Will the US Conference of Catholic Bishops ever be honest with parishioners?

09/18/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update September 20th: See here, the Bishops received almost $100 Million from taxpayers in 2016 for their migration/refugee fund “good works.”

I know I’m dreaming to think that one day the Catholic Church would explain to parishioners and the public at large that they depend on millions of taxpayer dollars every year to run their migration program.

Cardinal DiNardo — President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston. Let’s make a deal, tell the public and your parishioners how many millions you receive each year from the US Treasury for your migration campaign and I will shut up. Not holding my breath!

Here we have one more story where the Bishops are whining about how that mean old Donald Trump might slow the flow of refugees to America. BUT NOT ONE WORD ABOUT HOW THE BISHOPS’ BUDGET WILL BE IMPACTED!

They want the Administration to admit 75,000 impoverished third worlders to the US beginning October 1, but NOT ONE WORD THAT THEY RECEIVE TAXPAYER DOLLARS ON A PER HEAD BASIS (and the Bishops resettle the largest number of refugees each year).

Maybe many Catholics will think that is all hunky-dory, but they should at least be informed.

Here is the latest from Catholic News Agency:

Washington D.C., Sep 17, 2017 / 04:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Trump administration is reportedly planning to further reduce the number of refugees the U.S. will accept in the coming fiscal year, drawing concern from the U.S. bishops and others.

“We’re strongly urging the administration, the President, to set a Presidential determination of at least 75,000 [refugees],” Matt Wilch of the Office of Migration and Refugee Services at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told CNA of reported changes to the number of refugees the U.S. plans to accept in the 2018 fiscal year.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the Trump administration is planning to further reduce the number of refugee admissions for the 2018 fiscal year, “according to current and former government officials familiar with the discussions.”

[….]

Now the administration may be reducing its refugee quota even further, to below 50,000. [Eeek! I hope it is far below that!—ed]

The Executive Committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a written statement Tuesday that they were “troubled and deeply concerned” at reports that the administration was considering the reduction, which they called “inhumane.”

“We implore the administration to show mercy and compassion for those seeking refuge, and to advance the American value of freedom through providing safe harbor to those fleeing tyranny and religious persecution,” the bishops said.

The conference proposed a goal of 75,000 refugees instead. “We think it’s really time to get back to the serious business of saving lives, and we urge the administration to have the total this coming year be 75,000,” Wilch told CNA Thursday.

By the way, the nine contractors (see how much each of them gets from you, here) agreed that 75,000 was the number for this year and have coordinated their lobbying efforts around that number. It is no where near what they asked last year (200,000), but…

I’m guessing they think that is the best they can do and still keep their taxpayer-funded budgets from imploding.

Screenshot (849) — Did taxpayer dollars pay for this pamphlet?

Now, pay attention Catholics!

The Bishops have launched a propaganda campaign described in this American Thinker article (Catholic push for multicultural utopia gets weird) (hat tip: Julia). I have no time to go in to it in detail, but I strongly recommend that you—Catholics—read it.

Let me be clear! The Bishops and the church can do whatever they want to ‘educate’ their people, or welcome illegal aliens and refugees as long as they do so as a private entity.

A very simple concept!

The minute the USCCB takes your money and mine (taxpayers!) it becomes our business how they spend it.

Catholic Bishop Dolan says that the USCCB is not after more money when defending DACA kids, I beg to differ

09/11/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Bannon and Dolan — Bannon vs. Dolan! If the general taxpaying public had any idea of how many of their tax dollars ‘find their way’ in to the Catholic Church they would be getting out the pitch forks and hitting the streets! Bannon hit them where it hurts!

You can read about all of the back and forth as Steve Bannon maintained that the Bishops want more immigrants because it means more cash in their coffers and more bodies in their pews (see Michael Leahy at Breitbart).

Maybe more cash isn’t reason number one (‘social justice’ is), but it is most assuredly reason number two!

They were discussing mostly illegal immigrants, but you need to know that all of the federal refugee resettlement contractors*** (including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops) supported the Gang of Eight Amnesty back in 2013 because it would have expanded their taxpayer-funded role from resettling refugees (getting them their social services) to helping all the newly amnestied file their paperwork and get their government-supplied goodies.

