Tag: USCCB

Georgia on my mind: refugee numbers up, foreign-born numbers up, and Catholic Bishops lecture

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I already had two articles worth mentioning about Georgia and refugees before I saw this news from The Atlanta Journal Constitution this morning:

Georgia ranked eighth among states for the total number of refugees it received in the fiscal year ending in September at 2,710, according to a federal report released Tuesday.

Georgia Bishop HARTMAYER lectures, guilt-trips and urges Catholics to lobby for amnesty.

That is up 8 percent from the year before. But it is 810 fewer people than originally proposed by resettlement agencies.

The U.S. State Department confirmed earlier this year it had limited the number of refugees coming to Georgia, based partly on requests from Gov. Nathan Deal’s administration for sharp cuts. State officials have cited state and local taxpayer costs associated with taking in the refugees, school budget shortfalls and other concerns.

Deal has continued to push the Obama administration on the issue. In a letter he sent President Barack Obama in July, Deal complained Georgia has received a “disproportionate number of refugee placements over the past few years.”

Last month, the governor’s administration sided with Athens-Clarke County Mayor Nancy Denson in opposition to resettling 150 refugees there. The Democratic mayor complained resettlement officials had not reached out to enough people in her community early enough about the plans.

Local resettlement agencies are pushing back, saying refugees create a net gain for the state by working and paying taxes and attracting millions of dollars in federal aid money to Georgia.

[….]

The federal government provides refugees with funding that partially covers the cost of rent, furniture, food and clothing.

This last bit above confirms what I have been saying—not the working and paying taxes part (most don’t get paid enough to pay taxes!), but the part about millions of federal aid dollars following refugees.  It’s as if we are expected to believe that there is a money tree growing in Washington!

There is a major disconnect happening—those aid dollars from Washington come from taxpayers, including Georgia taxpayers—it is not free money!  And, there won’t be a net gain for the state when federal aid dollars arrive as refugees use more resources than they draw in from Washington.

Big whup if the feds help pay rent and get them some clothes and food stamps!  It is the cost of health services, education, and the criminal justice system that push states into the red with the immigrant population increase.  And, by the way, never mentioned is the unfairness of rent subsidized housing going to immigrants when poor and disabled Americans need that housing.

Then be sure to see this article from last week about the overall increase in the foreign-born population in Georgia.  Georgia immigrant population increase confirmed by CIS here too.

Georgia Catholic Bishops lecture!

The nerve of the Catholic Bishops of Georgia to lecture Georgians about Christian charity when the US Conference of Catholic Bishops refugee and immigration program is almost completely funded by US taxpayers (98% funded by you) and this screed by ARCHBISHOP WILTON D. GREGORY and BISHOP GREGORY J. HARTMAYER at The Georgia Bulletin never says one word about Caesar’s money which they depend on for their existence!

Please read their guilt-trip laced polemic here.  And, remember this!  It is not only ‘unaccompanied alien children’ and refugees that the Bishops are concerned about, they lobby for amnesty as well and admit it here.  Are they using your tax dollars for their lobbying campaign, that is what I would like to know!

We also urge Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform legislation, which will help fix our broken immigration system.

We strongly encourage you to support these principles by contacting your U.S. senators and congress members through the Catholic bishops’ Justice for Immigrants website.

On the State level, we ask legislators and officials to support policies that enhance the dignity of all people who come to our state.

See our complete Georgia archive by clicking here.  See especially Athens, Georgia mayor attempting to put brakes on refugee resettlement (mentioned above).

Note that over a year ago, Georgia was identified (by the Office of Refugee Resettlement) at a meeting I attended in Lancaster, PA as a ‘pocket of resistance’ to refugee resettlement and was cited as a reason that the ORR hired Welcoming America (to get peoples’ minds right)!

Also, there is a grassroots group opposing more refugee resettlement in Georgia, click here, that you should know about.

Come on Gateway Pundit, you should know about refugee resettlement by now!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This plan by a local Catholic group is NOT a plan to accommodate “illegal aliens!”   (See Gateway Pundit here)

 

Jim Hoft in a post entitled: Update: Officials Discuss Housing Syrian & Iraqi Refugees in South St. Louis.

“A local St. Louis Catholic church closed it’s school last year and now wants to use it to house illegal aliens.”

(hat tip: Julia)

Iraqis and Syrians are/will be LEGAL immigrants.

This is all legal and has been going on for over three decades. I can’t recreate all of Refugee Resettlement Watch for Gateway Pundit, so someone please tell some of the big conservative bloggers that it’s time they paid attention to LEGAL immigration especially as this is all being paid for out of the federal treasury!

It is not charitable Catholics passing the collection plate!  Catholic groups are federal contractors!

Iraqis are the largest group of refugees we are bringing to the US this year and in fiscal year 2015 (which begins in 4 weeks), Syrians will be pouring into your cities!   16,159 Iraqis have been brought to the US in the first ten months of this fiscal year.  A large percentage of them have been resettled by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (as the largest contractor) and its subcontractors.

The feds and their refugee contractors*** are scouting out new locations as we speak.

