Your tax dollars!

All of last week, we heard the dire warnings from Washington about sequestration.  If we cut a few billion from our trillions of dollars of government funded programs and projects, the planes won’t fly, children will starve and trashcans will overflow in our National Parks.  Yet here is an example of what we are spending our money on—-teaching refugees to have healthy marriages!

I could see some rationale for giving federal dollars to city or county mental health departments overloaded with refugees and asylees to deal with these issues where there might be some taxpayer oversight and review of how the grant money was used, but to give millions to non-profits for this purpose is sheer madness!

This is from that goldmine of information, the 2009 ORR Annual Report to Congress (p. 50).  Granted it reports on 2009 and earlier years, but it’s really all we have since the ORR is breaking the law by not having already completed reports for years 2010, 2011, and 2012.   No one in Congress seems to care that they are flouting the law.

Who knew all those Laotians, Vietnamese and Cambodians had such rotten marriages!

From the annual report:

Refugee Healthy Marriage Program

In FY 2009, ORR continued its commitment to promoting policies and programs that help strengthen the strong, positive family relationships that refugees have brought with them to the United States. The Refugee Healthy Marriage Program (RHMP) helps provide opportunities for refugees to strengthen their marriages by providing marriage education.

It is believed that refugee couples face unique difficulties because of their flight from persecution and long periods of insecurity. ORR funds marriage education in order to help refugees cope with these difficulties. This group of grantees provides marriage education workshops to refugee couples in order to enhance and promote healthy relationships by providing the skills, tools, knowledge and support necessary to create and sustain healthy marriages. Since the inception ofthe program in FY 2006, 44,476 refugees have attended family courses or workshops.

In FY 2009, ORR funded the following grants:

~Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Inc., $830,000, NY

~Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Inc., $400,000, NY

~United States Committee for Refugees & Immigrants, $780,000, VA

~Jewish Family & Career Services, $309,930, GA

~Lao Family Community Development,$250,000, CA

~Boat People SOS, $250,000, VA

~The Cambodian Family, $250,000, CA

~Alliance for Multicultural Community Services, $250,000, TX

~Jewish Child & Family Services, $247,785, IL

~Catholic Charities of Hartford, $250,000, CT

Obviously the big kahuna in the marriage-fixing business is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (one of the top nine federal refugee contractors).  They get paid by you to bring in refugees, then paid to fix their marriages!

Here are the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society’s affiliates teaching “healthy marriage” courses.    I had to laugh when I saw that Mohamud Mohamed of JFS (Jewish Family Services) of Western MA is teaching healthy marriages.  I sure hope he has a lesson or two on polygamy in refugee communities, that we don’t beat wives in America, and that honor killing one’s daughters will get you prison time.

Hopefully, this will be first in a series of suggested federal budget cuts from RRW!

Reminder!  Find me on twitter (I just started) @RefugeeWatcher!