The Gang of Eight Amnesty contained a “slush fund” for our usual gang of contractors (euphemistically called immigrant-serving organizations) according to an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies, see here.

Up until this point in time, I wondered why refugee contractors would support amnesty for millions of immigrants who would then compete for limited jobs with refugees that those same ‘non-profit’ groups were tasked to find employment for! It made no sense on a humanitarian level, but it does on an economic level.

Jon Feere for CIS:

Section 2537 of the Schumer-Rubio bill provides “Initial Entry, Adjustment, and Citizenship Assistance” grants to public and private, non-profit organizations that promise to help illegal immigrants apply for the amnesty (p. 384). For example, this includes help with “completing applications”, “gathering proof of identification”, and “applying for any waivers”. But the recipients of these funds are given a lot of discretion, as the funds can also be used for “any other assistance” that the grantee “considers useful” to aliens applying for amnesty. The bill appropriates $100 million in grant funding for a five-year period ending in 2018, plus any additional “sums as may be necessary for fiscal year 2019 and subsequent fiscal years”. (p. 392). There are no limits to the amount of money that may be given out to pro-amnesty groups.

So the Bishops have (and had in 2013) every reason (social justice and money!) to support amnesty (which is what DACA is). The Gang of Eight amnesty didn’t pass, but you can be sure any legislation to legalize the DACA ‘children’ will contain grant money as a pass-through to help them ‘adjust’ their status.

Then there is the payola the USCCB gets every year to resettle refugees.

Here is the USCCB segment of my recent analysis of the nine major federal refugee agencies budgets:

US Conference of Catholic Bishops Migration Fund (97% taxpayer funded)

Now it gets even trickier! The Bishops don’t file a Form 990 and their operations are so vast, I could spend the whole day and still not sort it out. Also, maybe you can find one, but I have not found an annual report for their refugee program since I found this one for 2014.

So we will have to rely on it (again). Keep in mind these funds for their refugee resettlement program do not include millions that go directly from the feds to some individual Catholic Charities and Dioceses around the US. (If you are researching your local CC or Dioceses, you can often find good numbers at USASpending.gov)

“Federal grants” is your money, so is the Travel Loan Collection Fees, so that puts the Bishops’ refugee resettlement program at 97% taxpayer funded. (I am not sure if the Unaccompanied Alien Children fall in to yet another fund!).

I would like to get a more up-to-date accounting for the Bishops, but they must be hiding those reports really well! I suspect they are pulling down even more payola in more recent years.

Obviously we don’t know what salaries are being paid for their Washington, DC lobbying shop. Their previous head lobbyist was Kevin Appleby.

Go here to see how the Bishop’s money compares with the other eight major federal contractors.

And, that isn’t all there is.

You can search individual Catholic Charities (USASpending.gov) and find even more of your money going to local dioceses for migrants. I promise you, you will be blown away by the amounts of money flowing from the US Treasury to your local diocese.

In addition to the US Refugee Admissions Program, Catholic Legal Services gets a vast amount of federal money to pay for lawyers for the ‘kids.’ I’ll leave that research to you.

***For new readers, these are the nine major federal refugee contractors which would have financially benefited from Amnesty in 2013. We can never thoroughly reform the refugee program (or immigration itself) as long as these nine are paid by you to lobby, community organize, sign immigrants up for welfare, and act as head-hunters for big businesses in need of cheap labor.

It is time for all of these quasi-government agencies to raise their own private money for their charitable ‘good works.’ If they give up their federal hand-outs then they will demonstrate that caring for human beings is their first and only concern!

Catholic Bishops, Lutherans lament: not enough refugees coming in to pay our bills

07/17/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

LOL! No of course they didn’t say it that way, but that is what they mean. Instead, once again, it is about the poor refugees left in the lurch in some third world hell hole because of that meany Donald J. Trump.
This is a broken record alert, but I plan to continue to pound the issue of payment to contractors being tied to the number of refugees admitted, so there is never a reasonable discussion about any slowdown or reform of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.

If they were paying for their Christian ‘charity’ out of the pockets of good and kind-hearted parishioners, I would have nothing to say. But, until the USCCB admits to the media that they receive 97% of their annual migration fund budget (about $83 million in 2014) from taxpayers, I will be a broken record on the issue.

