We’ll have more on this tomorrow, but here is a press release from South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy about the plan by the UN/US State Department and contractor World Reliefto begin moving refugees into Spartanburg, a small city in Gowdy’s district. ***Update*** More here on June 4th.
For new readers, go here for our original post (almost three months ago) with updates on how the controversy has evolved. Gowdy wants a briefing from Julia Frifield, Asst. Secretary for Legislative Affairs at the US State Department. Check out her bio! She was previously Chief of Staff for US Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/218067.htm
Gowdy Invites State Department to Brief SC Delegation on Refugee Resettlement
Washington, DC -Congressman Trey Gowdy (R- SC) issued this statement regarding the State Department’s non-response to his follow-up questions on the Spartanburg refugee resettlement:
“The State Department’s response to our office’s 14 follow up questions was again sorely inadequate and failed to provide answers. Additionally, our office met with World Relief in April, contrary to State’s most recent letter. Because the State Department was wrong on this account, and because our office did not receive answers to our questions during that meeting with the resettlement agency, we are inviting State Department Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Julia Frifieldto provide a briefing to the South Carolina delegation on this issue.
“From the beginning, our interest in this issue has not been to advocate for an outcome, but to ensure transparency and get answers to constituent questions. We will continue to pursue those answers through a face-to-face briefing with the State Department.”
Click here to see the letter.
Again, for new readers, here is a post from a month ago where we reported on the first response Rep. Gowdy received from Sec. of State John Kerry’s office.
Asst. Sec. of State for PRM Anne Richard (left) and UNHCR Antonio Guterres want to send 11,000 Syrians to your towns and cities this year.
I am not surprised.
This is one of the hottest national security issues we have going right now—the question of whether we should be admitting the 11,000 Syrian refugees the UN has picked out for us without jeopardizing our safety!
A reader just sent us the postponement notice for a hearing we were anxious to see tomorrow. I’ve gotten pretty cynical, so wonder if someone got to the chairman?
If you were planning on contacting your member of Congress on this, please still do so!
Breaking news: Man arrested in Italy is believed to be responsible for the deadly Tunisian museum attack. He got into Europe pretending to be a REFUGEE. P.S. to the Michigan group I spoke with last night! I have not forgotten! I do plan to post the Michigan data, but have run out of time this morning!
We are the taxpayers. We are paying for all of this refugee resettlement. Other than perhaps the individual names of the refugees, why should any of the documents be “proprietary,” but that is what staff for Secretary of State John Kerry is telling Rep. Trey Gowdy, here.***
“Funding proposals to PRM [US State Dept. Population, Refugees and Migration] are proprietary documents.”
Responsible for the Refugee Admissions Program are Sec. of State John Kerry being whispered to by Asst. Sec. of State for Population Refugees and Migration, Anne C. Richard formerly a Vice President with one of the contractors. The revolving door between government agencies and contractors is alive and well!
A couple of weeks ago we reported, here, on the “Abstracts” each resettlement subcontractor must prepare each year in preparation for getting a new batch of refugees—it’s kind of a wish list for how many refugees they want to bring to your town, where they might come from, and what amenities your town has to offer the refugees (the “seedlings”—Obama Administration word). It also contains information on what it will cost and what the subcontractor will contribute. Their allotment of refugees and their funding will be based on these reports to Washington. Why would such documents be “proprietary?”
Editor’s note: I worry daily about how far readers want to get “into the weeds” on the inner workings of the Refugee Admissions Program, but will continue to post information like this for those of you who enjoy wandering in the weeds!
Here (below) is a page from an abstract we posted (this is from Memphis), and the bit of information I want to leave you with is this:
The Refugee Act of 1980 (Senators Kennedy, Biden and Pres. Jimmy Carter) envisioned a public-private partnership with these contractors. However, increasingly, over the years the contractors don’t have much in the way of cash to supply so they count up all the used furniture they get and the hours and miles their ‘volunteers’ accrue and count that as their contribution to the cost of the program.
So, this is also why it is so important for them to find “church” groups and other groups to volunteer because their “volunteer” man-hours represent cold hard cash—the contractors share of the public-private partnership (they really have a racket going!).
In this sample page from Memphis, TN for FY2010, Catholic Charities is projecting that they will contribute $50,000 in Volunteer hours/Miles, the same as the previous year, but I will bet these are only guesses at best!
Please go here and find a resettlement subcontractor close to you and ask them to send you their most recent “abstracts.” I suggest you ask for several years going back from FY2015 (they are working on 2016 now). Assuming the agency gives you what you are asking for, I think you will be surprised to learn what amenities your town has to offer the “new Americans!”
*** For readers arriving here for the first time today, see our initial post on Spartanburg, SC with updates on Rep. Trey Gowdy’s involvement, click here.
