But, there is something you, Americans, need to know about Malta.
Before giving Malta ‘high-fives’ for humanitarian zeal, consider this:
The European island nation has been sending its excess migrants to the US ever since the George W. Bush administration in what is a possibly illegal maneuver by our US State Department.
Malta is a safe European country and anyone who gets there seeking asylum is their problem, not ours!
The practice of sending a few hundred to Yourtown, USA has been going on for years. Although the numbers are down under President Donald Trump, we are still taking some.
First here is the latest from the European migration crisis.
VALLETTA (AFP) –
Migrants rescued at sea by a merchant vessel are being taken to Malta after two days in limbo following Italy’s refusal to accept them, the Maltese armed forces said Wednesday.
So where will this group of 44 Africans be resettled?
The Just Fitz III plucked 44 migrants from a rickety wooden boat late Monday after they ran into difficulty during the perilous crossing from North Africa.
The Marshall Islands-flagged vessel, which had been headed to Tunisia, was diverted to help the migrants as they floundered some 60 nautical miles south of the Italian island of Lampedusa, in Malta’s search and rescue zone.
Valletta said those rescued at sea should be taken to the nearest safe port, on Lampedusa.
But Italy’s new and hardline interior minister Matteo Salvini, the head of the far-right League, has vowed to stop migrant arrivals.
“Following the refusal of Italy to provide for the nearest place of safety, shelter and logistical support to the ship and in view of deteriorating weather conditions affecting the area,” Malta agreed to take the migrants, the army said.
An offshore patrol vessel picked up the migrants from the Just Fitz III and was expected to disembark them on Malta late Wednesday.
Ambitious readers might want to have a look at my Malta archive, here, which I have been building for over ten years.
See here, that even in Trump’s first full year in office we are still bringing ‘refugees’ from the safe country of Malta. We ‘welcomed’ 128 migrants from Malta in FY18. We are not told where they were placed in the US.
And note that there were 93 cases for the 128 migrants which tells us they were mostly single people (probably single men)!
Migrants and asylum seekers who make their way to Europe are not our problem.
We have enough problems with fake asylum seekers coming to our borders.
Surely Malta isn’t going to step up and say we will take a few of those Hondurans off your hands! Not in a million years!
If he knew this was happening, Trump could stop the Malta to Yourtown express with a phone call.
…..there must be an error in this report, but I am posting it just to see if we can get the truth shaken loose.
When I first started writing this blog in 2007 there were ten federal resettlement contractors that monopolized all refugee placement in the US, but the number dropped to nine and has remained there ever since. The nine are listed below.***
Earlier we learned that Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) was as much as 99.5% funded by you (taxpayers!) for their charitable good works for refugees. So it would be no surprise to learn that they would be one of the federal resettlement contractors dropped by the US State Department as the Trump administration slows the flow of paying clients to the US.
By the way, when the present Refugee Admissions Program was set up, it was supposed to be a public-private partnership, but over the years the private funds dwindled as they became more dependent on public money (aka taxpayer dollars).
The headline for the story which is mostly about Episcopal Church business is this:
Executive Council passes budget, grants diocesan waivers, praises work of Episcopal Migration Ministries
The Rev. Charles Robertson predicts EMM will be cut off from refugee contracts. “We are prepared for the worst.”
Members of Executive Council also received briefings from church officers and staff members during the week, including a bleak assessment of the future of the church’s refugee resettlement work from the Rev. Charles Robertson, the presiding bishop’s canon for ministry beyond the Episcopal Church.
Episcopal Migration Ministries, one of nine agencies with federal contracts to resettle refugees in the United States, expects to learn in the coming weeks if its contract will be renewed, at a time when the Trump administration has dramatically reduced the number of refugees being resettled. The odds are not in Episcopal Migration Ministries’ favor, Robertson told Executive Council’s Ministry Beyond the Episcopal Church Committee.
Could seven be given the boot?
“If we were going to bet on it, we’d bet we’re not going to make the cut,” Robertson said. He predicted only two of the nine would receive contracts. Though unlikely, he said it is still possible Episcopal Migration Ministries will be one of the two.
I’m thinking that the reporter got that wrong and meant to say that ‘seven of the nine would receive contracts.’ If it is true that seven would be cut, that would be earth-shaking news.
Later that afternoon, Robertson gave a sobering outlook on Episcopal Migration Ministries’ future to the committee on Ministry Beyond the Episcopal Church.
“We are prepared for the worst,” Robertson said – the worst being the end of Episcopal Migration Ministries’ contract to continue the resettlement work it has done for the federal government since the 1980s.
EMM’s interactive partners map. Go here to see if one of their offices is near you: https://episcopalmigrationministries.org/our-partners/
The U.S. Department of State announced Sept. 17 that it would lower the ceiling to just 30,000 refugees for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, down from a ceiling of 85,000 just two years ago. And that 30,000 is just the upper limit, Robertson stressed. The actual number of refugees to be welcomed into the United States likely will be much lower.