It was only six days ago I did a new accounting report for the nine federal refugee contractors*** quasi-government agencies that monopolize all resettlement in the US.
Both the Bishops and the Lutheran contractor are 96-97% funded by US taxpayers!
You will never know that by reading this news. Indeed, Charity Navigator, a service that rates charities to help you decide if you want to give, said this about LIRS (they would have said the same about the USCCB except that outfit doesn’t file a Form 990, that we can find).

This organization is not eligible to be rated by Charity Navigator because, as a service for individual givers, we only rate organizations that depend on support from individual contributors and foundations. Organizations such as this, that get most of their revenue from the government or from program services, are therefore not eligible to be rated.

In this story from Crux (a Catholic publication) we learn that Catholics and Lutherans are #1 and #2 in the number of refugees they drop off in American towns and cities.
Here is Crux (lamentations):

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Amid a federal judge ordering the government to broaden the exemptions to the immigration travel ban partially upheld by the Supreme Court, Catholic and Lutheran leaders lamented that the immigration cap had been reached for refugees without such exemptions for the 2017 fiscal year.

The federal government suspended travel July 12 for refugee immigrants without close family connections after confirming that 50,000 refugees – the limit imposed by President Donald Trump in a March 6 executive order – had arrived on U.S. soil.

“We remain deeply troubled by the human consequences of the revised executive order on refugee admissions and the travel ban,” said Bishop Joe S. Vasquez of Austin, Texas, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Migration, in a July 13 statement.

“Resettling only 50,000 refugees a year, down from 110,000, does not reflect the need, our compassion, and our capacity as a nation,” Vasquez added. “We have the ability to continue to assist the most vulnerable among us without sacrificing our values as Americans or the safety and security of our nation.” [Be sure to see my post on the ceilings going back 30 years, here. Note that Obama got no where near 110,000 until he was virtually walking out the door, now that has become the standard measure!—ed]

“The pause on resettlement and restrictions on the number of persons who can enter our country as refugees will have an immediate effect on our ability to conduct the lifesaving work of providing safety and protection,” said a July 12 statement by Kay Bellor, vice president for programs of Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Service, which is second only to the U.S. bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services in the number of refugees it helps resettle in the United States. [Yes, it will have an immediate effect because your organization raised virtually NO PRIVATE MONEY!—ed]

William Canny is the Bishops’ lobbyist in DC. He gets his salary, whatever it is, largely from the US taxpayer. Photo and bio here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-canny-989616b1

[….]

“As Bishop Vasquez said, it’s very sad, deeply troubling,” MRS executive director William Canny told Catholic News Service July 14.

Pushing for 75,000 refugees in FY18!

At least they have tempered the demand for 200,000 they made of Obama for his last year. If Trump admits 75,000 he will be about 10,000 above the average admissions for the last ten years (which included their dear leader’s years).
Crux continues….

“What we’re advocating for is 75,000” refugees to come into the United States during fiscal 2018, Canny told CNS. “We understand that the administration has security concerns. The administration made some initiative to reduce the number of refugees coming into the country. We don’t agree with it, so at a minimum, we think we should be bringing in 75,000.”

Bellor agreed with the 75,000 figure, noting the number is “less than the need.” Citing United Nations World Refugee Day figures, “the numbers are definitely not shrinking,” she said. “The number of people on the move is 66 million.”

LOL! 75,000 must be the point where they can keep their budgets plenty full with your money!
There is more at Crux, go here to read it all.
Come on all of you (not just the Lutherans and the Catholics), admit that your ‘charitable’ work with refugees could not happen without a huge infusion of more than a half a billion $ a year in federal funding.
And, come on mainstream media, it is time you told the truth!
***Federal contractors/middlemen/lobbyists/community organizers paid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities. Because their income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, the only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove the contractors from the process.

US State Department continues its pattern of secrecy regarding refugee resettlement

05/25/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The leading non-profit watchdog on government transparency, Judicial Watch, has been digging in to records relating to the resettlement of tens of thousands of refugees and other migrants and the money we spend on them.

