders ever consider that they may not being doing the humanitarian thing by ripping people from their cultures so they can become the cheap labor force, for example, BIG MEAT.

Office of Refugee Resettlement budget in the billions for FY2016

03/09/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A reader sent us this very nice summary of the cost of the refugee program and how it is structured. I urge you to read it yourself at Politically Short.
(As of this writing, I see writer Nick Short left out World Relief (Evangelicals) in his list of Volags, but otherwise this is excellent!)
Mr. Short also directs readers to this map of the resettlement placement cities for Fiscal Year 2016. Sorry I couldn’t reproduce it more clearly, go here for the original. Note the color coding in each city for which of the nine major resettlement contractors are working there. Amazing isn’t it that there are some cities with 4,5,6 or more contractors working the same territory!
I’ve updated our Frequently Asked Questions with this newest map.

Office of Refugee Resettlement not taking care of the alien "children"

01/31/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last week a Senate committee held a hearing that raked the Dept. of Health and Human Services over the coals because they did not make sure ‘unaccompanied alien children’ were not placed with human traffickers in the wake of the border invasion of 2014.
Although an assistant secretary at HHS was grilled by the committee, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) should really be the target of the questioning.

Senator Rob Portman should be encouraged to take his investigation deeper and look into the grants and contracts awarded by the ORR for care of the “children.”

For new readers we have an extensive archive filed under the key words ‘unaccompanied minors’ (which several years ago was the term being used to describe the “children” entering the country without parents, or where parents abandoned them upon arrival).
Two refugee resettlement contractors have been getting grants for years to take care of the children—US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
I have often speculated that the Bishops had something to do with lighting the fuse for the invasion as a delegation of Bishops led by their lobbyist, Kevin Appleby, traveled to Central America in mid 2013 and returned to “predict” the coming border rush of the summer of 2014. (A story for another day!)

What is going on here?

Not ever properly explained was the abrupt resignation of the Director of ORR, Eskinder Negash, in December of 2014. Rumors are that it had a lot to do with something going wrong at ORR with the mostly teenage ‘children.’ Be sure to see this post about the squabbling among contractors getting grants for the children.
US News:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Migrant children in the government’s care fell prey to human trafficking after the Health and Human Services Department failed to protect them, according to a bipartisan congressional investigation released Thursday.

[Remember the Obama Administration’s decision to quickly (and secretively) distribute the children around the country to hundreds of communities, a decision which probably led to the sloppy handling of the cases.—ed]

The six-month inquiry found that the government, overwhelmed by the influx of tens of thousands of children crossing the border to flee violence in Central America, failed to conduct the most basic checks on the adults entrusted with caring for the children.

Many adult sponsors didn’t undergo thorough background checks. Government officials didn’t visit homes and in some cases, had no idea that adult sponsors had several unrelated children, a possible sign of human trafficking.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, chairman of the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee, said the HHS placement program for migrant children suffers from “serious, systemic defects.” The report echoed the findings of an Associated Press investigation.

At a hearing reviewing the program, officials from the department angered Democratic and Republican senators, who dismissed their answers as incomplete or complained that they failed to take full responsibility for the children who were abused or exploited.

There is more here.

Meanwhile in Sweden…..

Europe also got its share of ‘unaccompanied alien children’ (surely the invasion here and there was orchestrated by the hard Left Open Borders gang) and now they have big problems. In this report from the Daily Mail we learn that many of the teenage ‘children’ from Africa have escaped their asylum homes and are loose and forming gangs in Stockholm.

Florida: Refugee contractors squabble over government boodle

01/22/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I have to admit this is some great reporting at the Huffington Post.
It adds considerable detail to a dispute we knew a little about, but more importantly it is a window into the ‘souls’ of the ‘humanitarian’ refugee contractors. We have been telling readers for years that resettling refugees, and in this case taking care of the so-called Unaccompanied Alien Children, is all about MONEY. It is about competition between contractors and it is about the revolving door as contractors become political appointees then return to their former boss (the contractor) as recipients of lucrative government contracts.
This is a complicated story and I’m going to urge you to read it all, but here is what you need to know about a couple of the key players in this drama.

And, let me ask at the outset! Where is Congress?

Lavinia and Negash — Eskinder Negash (left) and Lavinia Limon (second from right).

Some of the players (we have many posts here at RRW on these characters, search their names):
Lavinia Limon was Bill Clinton’s head of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and now heads the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI).
Eskinder Negash was a Vice President at USCRI before he was chosen to head the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Obama Administration. Negash resigned suddenly in December of 2014. No one ever publicly explained his sudden departure. And, then eventually he returned to USCRI.
Bob Carey is now the head of ORR (replacing Negash) and he comes to the government job from yet another contractor, the International Rescue Committee. And, although not mentioned here, the person in charge of refugees at the US State Department, Anne Richard, came to her perch there from, you guessed it, the International Rescue Committee.
So, the IRC has two former employees heading the two major agencies involved with resettling refugees. But, that is a story for another day!
The arrival of tens of thousands of Unaccompanied Alien Children in the summer of 2014, and many thousands before and since, unleashed gobs of government grant and contract money to the same agencies (the nine big refugee contractors and two other newer contractors) not only for the care of the ‘children’ which they are pretending are legitimate refugees/asylum seekers, but also for their legal fees in their attempts to keep them here in America by transforming them into legal immigrants.

train children — The ‘children’ represent cold hard cash for non-government refugee contractors.