Episcopal Migration Ministries once oversaw 31 resettlement affiliates in 26 dioceses, but that number has dwindled to 14 affiliates in 12 dioceses. With even fewer refugees to resettle, the federal government isn’t expected to keep all nine of its contracted agencies, Robertson said, and Episcopal Migration Ministries, though well equipped to do that work, is one of the smaller of the nine.
Even in the worst-case scenario, however, Episcopal Migration Ministries will remain an important part of the Episcopal Church’s outreach efforts. If the resettlement work ends, the agency may find other ways to support refugees and, possibly, other immigrants, Robertson said. He estimated it would take about a year to fully realize that new vision for the agency.
I wonder what the loss of millions of federal dollars will do to the church. I once had a reader, knowledgeable about the budget of the Episcopal Church, tell me that some of the refugee dollars went to other programs, however we were never able to confirm that.
By the way, there likely won’t be any tears shed by the remaining contractors since the nine have been competitors as they ‘bid for bodies!’
***Below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.
I realize I haven’t posted this list for twelve whole days!
The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!
And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! And, get them registered to vote eventually!
I missed this last week and so did most everyone as official Washington was in turmoil over the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.
The President signed the Memorandum on Thursday.
We had already reportedon the expected 30,000 cap, but up until the President’s signature on the the determination we still weren’t sure how many refugees could enter the US in the fiscal year we bean just last Monday.
“The costs are staggering. The costs are truly staggering!”
(Don Barnett, Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies)
I reported a few days agoon the ‘Report to Congress’ released by the US State Department as part of the consultation with Congress requirement of the Administration when determining how many refugees will be admitted to the US beginning on Monday.
Here LifeZetteanalyzed a portion of that report about what you pay for the program (actually only a small portion of the costs!).
America’s refugee program cost taxpayers more than $125 billion over a 10-year period, according to a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report to Congress on a proposed cut in the émigré cap.
The report accounts for refugees resettled from abroad, foreigners in the United States granted asylum, and people participating in special programs set up for Iraqis, Cubans, Haitians, and Amerasians from Vietnam.
The cost to federal taxpayers for refugees and individuals granted asylum in fiscal years 2005 through 2014 came to $74.7 billion, plus an additional $21.9 billion for state matching funds for programs available to refugees.
The total cost was $96.65 billion. Including spouses and children, the overall cost to state and federal taxpayers rises to $125.696 billion.
That total includes the cost of relocating refugees, services provided by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), child care subsidies and three main welfare programs — Medicaid, Medicare, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.
In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, President Donald Trump alluded to the cost in arguing that U.S. generosity is better demonstrated near locations from which refugees come.
[….]
The nearly $126 billion estimated cost over 10 years, however, represents but a fraction of the total taxpayer investment. It does not include more than a dozen other programs, such as Social Security, various tax credits, education spending, and other welfare.
[Other welfare supplied by federal and state taxpayers would include food stamps, and other costs include federally required interpreters for courts, medical care and schools, the criminal justice system and most often ignored—remittances—money the refugees send home and out of our economy.—-ed]
[….]
Don Barnett, a fellow at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), told LifeZette that it makes sense to take a comprehensive approach to assessing refugee costs that go beyond just the relocation expenses.
Unlike other immigrants, who must wait five years before they are eligible for government-assistance programs, refugees and individuals granted asylum immediately can receive welfare.
“The costs are staggering. The costs are truly staggering,” said Barnett.
[….]
The Libertarian CATO Institute has been talking about reform that would include private citizens sponsoring refugees. It does have its appeal. But, he knows that not enough sponsors would be found especially if they were on the hook for all of the care of a refugee or refugee family, so CATO is not proposing abolishing the present contractor system of resettlement. CATO wants both systems at the same time—the same as Canada!
The government report estimates that in a typical year, major HHS programs cost about $3,300 per refugee.
A 2015 study by CIS, which favors lower levels of immigration, attempted to account for a broader range of costs imposed by refugees. The study found that the five-year cost of relocating refugees from the Middle East came to $64,370 per person and $257,481 per household.
[….]
Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, did not dispute the government’s cost estimates.
[….]
A better approach than a bureaucratic, taxpayer-funded refugee system, Nowrasteh said, is to allow private citizens and organizations to sponsor refugees and take financial responsibility for them. He said Canada has such a system and that the United States has had similar policies in the past.
I have to steel myself to write AGAIN about the issue of the President’s legal right to set the annual CAP (aka ceiling) for the number of refugees to be invited to the US to become your new neighbors. But, I know how important repetition (to the point of wanting to barf) is!
Bixby at twitter: @scottbix
In fact, as I read the Daily Beast story by Scott Bixby, I was heartened to see that maybe after all these years the facts about the program are beginning to be reported and understood.
Progress is being made!