Since yesterday was the end of the month, I thought it was time to check out the government data basesto see how many Syrian refugees have been admitted to the US over the last few years (I went back to January 1, 2012). Remember that the UN has 11,000 Syrians picked out for us and that the FBI testified in Februarythat they cannot be screened because there are no records available on these people who fled Syria and are mostly living in UN camps.
Deciding the future for your towns and cities: Anne Richard, Asst. Sec. of State for PRM and Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. She is under pressure to keep Guterres happy!
The US State Department is on a push to get 2,000 to your towns by September 30th (the end of FY2015). That is not nearly what the UN wants, but is the result of the difficult security screening process that the FBI told Congress about.
This is what I learned:
Since 2012 we admitted 815 Syrian refugees through the Refugee Admissions Program. On April 4th, I reported 682.
They are on a roll now—133 admitted in the last few weeks.
The top five states receiving Syrians are:
California (103)
Texas (100)
Illinois (87)
Arizona (64)
Pennsylvania (51)
36 states received some Syrians.
Of the 815 Syrians, 749 are Muslims of some sort with the vast majority (701) being Sunni Muslims. That means 92% are Muslim.
If you are being told in your town that you are going to get mostly Christians, don’t believe it. Only 43 self-identified ‘Christians’ (that includes 1 Catholic) have been admitted. That is 5% of the total.
By the way, if you are saying to yourself that there are a lot more than 815 Syrians around, remember that there are other legal programs that have admitted, or allowed Syrians to stay in the US , and also some very likely illegal alien Syrians in the mix as well.
Editor: Every resettlement agency (contractor) must submit to its parent contractor (those top nine we harp about all the time) a plan for your town or city every year. “The plan” (sometimes called an “abstract”) includes the number of refugees the local agency thinks they can accommodate and lists the resources/amenities your town has to offer the refugees. These “plans” are never available for public review and comment, but are used by the US State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement to determine how much of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars are needed by the contractors.
A citizen activist in Tennessee has penned this important guest post so that you can learn how to obtain and research “the plan” for your community.
Last week we asked you to get your state plan, here. Now it is time to get your local one.
Here are the resettlement subcontractors working in over 190 cities across the country. Find one near you and ask for their “abstract” for FY2015. Unfortunately 2015 has already been approved, but it will give you an idea of what they are doing at this minute in your city.
As we approach FY2016, demand “the plan” before it goes to Washington. FY2016 begins on October 1, 2015, so they are working on these now, or will be shortly.
Get the Plan Before Federal Contractors Bring Refugees to Your Community
By Joanne Bregman
Federal refugee resettlement contractors should be required to openly disclose their proposed plan to the receiving host community before it is accepted and funded by the federal government. These plans contain no proprietary information and should not be awarded public money without first being vetted, commented upon and accepted by the proposed receiving community.
This is especially important in the states being run as Wilson-Fish programs, which means that a federal contractor is in charge and the state government has no voice in the running of the program. In states where the program is run by the state government, not only would this be appropriate but state dollars appropriated to the program should be discussed openly and the priority questioned by the state legislature prior to adopting their annual budget.
This GAO Report was critical of the process for resettling refugees into local communities, but it seems to have disappeared down a black hole. We see no reform, or more transparency coming from its release nearly three years ago. http://www.gao.gov/assets/600/592975.pdf
Refugee resettlement is a government procured set of services that federal contractors are paid to provide. In fact, the resettlement contractors are paid for each individual refugee they bring to a community and as the 2012 GAO report noted:
“…local affiliate funding is based on the number of refugees they serve, so affiliates have an incentive to maintain or increase the number of refugees they resettle each year rather than allowing the number to decrease.”
The nine national voluntary agencies (VOLAGs) have affiliate (local) offices spread throughout the country, except for Wyoming where there is no refugee resettlement program.
Sometime before the start of the federal fiscal year (October 1 of the previous year) when these businesses get to find out how much public money they will receive, the local affiliate offices submit a resettlement proposal, sometimes called a “resettlement abstract.”
They “bid for bodies” and write narratives explaining why their location is a good place to resettle refugees. These “bids” are sent to their national VOLAG, which works with the State Department and the other VOLAGs to divide up the new fiscal year’s anticipated arrivals and the money that attaches to the arrivals.
The abstracts/annual resettlement plans include statements like “ELL [English Language Learner] services in the public schools are free.” Of course lots of other taxpayer- funded services such as Medicaid and cash welfare are also “free.”
They detail how many mosques might be in a location and how many languages are spoken by the agency’s staff members. They might include information about the ethnic composition of the seed communities they helped to start and the medical services available in a community. The plan might disclose the work of the resettlement agency’s “employment specialists” paid to get refugees employed ahead of unemployed Americans in the same community.
Here (below) is an example of a local resettlement plan; there should be a requirement that they be presented to local communities before being funded with public money.Until then, community members should inquire of the local resettlement organizations in their communities and when they are told (as they most likely will), that they do not have the information, move on to the national parent VOLAG office and request the documents.