Yesterday, JW reported that while the Dept of Health and Human Services was forthcoming about the cost of care for the tens of thousands of ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ (they are NOT refugees) spread throughout America, the State Department continues to withhold information about what you pay for the resettlement of refugees from around the world.
Incidentally I like the use of the words “foreign nationals” in this article to describe the disparate people we are paying to care for.
Again, the ‘children’ from Central America are not “refugees” and that distinction must continue to be made because the Open Borders Left is working every day to make you think that the mostly male teens are refugees escaping persecution.
Judicial Watch (two days ago):

The U.S. government spends billions of dollars to “resettle” foreign nationals and transparency on how the money is spent depends on the agency involved. Judicial Watch has been investigating it for years, specifically the huge amount of taxpayer dollars that go to “voluntary agencies”, known as VOLAGs, to provide a wide range of services for the new arrivals. Throughout the ongoing probe Judicial Watch has found a striking difference on how government lawyers use an exemption, officially known as (b)(4), to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to withhold records. All the cases involve public funds being used to resettle foreigners on U.S. soil and Americans should be entitled to the records.

The (b)(4) exemption permits agencies to withhold trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person which is privileged or confidential. Depending on the government agency and the mood of the taxpayer-funded lawyers handling public records requests, that information is exempt from disclosure. In these cases, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) disclosed a VOLAG contract to resettle tens of thousands of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) that entered the U.S. through Mexico under the Obama administration while the State Department withheld large portions of a one-year, $22.8 million deal to resettle refugees from Muslim countries. Most of the UACs came from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and the Obama administration blamed the sudden surge on violence in the three central American nations. The agency responsible for resettling the minors and issuing contracts for the costly services is HHS.

See the JW post for the details of where your money went for the ‘children.’
JW continues….

Bishop Joe Vásquez, Chairman of the USCCB Migration Committee, opposes President Trump’s EO on immigration. What galls me is that they are never honest and tell the public how much taxpayer money they are sucking up for their ‘religious charitable work.’http://www.usccb.org/news/2017/17-026.cfm

This has become a heated issue for the government which may explain why other agencies aren’t as forthcoming in providing specific figures, thus abusing the (b)(4) exemption. The State Department, for instance, redacted huge portions of records involving contracts with VOLAGs to resettle refugees from mostly Muslim countries. The files illustrate the disparate redaction treatment given by different government agencies to the same types of records. The State Department paid a VOLAG called United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) a ghastly $22,838,173 in one year to resettle refugees that came mostly from Muslim countries. Unlike HHS, the agency redacted information related to what the USCCB charged the government for things like furniture, personnel, equipment and other costs associated with contracts to resettle refugees. Why did one government agency hand over the same types of records that another agency claims are trade secrets? Judicial Watch is challenging the State Department’s (b)(4) exemption and will provide updates as they become available.

Continue reading here.
I don’t know if JW’s FOIA request was an older one to the Obama State Department. If it was, it would be interesting to see how the Trump State Department handles such requests. If this was from a new FOIA (post Trump inauguration), then we know that the Trump DOS is going to be as secretive as Obama’s was.
As we said yesterday, the Trump Administration in FY18 is going to continue to spend billions on these foreign nationals.
Just so you know, Baptist Children and Family Services, that is getting the millions for the UACs is not one of the nine federal resettlement contractors calling themselves VOLAGs. It doesn’t resettle real refugees through the US Refugee Admissions Program.
It is, of course, a federal contractor just as the nine which monopolize resettlement in America are. Here is an example of a research project someone should undertake—-figure out how much federal money goes to BCFS every year.
The nine VOLAGs comprise a closed little click and I suspect they are not happy that BCFS has wormed its way in to their pots of (your) money.
Two of the nine (possibly more now) have been getting payola from HHS to care for ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ for years (in addition to resettling refugees) and the two are the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
For new readers, in government-speak the word VOLAG stands for Voluntary Agencies which I have said is such a joke because they are mostly paid out of the US Treasury to do their ‘charitable good works.’ Go here at HHS where they list the nine so-called VOLAGs. See them here below:

Just so you know, when I started writing RRW in 2007, there was a tenth VOLAG. It was the state of Iowa. To break in to this closed group, a wannabe government contractor must show they have experience resettling refugees. Maybe BCFS is hoping to get in on the refugee resettlement action by first ‘resettling’ the children from Central America. I’ve also hypothesized that the Mormon Church in Utah might at some point try to break in to this charmed circle.