*** The federal migrant resettlement contractors which we have followed for years (Grant recipient big dogs (devouring federal cash) Baptist Child and Family Services and Southwest Key Programs  are new on the scene in recent years.):

Wall Street Journal parrots migrant contractors’ wail for more tax dollars

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Geez, you would think that the big media like the Wall Street Journal (Miriam Jordan) might actually do a little more work than to simply join the orchestrated PR chorus (lobbying campaign!) of the likes of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) wailing for more taxpayer funding so they don’t have to reduce staff or heaven-forbid close offices and stop traveling or going to meetings in the wake of the “children’s” border surge.

In fact, as a regular reader here, you know both of those “refugee” (referred to now as “migrant”) contractors (the biggest crybabies) are getting money from two of the US Health and Human Services (Office of Refugee Resettlement) pockets—the one for ‘unaccompanied alien children’ and for the usual refugee flow of third-worlders into America.

Here is the Wall Street Journal’s ho-hum story (virtually the same one we are seeing from publications large and small).  Emphasis is mine:

The influx of Central American children across the southern U.S. border in recent months is having an impact on another immigrant community: refugees from Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Government funds that would ordinarily go to resettlement programs for refugees have been diverted to help pay for the costs of coping with the recent wave of unaccompanied minors, and it isn’t clear if the money will be entirely restored.

Then get this fear-mongering!

Now retired President and CEO of Lutheran Community Services Northwest, Roberta Nestaas, was making over $200,000 in salary and benefits at the time of her retirement earlier this summer.

“Unfortunately, you are taking from one vulnerable population to provide to another vulnerable population,” said Jacinda Paschoal, regional operations manager for Lutheran Community Services Northwest, which resettles refugees in Oregon and Washington.

She said that tuberculosis testing, follow-up and treatment as well as services for school-aged children and elderly refugees are among those impacted by cuts. More than a dozen staff positions are slated to be eliminated in Portland, she said, because of the reallocation of resources.

I’m betting most readers are now saying—WTH!—we are bringing refugees with tuberculosis into the US and paying for their treatment? YES! Old people who need care too?   YES!

And, then this is the blood-boiling part of the story (if that wasn’t enough).   The article suggests that these contractors use their own “self-generated funding” to pay for their good works.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and other organizations that serve refugees have taken their concerns to congressional representatives. Among others, the organizations, using federal and self-generated funding, help refugees find housing and work as well as enroll in English classes and get vaccinated.  [The reporter could very easily have put a qualifier in this sentence that told readers that MOST of the money they spend is federal money—ed]

How much is federal and how much is private CHARITABLE money?  Truth please!

The USCCB is 98% supported by tax dollars and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is 97% supported by public money.  Another galling thing we never hear about is that these federal contractors were lobbying for the Senate’s Gang of Eight amnesty bill! On our dime?

Since Jordan quotes from the whiners at Lutheran Community Services Northwest, let’s just have a look at their finances!

Here is their Form 990 for 2013 (year ending June 30th, 2013):

They received income that year of $21,604,804 and $19,557,224 came directly from US taxpayers as government grants.  There are other categories of income that are also possibly streams from public money as well. But, assuming just the government grants, that means they are 86% funded by you!

Their CEO, Roberta Nestaas, retired on June 30th of this year and was pulling down a salary and benefits package worth $221,935.  Presumably new CEO David Duea will do just as well (by doing good).

Their expenses include $13.7 million in wages and another nearly $2 million in “employee benefits.”  Their current officers and directors compensation was $371,575.

Office expenses and occupancy were over $2.3 million.

Travel: $389,574

Meetings and conferences:  $219,353

They even have an expense called “Volunteer expenses” which came to $176,510 in that one year.

So now why do you think there is all this wailing going on from quasi-government/quasi-religious supposed non-profits who want more of your money?

Come on!  How about some real investigative reporting for a change!

All of our coverage of ‘unaccompanied minors’ is here (the archive goes back several years).  Were the US Bishops partially responsible for the surge?  We think so!

Time magazine reports on federal migrant resettlement contractors

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is a new day in America!  A major media outlet has dared mention the fact that quasi-government/quasi-religious agencies are reaping millions in government grants to care for “refugees” and the illegal alien children surging across our southern border.

[Editor: I realize that I can’t really refer to the contractors*** as refugee resettlement contractors anymore since they now resettle illegal aliens as well! I guess we will call them migrant resettlement contractors.]

And, by the way readers, resettlement (hooking them up with social services and health care, filing their citizenship paperwork etc.) is the job the contractors would have legally been paid to do for all migrants (the newly amnestied) through S.744 (the Gang of Eight amnesty bill) if it had made it to the President’s desk.  The contractors listed below all lobbied for S.744!

As regular readers of RRW, you know most of this about grant recipient big dogs—Baptist Child and Family Services and Southwest Key—as well as the smaller federal contractors (by comparison!) the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, but the average America getting news from the dinosaur media does not!  Until now!

Here is Time (emphasis mine) in a story from last week entitled: This Baptist Charity Is Being Paid Hundreds of Millions to Shelter Child Migrants.