Reporter Bixby actually did some good reporting when he said that many of the contractors are 97% federally funded on a refugee per capita basis. (You know that, but believe me the average voting American doesn’t!).
Most reports by the Leftwing lapdog media about these federal contractors, aka VOLAGs, leave readers and viewers with a wrong assumption that they are paying for all of their ‘humanitarian good works’ from their own charitable pockets. It ain’t so!
Before I get into the latest whinefest by the contractors*** consider one of my primary fundamental concerns:
Taxpayers should not be required to pay large (any!) salaries and supply non-profits with cushy office space only to have those same non-profits act as political community organizers and agitators for not just more refugees, but for more migrants, legal and illegal, trying to get to the US.
The story is entitled:
The New Collateral Damage in Trump’s War on Refugees
The Trump administration has cut the number of refugees they let into the country by a third. That decision could gravely harm organizations that assist those already here.
(Emphasis is mine)
When the Trump administration announced its intention to slash the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States to the lowest level in nearly four decades, the decision sparked worry among thousands of displaced persons who feared that the nation’s doors were now closed to them. But in addition to the record number of global refugees seeking safety from unrest in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the admissions cap will likely also harm organizations designed to help the thousands of displaced people who do make it safely to the United States.
As the U.S. government slows the number of legal refugees who can enter the country to a trickle, the nine private voluntary agencies with cooperative agreements with the State Department to help settle those refugees must now contend with a potentially devastating budget crunch.
Reporter Bixby picked the wrong contractor to quote. The International Rescue Committee headquartered in Manhattan is headed by David Miliband, a British national, sucking down a nearly $700,000 annual salary as the NON-PROFIT organization fires lower level staff. The IRC received $846 million from the US Treasury since 2008.
“It’ll have a tremendous impact on the number of people who are able to access these life-saving services,” Nazanin Ash [working for Miliband—ed] vice president of policy and advocacy at the International Rescue Committee, told The Daily Beast. “There’ve been over 150 office closures over the last two years, and that shutters a vital resource in many communities across the country.”
[….]
Government grants, provided on a per capita basis tied to the number of refugees assisted, account for as much as 97 percent of the resettlement grants for these organizations. Lower resettlement admissions therefore mean fewer federal dollars—and program funding is now set to plummet as precipitously as the number of admitted refugees.
That loss in grant money threatens a funding shortfall that could endanger community-based resettlement offices nationwide, as well as programs intended to help those who have fled their homes to establish a life in the United States, from housing placement and food support to professional support, English classes and community integration.
[….]
Under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the president has the sole authority, following consultation with Congress, to determine the maximum number of refugees who can be resettled in the United States, called the Presidential Determination. Under President Donald Trump, the Presidential Determination was decreased from 110,000 in 2017 to 45,000 refugees in 2018, one-seventh of its peak. Even then, the cap is a limit, not a requirement—so far, only 20,918 refugees have actually been admitted to the United States this year.
Don’t miss my post on the myth of Obama’s 110,000 ceiling, here where I said this:
Never once in his previous 7 years did he propose a ceiling (a cap!) that high and he came no where near that number of refugees admitted.
LOL! Now they are really stretching.
Below Melanie Nezer of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (which received $186 million from the US Treasury since 2008) says, because of that meany Trump, you are being deprived of the joy, of not getting to know refugees who might have been placed in your towns.
If it was going to be such a positive thing to open more communities for refugee placement, then why did the Obama State Department keep those sites under consideration secret from us?
Do not forget that these nine contractors were working closely with the US State Department in the Obama years to locate as many as 40 new resettlement sites and it was all being kept secret from you—the citizens of the 40 or so new targets.
If you were to benefit so much from being ‘chosen’ then why were they keeping those sites secret?
Nezer cautioned that the grant reduction won’t just negatively affect the refugees they’re intended to serve, but may foster a sense of isolation and complacency among native-born Americans.
“Fewer resettlement offices means fewer opportunities for people to volunteer and work with refugees,” Nezer explained. “If fewer refugees come, and fewer Americans get to engage directly with refugees, that kind of starts a cycle where there’s less direct connection” with refugee populations.
“As fewer comes and fewer Americans get to have that relationship, then there’s less support for letting refugees in at all.”
There is much more in this story, but its getting way too long.
Read it all here, see that reporter Bixby, trying to make a case for bipartisan support for the program, tells us how angry REPUBLICANS in the House and Senate are at the President for not consulting them as the law stipulates. See my post here on that.
These R’s are just a bunch of phony-baloneys who cared not one whit about past consultation requirements when numbers were large!
Many only care about one thing—cheap labor for their pals at global corporations and at the Chamber of Commerce!
***Here below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.
You might be sick of seeing this list almost every day, but a friend once told me that people need to see something seven times before it completely sinks in, so it seems to me that 70, or even 700 isn’t too much!
And, besides I have new readers every day.
The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!
And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! And, get them registered to vote eventually!