US Catholic Bishops assail Trump refugee slowdown, never mention the millions they are paid!

03/07/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Actually it is over a half billion the US Conference of Catholic Bishops received from US taxpayers since 2008!

(By the way, I just heard Raymond Arroyo on Fox and Friends say that the USCCB gets millions of tax dollars annually from the federal treasury, but I couldn’t find the clip. Yeh! Finally that information is getting in to the mainstream media!)
***Update*** Reader Robin has found the clip. Be sure to watch (click here) at about 50 seconds in when Brian Kilmeade asks why Lutherans and Catholics oppose the Trump refugee slowdown. Clearly Arroyo has done some homework!
Here is the latest from Catholic News Agency (CNA):

Washington D.C., Mar 6, 2017 / 03:50 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With people fleeing humanitarian crises around the world, President Donald Trump’s new executive order halting refugee admissions is wrong, Catholic bishop and aid groups maintain.

Bishop Vasquez chairs the U.S. bishops’ committee on migration. Last time we looked we reported that 97% of the Bishop’s Migration funds money comes from you—the taxpayers! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/01/11/and-we-almost-missed-it-us-conference-of-catholic-bishops-celebrates-its-national-migration-week/

“We remain deeply troubled by the human consequences of the revised executive order on refugee admissions and the travel ban. While we note the Administration’s efforts to modify the Executive Order in light of various legal concerns, the revised Order still leaves many innocent lives at risk,” Bishop Joe Vasquez of Austin stated March 6. Bishop Vasquez chairs the U.S. bishops’ committee on migration.

“The U.S. Catholic Bishops have long recognized the importance of ensuring public safety and would welcome reasonable and necessary steps to accomplish that goal,” he said.

“However, based on the knowledge that refugees are already subjected to the most vigorous vetting process of anyone who enters the United States, there is no merit to pausing the refugee resettlement program while considering further improvement to that vetting process.”

Here comes the big lie that Trump is reducing the number of refugees dramatically! Contractors, like the US Bishops, did just fine on less than 50,000 refugees during 4 of Bush’s years.
But, for only one year did Obama propose the astronomical number of 110,000 (for most of the year he would not be in office!) and that becomes the standard that the ignorant, gullible media goes with! For the many new readers we get every day, the resettlement contractors, including the USCCB, gets paid by the head to place refugees in your towns. More refugees=more money!

“Resettling only 50,000 refugees a year, down from 110,000, does not reflect the need, our compassion, and our capacity as a nation,” Bishop Vasquez stated. “We have the ability to continue to assist the most vulnerable among us without sacrificing our values as Americans or the safety and security of our nation.”

He goes on to oppose any religious test (like the prioritization of Christians in the first EO) for admission to the US.
Now, here comes a major truth! And, this is why Christians are not prioritized from Muslim countries!

Refugees must first register with the UNHCR to be eligible for resettlement.

Trump should immediately sever our ties with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, save us millions of dollars, and put in place a program where we, the US, chooses our refugees without the UNHCR middle men!
CNA continues……

“The Obama administration policy was to prioritize these groups, but despite this they remain severely underrepresented in U.S. refugee admissions, so it’s clear that a fair outcome is even more important than a stated priority,” he said. [Andrew Walther, vice president of communications and strategic planning at the Knights of Columbus.]

Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan of Antioch has warned that Christians hoping to be resettled in the U.S. or Canada have never even had the chance.

“I personally heard on several occasions from many of our Christian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, that their applications for refugee visas, either to the USA or Canada, are without any response, if not refused by the consulates of the USA and Canada,” he stated.

Never mentioned at CNA News is the financial reason the USCCB does not want to slow the flow for even a short period of time—$$$$$!
Here (below) is just one page of the income the USCCB is getting from you (from 2008-2016). This does not include the millions and millions of tax payer dollars received separately by individual Catholic Charities around the country.
My screenshot from USASpending.gov captures only 7 of 227 transactions.

For those of you interested in the USAID funding be sure to scroll through the pages and see how much of that money the USCCB gets!

By the way, since the Bishops are exempt from filing Form 990’s we can’t get at their salaries.