Tag: Sequestration

ORR kills national consultation due to budget cuts

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Eskinder Negash (Director of ORR): We can’t afford the DC party this year.

Your tax dollars!

This is no great loss to any of you who have concerns about refugee resettlement and the ability of your city or state to afford more refugees on public assistance, because you don’t get invited to the big annual party anyway.  You are NOT a stakeholder!

Eskinder Negash, formerly a Vice President of federal contractor US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, now head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (which hands out grants), has sent a letter to “stakeholders” (stakeholders do not include you!) telling them that (boo-hoo) no “consultation” this year.

Here is Negash yesterday:

To all ORR Stakeholders:

One of the key priorities of the Office of Refugee Resettlement has been to increase ORR’s communications and outreach to refugees, service providers, partners and other stakeholders.  Only by creating a platform for refugee voices to be heard can we ensure that we support refugees’ best interests, and meet the needs of those we welcome to the United States under this exemplary humanitarian program.

The ORR National Consultation is one way in which this office has traditionally sponsored such discussions [Read:  US taxpayers sponsored the feel-good event–ed].  This annual event, however, does not come without cost; therefore, given the current challenges we are facing with regard to budget, coupled with our commitment to maintaining current programs as a top priority, we have made the decision not to hold a National Consultation this year.

Read it all here, if you feel like it.

Waste of money anyway!

Christopher Coen writing at Friends of Refugees, here, in 2010 tells us that the annual event is nothing more than a huge lobbying project where contractors bring in their best examples of successful happy refugees (you pay their travel expenses!) and parade them around the Hill to ask Congress for more ‘moolah’ for the contractors.   Refugees critical of the contractors’ care of refugees are persona non grata!

Here is Coen in 2010:

Is this the type of conference marking the 30th anniversary of the refugee resettlement program that will really benefit the refugees, the average citizen, and the nation? Or is this whole thing a set up to help the refugee resettlement contractors and their revolving door friends in government?

For new readers:  See my Sequestration savings suggestions for ORR, here.

Another suggestion for the sequestration budget cutting ax: IDAs

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars!

IDAs—Individual Development Accounts!

What is that?  It’s a fancy name for your tax dollars matching a refugee’s savings.  For every dollar a refugee saves in this program (administered not by a government agency, but laundered through a non-profit), he or she is matched a dollar from the federal treasury.  I am not kidding!

How many times over the years have I heard someone complain—how are these refugees getting cars and such—this is how.  The monies can be used toward purchasing a car, a house, a business or education.

Here is a profile of a refugee eligible for this special deal.  He/she is usually employed (and may earn up to $3000 a month!) and own a house, have one car, and no more than $10,000 in assets, and can sign up for the program.   Nothing like this is available to a low income American citizen that I know of!  Ever heard of it?

$4-5 million could be saved annually if we dumped this discriminatory program!

Like St. Patrick’s never-ending pot of gold, the federal treasury is available for certain special groups of people.

In 2009 (from that finally-released three years late 2009 Annual Report to Congress, p.38) we spent $4.6 million on the program, again by passing your money through an unaccountable non-profit agency.   If we insist on redistributing taxpayers money this way, couldn’t the program go through the state refugee agencies which are at least nominally open to public scrutiny?

By the way, ORR tells us that 8% of participants quit the program—I wonder do they give your money back?

Here then are the resettlement contractors and ethnic community group grants for 2009.  I bet they each get to keep a cut of the pie for their own “administration” of the program.

Continuation grants awarded in FY 2009 to the following programs with cycles that will end on September 29, 2010 are:
•
Lao Family Community Development, Inc., Oakland, CA, $200,000
•
World Relief DuPage, Wheaton, IL, $235,000
•
ISED Ventures, Des Moines, IA, $235,000
•
Jewish Family & Vocational Services, Inc., Louisville, KY, $230,000
•
International Institute of Metropolitan St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, $180,000
•
New York Association for New Americans, New York, NY, $300,000
•
Women’s Opportunities Resource Center, Philadelphia, PA, $235,000
•
Catholic Charities of Tennessee, Nashville, TN, $194,392.

Continuation grants awarded in FY 2009 to the following programs with cycles that will end on September 29, 2012 are:
•
Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County, San Jose, CA, $204,000
•
Western Kentucky Refugee Mutual Assistance Society, Inc., Bowling Green, KY, $150,000
•
Economic and Community Development Institute, Columbus, OH, $230,000
•
Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Augusta, ME, $207,901
•
Catholic Charities, Diocese of Camden, Inc., Camden, NJ, $225,000
•
Diocese of Olympia, Seattle, WA, $205,000
•
ECDC Enterprise Development Group, Arlington, VA, $280,000
•
Mountain States Group, Boise, ID, $201,018
•
United Way, Inc., Los Angeles, CA, $240,000
•
Neighborhood Assets, Spokane, WA, $50,000
•
International Rescue Committee Phoenix, New York, NY, $230,000
•
Alliance for Multicultural Community Service Inc., Houston, TX, $203,500
•
Catholic Charities, Diocese of St. Petersburg, Inc., St. Petersburg, FL, $200,000
•
Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association of Greater Lowell, Inc., Lowell, MA,$192,380

I wonder if the Health and Human Services Inspector General has ever looked into this program?  Does anyone audit these outfits?

Editors note:  This is the third in my series of suggested budget cuts.  Here I suggested we could cut the grants for refugee “healthy marriages,” and here for the little ACORN-like ethnic community based organizations.  Including the IDAs, I’ve now saved the US taxpayers over $13 million!  I wonder what the sequester is going to require ORR to cut overall?