Iowa Senator Charles Grassley wants to be sure taxpayer money is not being misused. Go for it Senator!

In the late afternoon of July 9, Air Force One touched down at Love Field in Dallas. President Barack Obama ducked into a private room at the airport for a discussion about the crisis of undocumented children crossing the southwest border. Assembled around a wooden table were top Texas officials, including Governor Rick Perry and Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, as well as the leaders of several faith-based charities. One of them was a man so anonymous, the White House pool report misspelled his name.

Kevin Dinnin is the CEO of a faith-based, nonprofit organization called BCFS, formerly known as Baptist Child and Family Services. This obscure charity has emerged as one of the biggest players in the federal government’s response to the influx of more than 57,000 unaccompanied children who have trudged across the southern border so far this year. It runs two of the largest facilities for temporarily housing immigrant children, as well as six permanent shelters in California and Texas. Since December, BCFS has received more than $280 million in federal grants to operate these shelters, according to government records. On July 7, two days before Dinnin met Obama in Dallas, the Department of Health and Human Services awarded BCFS $190,707,505 in a single grant.

Senator Grassley wants answers!

Senator Charles Grassley, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell on July 17, requesting information about BCFS contracts to ensure that taxpayer money wasn’t being misused. “Despite being almost completely dependent on the public, BCFS has faced heavy criticism for attempting to avoid public scrutiny,” the Iowa Republican wrote. “This aversion to basic transparency is extremely disturbing.”

[….]

For BCFS executives, the work can be lucrative. According to federal tax records, Dinnin received nearly $450,000 in compensation in 2012. At least four other top officials earned more than $200,000. The median salary for the CEOs of nonprofit organizations like BCFS was about $285,000 in 2011, according to a 2013 survey by Charity Navigator.

Our old standbys, the Lutherans and Catholics get a mention:

The federal grant money for sheltering unaccompanied children, provided by HHS’s Administration for Children and Families, has so far totaled $671 million during the 2014 fiscal year. BCFS has received 40% of those funds, making it the largest recipient of money disbursed to contractors to temporarily house unaccompanied children until they can be reunited with family members or placed in foster care. Dozens of other organizations are involved in the effort, including Southwest Key Programs, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

And then get this!  They say that the reason for the secrecy is that they fear—you (“clusters” of armed citizens they say!) protesting.  What they really fear is that protests will wake up the American people and more will figure out how they are being scammed out of their tax dollars not to mention that they will come to understand the level to which we are being invaded by the third world!

The level of secrecy surrounding the facilities is unusual, says Neil Gordon, an investigator for the Washington-based Project on Government Oversight. But observers say it may be warranted. From Arizona to Michigan, clusters of citizens have held armed protests to oppose the relocation of undocumented children to facilities in their communities. “This situation is pretty unique in that they don’t want the mobs to come out and cause problems,” Gordon says. “That might be the reason they’re being so tight-lipped.”

Doesn’t that just tick you off!  “Observers say” (who the hell are the observers!).  Heck, I should start using that phrase!  I’ve got all sorts of “observers” with a lot to say!

There is much more, read it all and rejoice that the word is now reaching living rooms nationwide!

***The federal refugee resettlement contractors (I suspect grant recipient big dogs Baptist Child and Family Services and Southwest Key Programs  are now devouring all the federal cash):

Our complete archive on ‘unaccompanied minors’ goes back several years, click here for all of those posts.

CNN investigates: US Catholic Bishops live in mansions

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Cardinal Dolan and three other priests live in this $30 million Madison Avenue mansion. Lots of room to house innumerable refugees and “children.”

 

At a time when the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is receiving millions of tax dollars  (not including the fact that they pay no local property taxes) to do their “Christian charity” on behalf of refugees and the ‘unaccompanied alien children’ surging across the US southern border and are caterwauling for more tax dollars, we learn that some of the US Bishops are living in priest palaces!  Hat tip: Brad

So why can’t the Catholic Church sell some of its valuable real estate instead of tapping the taxpayer for cash for their charity?  And, on top of it, consider their hubris as they lecture us about  “welcoming the stranger.”  How many angels dance on the head of a pin?  How about, how many migrants can squeeze into a Bishop’s mansion?

Cardinal Timothy Dolan has the priciest digs of all—-a Madison Avenue mansion worth $30 million.

Visit CNN and enjoy photos of other homes of the rich and religious.

But, here (right) is the Baltimore home of Bishop William Lori who we mentioned recently as he fussed and fumed about a new Obama ruling that might restrict the Bishops’ lifeline of federal cash by excluding them from federal contracts.

With 11,500 square feet he should easily be able to house ten or more illegal alien teens here and still have room for himself and his office.

Endnote:  I wonder where Bishop Elizondo lives?

Go here for all of our coverage of the ‘unaccompanied minors’ crisis.  For everything on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), search for USCCB or Catholic Charities and some other key word because I bet we have 300 posts or more here relating to their activities—good luck!

The Bishops are the largest of the original nine federal refugee/illegal alien (political activist!) contractors!

The federal refugee resettlement contractors (we may have to start adding grant recipient big dogs Baptist Child and Family Services and Southwest Key Programs to our list):