Tag: USA Spending

Taxpayer Funded Refugee Resettlement Contractors Doing Well even with Trump in the White House

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 4 Comments

When President Trump arrived in the Oval Office I had a lot of hope that the new Administration would begin to turn off the funding for the nine federal resettlement agencies that have been for decades monopolizing all refugee placement in the US.

But, alas, even as refugee numbers have plummeted, the contractors are still sucking down millions of federal dollars each month, in most cases on par with what they were getting during the Obama years.

And, as they complain that they have had to close offices and fire staff they are still doing well (Ha! By doing good?) and will be well-positioned to ramp-up as soon as the Dems regain the White House (whenever that is!).

Presidential candidate Joe Biden has already signaled he wants over 100,000 refugees admitted each year (a figure Obama never achieved).

Of course, it isn’t all on Trump, Congress is a major player and there is no will there to slow or reform the refugee program. Oh, some do want to ‘reform’— by expanding it!

For the umpteenth time, the flawed structure of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program has not been reformed one significant bit in the last 3 years.

What are these ‘charities’ doing with all this money?

Using data at USASpending.gov ,*** I’ve gathered in one place the federal payout to the nine federal refugee grantees/contractors which, as I said, have monopolized all refugee resettlement in America for decades.

 

When looking at the screenshots below, for relative comparison of the size of the ‘non-profits,’ that number in the left hand corner is useful. It is what they received in the last twelve months from the US Treasury—the US taxpayer.

Know that FY2008 was Bush’s last year and that FY2016 was Obama’s last year in office.

Church World Service

 

That $45 million is what they received in the last 12 months from you, involuntarily via the US Treasury.
2008 was a Bush year. And for FY2020 remember we are only 7 months into the fiscal year which ends on September 30th.

 

Ethiopian Community Development Council

 

Don’t ask me why they show no federal funding for those previous years, they have been around for a long time.

 

Episcopal Migration Ministries

(This one is tricky because they have another name!)

 

HIAS (aka Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)

 

Notice that HIAS has had its best year in over a decade during the Trump Administration.

 

International Rescue Committee

 

There were additional transactions for the IRC under different duns numbers.
They are down a little under Trump, but they are up more than double what they were getting under Bush!

 

U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants

 

 

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service

 

 

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

(By the way, in addition to the monies here mostly for the refugee program, the Bishops received a whopping $400 million for Catholic Relief Services.)

 

The Bishops have taken a significant drop in funding since their top Obama year.

 

World Relief Corporation

 

 

 

So what are the contractors whining about, they are all still better off now than they were ten years ago.  And, they are positioned well to expand when the Dems retake the White House.

This post is filed in two categories:  Where to find information and Knowledge is Power.

*** USASpending.gov is a relatively new undertaking of the US government that creates transparency for all of us and it was created in the Obama Administration.

USCRI Who? This Refugee Resettlement Agency is Laying Low, and Doing Well

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 3 Comments

I’ve been noticing the absence of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), one of the top nine federal contractors***, in all the anti-Trump media hubbub and wondered if they were shrinking financially and therefore laying low to stay out of Trump’s line of sight.

So I checked today, and guess what?

USCRI is approximately 96% federally funded, and…..

They are doing financially better under the Trump Administration than they ever did in the Obama years. 

But, before I give you the data, let me tell you how much controversy they stirred over the years.

Memory lane:

Former USCRI CEO Lavinia Limon with Chobani CEO at the Clinton Global Initiative (all you need to know!).

Longtime readers may remember the huge controversy in Twin Falls, Idaho that I wrote about extensively for months that involved USCRI’s subcontractor there.  It revolved around Chobani Yogurt’s hunger for refugee labor and came to a media explosion over the sexual abuse of a child by refugee boys.

Then there was USCRI’s effort to open a new office in Rutland, VT that ended in failure when citizens rose up, protested, and threw out the ‘welcoming’ mayor.

Earlier I reported on the mess USCRI was embroiled in in Bowling Green, KY when Burmese refugees were placed in substandard housing.

(Here I am going to urge readers to use the search window top right at RRW and enter key words to find out more about Twin Falls, Rutland, Bowling Green, Lavinia Limon, Eskinder Negash etc. and save me some work putting in a zillion links!)

One point on the issue of subcontractors: 

Someone knowledgeable about the big nine recently mentioned that local agencies don’t have the same name sometimes as their parent organization.  Exactly right! Whether they do that on purpose I don’t know, but for those of you wanting to better understand how secretive this program is, that is one important piece of evidence.

Hundreds of subcontractors work for the big nine and those nine move federal funding to their subcontractors usually referred to as affiliates.

They have been wailing and moaning about having to close offices in the Trump era, apparently Trump isn’t hurting USCRI.

Go here to see USCRI’s affiliates:

 

Revolving door!

Also, USCRI is notable as a prime example of the revolving door between government contractors and the agencies from which the organization gets most of its funding.

Both USCRI’s previous CEO Lavinia Limon (headed Clinton’s Office of Refugee Resettlement) and its present CEO Eskinder Negash (headed Obama’s ORR) revolved in and out of government.  Both have done very well themselves in the process as you will see below.

First, here is the stunning financial information at USA Spending.  (I told readers how to use the invaluable site in Knowledge is Power V.)

Remember that we are only 4 months into FY2020 and that is why that number is so low. So check back in September.

 

Looking at the most recently available IRS Form 990, we can say that USCRI is 96% federally funded—that is funded by you, the US taxpayer!

That means they are acting like a government agency but without any of the checks and balances of a federal agency. For example you can’t use the Freedom of Information Act to get information out of a ‘non-profit.’

Check out the 6-figure salaries you pay!  Some are higher than US Senators or Supreme Court Justices!

Ms. Limon is gone, but apparently not at the time this Form990 was filed. By the way the next page lists four additional employees making above six-figures. https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2018/131/878/2018-131878704-1108fd6f-9.pdf

 

See all of my Knowledge is Power series.

*** Here are the nine major federal refugee contractors.  I’ve analyzed five so far including USCRI today and only the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has taken a serious budgetary hit under the Trump Administration.  Congress and the Deep staters are making sure these fake non-profits are staying in the black.

So far only the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has seen a significant decline in its federal funding.  In fact the three who recently sued to stop the Trump refugee reform effort—Church World Service, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and HIAS—are doing very well.  Now we know that USCRI is doing exceedingly well.

I will work on the remaining four in the coming days and weeks.

I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.

 

HIAS Blasts Trump on New Travel Restrictions While Receiving Millions from Taxpayers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Indeed much to my shock, USA Spending reports that the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) is getting more federal dollars under the Trump Administration than it did under the Obama government!

HIAS is the 4th of the nine federal contractors I’ve analyzed at USA Spending and three of the four are doing exceedingly well financially under Trump in spite of their constant wailing and moaning about how they must close offices and reduce staff.

Our often assumed connection between the number of refugees coming in and the nine contractors’ financial well-being is out the window!

So far only the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has seen a significant decline in its federal funding.  In fact the three who recently sued to stop the Trump refugee reform effort—Church World Service, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and now HIAS—are doing very well.

I think that the Deep State is undermining Trump by funding his political opposition with our money!

Does the White House know?

Here is HIAS raising money off of the President’s latest effort to keep us safe with new travel restrictions (refugees are exempt!):

 

Now see that they are not hurting financially and are still receiving millions of tax dollars as they work against President Trump every day!

From USASpending.gov:

See that in FY2019 HIAS received more than they did in any Obama year!