Which brings us to this incredible piece of reporting!
Of course, the spin here is that the children are suffering (and the legal system will be bogged down), but readers take note: this report raises questions about alleged corruption in the entire grants and contracts system run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Dept. of Health and Human Services.

The tip-off that there is a problem comes when the Catholic Bishops get mad that USCRI is getting some boodle unfairly when they want the boodle!

Bizarre Contract Dispute Putting Thousands Of Migrant Children At Risk, by Ryan Grim, begins:

WASHINGTON — Thousands of unaccompanied minors who came across the U.S. border as part of the migrant crisis are at risk of being deported without due process, the archbishop of Miami has warned the Obama administration.

Although the law dictates that these children must be given legal services, recent moves by the Office of Refugee Resettlement have thrown that into doubt. ORR, which is an agency under the umbrella of Health and Human Services, awarded the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants a contract to represent the children. USCRI in turn planned to subcontract with a social services firm that employed zero attorneys at the time.

I want you to read it all. It is complicated, but oh so juicy!
Did USCRI get the contract because Negash was the head of ORR? Is this why Negash resigned so suddenly back in December of 2014? Shouldn’t there be a law that contractors cannot move in and out of government positions where they are in a position to award grants and contracts to their former bosses?
Where is Trey Gowdy (chairman of the committee responsible for refugees in the House of Representatives)? Does he know about this? Is his committee investigating?
If you are as outraged as I am by the allegations raised in the Huffington Post story, please send the article to your member of Congress and US Senators and demand they get to the bottom of this because after all it is YOUR money!

Myth: Refugees get free cars explained; not free, but taxpayer subsidized

11/04/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update November 5: A reader tells us there is a way for refugees to get cars free (besides the IDA method below). If others of you have more information on how these ‘deals’ work, please let us know:

The most common route to a “free car” is through the Match Grant program – and yes this does provide a free used car to the refugee and cash to the contractor. The way it works is john Q public (or a dealer) donates his car to the Match Grant program. The contractor (Volag) gives the car to the refugee and, at the same time, presents a bill to the ORR Match Grant program . ORR Match Grant pays cash to the contractor (Volag) for 90% of the claimed value of the donated car. I am not exactly sure of the 90% – it is always changing and always getting better and better for the contractor (Volag).By now it could 100% of the claimed value. At any rate, the U.S. treasury takes 2 hits: one for the guy who writes off the donation on this tax returns and one for the pay out to the contractor (Volag).

One more mention of North Dakota and then I have to do a whole bunch of other things (I expect posting may be sporadic in the coming days).

Close up shot of Uncle Sam holding pink piggy bank — Yes, the federal government runs a piggy bank for refugees and cars are one of the permitted goals for the special savings account. The resettlement contractors manage the money.

When we told you about the myth-buster meeting in Fargo earlier this morning, here, one line in the news account jumped out at me (one of several), but I want to tell you a bit about this one:

She added that refugees are not given free cars. “They get, at most, a four-month bus pass,” she said.

For years I’ve been seeing the “free cars” line. There really is an explanation to it, but because whoever asked about it at the meeting probably didn’t ask the right question that allowed Ms. Thomasson to dismiss it as she did.

In fact, the Office of Refugee Resettlement has a special grant program called ‘Individual Development Accounts (IDAs).

We told you about it here recently (sorry for daily readers that we have to go over these things, but on some days we have a couple thousand new readers who have never been here before, so we have to repeat information).
For every dollar the refugee saves for one of 4 possible savings goals, you, the federal taxpayer match them a dollar. This whole program is managed through resettlement contractors like Lutheran Social Services.
Here is the gist of the program:

Individual Development Accounts (IDA) are matched savings accounts designed to help refugees save for a specific purchase. Under the IDA program, the matching funds, together with the refugee’s own savings from their employment, are available for purchasing one (or more) of four savings goals:

Home purchase
Small business development
Post secondary education or training
Automobile (for employment purposes)
Public or private non-profit organizations administer IDA programming.

[….]

IDA grantees provide matched savings accounts to refugees whose annual income is less than 200 percent of the poverty level and whose assets, exclusive of a personal residence and one vehicle, are less than $10,000. Grantees provide matches of up to $1 for every $1 deposited by a refugee in a savings account. The total match amount provided may not exceed $2,000 for individuals or $4,000 for households. Upon enrolling in an IDA program, a refugee signs a savings plan agreement which specifies the savings goal, the match rate, and the amount the refugee will save each month.

I must mention that there was a time when Catholic Charities was taking donations of used cars and there were some stories about cars going to refugees that way, but I haven’t heard of it in recent years.
I am guessing that the “free cars” claim is based on the IDAs.
If the question had been asked in this way: “Do refugees get car purchases subsidized through federal grants?” I would hope Ms. Thomasson would explain the program.
Incidentally, you can imagine that when word gets out in communities that refugees are getting ‘goodies’ like this and the average low-income American isn’t getting these special deals, some tension likely builds in the community.