Raleigh, NC: Federal resettlement contractor goes into the half-way house business, not enough subsidized housing?

Editor’s note:  There are so many stories like this one, warm and fuzzy stories, about how volunteers are jumping in to help third world refugees arriving in America, that I couldn’t possibly post them all.  Nor, do I have time to take every one of them apart for you.  That said, please see this news from North Carolina where apparently local churches have run out of America poor and homeless people and so are doing their Christian charity for third world refugees by furnishing half-way houses for them (and for a multi-million dollar federal resettlement contractor).

Stacie Blake
Stacie Blake, a Washington DC ‘advocate’ for federal refugee contractor USCRI, gushes over new halfway house project in Raleigh, NC. http://www.refugees.org/about-us/who-we-are/our-staff/?referrer=https://www.google.com/

Here are some points to consider as you read through this puff piece (besides the fact that we can only assume there are no more needy Americans/homeless vets in Raleigh):

~USCRI (US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants) is a federal contractor (one of nine) which gets 99% of its “contributions” from you, the US taxpayer. See page 9 of a recent Form 990. They had gifts and contributions in the amount of $35,676,146 and received $35,429,570 from GOVERNMENT GRANTS (that is your money). Salaries are on page 7. They are not a poor and struggling non-profit group, but in reality a quasi-government agency.

~USCRI signs a contract (oopsy an “agreement”) with the US State Department promising to find apartments for refugees, so I am surprised that the US State Department is letting them put refugees in what amounts to half-way houses (described in this article).  Are these contractors in the real estate business now?

~The good Baptists and other church folks helping should know that their volunteer time has a dollar value placed on it for the purpose of USCRI showing the feds that they have made a financial contribution, that USCRI has ‘skin in the game.’

Likewise the donation of furniture and other donations, like clothes, have a dollar value placed on them for the purpose, again, of showing the feds that they (USCRI) are holding up their end of the highly touted “public-private partnership” (which has become a joke) as the public contribution now far outweighs any private donations as you see in their Form 990.

~North Carolina has become one of the top states to ‘welcome’ refugees (don’t ask me how it got that way, except that I think when it was first targeted, the federal contractors found no resistance and there must be labor intensive industries looking for cheap labor). We learn that Raleigh has four of the nine major federal contractors working there and ‘welcomes’ 325 refugees a year.

Read it all.
Serious students of the refugee program might want to watch Ms. Blake in this 20 minute video in which she explains that 35 years ago, before the Refugee Act of 1980, everyone did “immigration work.”  However, when the Act was signed into law it came with “money attached to it” for refugees and thus a division developed between immigration activism generally and those working on Refugees (with a capital R, she says).  Now they are coming together again, reports Ms. Blake.
I think that is obvious when you see the line-up of the big NYC pow-wow, here, to prepare for the 2016 Presidential race.

Drilling down on federal contractors that launder your money to local agencies—Twin Falls again

The spotlight in the Twin Falls, Idaho controversy shifts from the big business interests we mentioned in our previous post, to the major federal contractor that is really calling the shots — not the local College of Southern Idaho Refugee Program.
The federal resettlement contractor, located in Arlington, Virginia is known in the refugee industry as USCRI (US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants) which passes your tax dollars through to their local affiliate—CSI.

Lavinia Limon again
Learn more about Lavinia here: http://thehispanicblog.com/2012/04/14/who-is-lavinia-limon-meet-the-ceo-of-the-u-s-committee-for-refugees-immigrants/

We continue to be perplexed why there is no federal Form 990 available for CSI’s refugee program and would like to see the College’s financials to see exactly how much is coming in through their books for the refugee program.
However, we get some idea by having a look at the most recently available Form 990 for USCRI.
First, the best page of recent Form 990s is page 9.  I say recent because when I first looked at Form 990s years ago these numbers were more prominently presented on page 1.

In 2013, USCRI had an income stream as follows (in red are your tax dollars).  Numbers are rounded to save me work!

Government Grants:   $35.4 million

Other contributions: $247,000

IOM Collection Fees:  $1.7 million (Refugees are loaned tax dollars via the International Organization for Migration, another contractor, for their airfare and must return the loan, however the resettlement contractors get to keep a portion of any money they can wring out of the poor refugees. This is USCRI’s share for that year.  It really should have been all returned to the US Treasury.)

Interpreters:  $1.2 million  (This is probably mostly local tax dollars as the contractors are now in the business of providing their workers and refugees for interpretive services needed in the health care system and criminal justice system to name just two).

Childcare Service:  $350,000 (will give them the benefit of the doubt that this is private income???)

Misc. small stuff

Total income:  $39.2 million  or about 98% funded by tax dollars!

BTW, CEO Lavinia Limon earned a cool $289,192 according to this Form 990 and another Limon (relative?) earned $139,869. These salaries are in the mid-range for CEOs and employees in the humanitarian business.  One of them, in another non-profit, makes close to $500,000 a year.

Limon had served as Bill Clinton’s Director of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement having revolved in and out of government as did her right hand man Eskinder Negash (you saw him here the other day leading the charge for 100,000 Syrians to be admitted to the US this coming year).
Anyway, back to Twin Falls.  On Page 10 of the Form 990 you will see that Limon passed $22.3 million of their income (from you) to subcontractors working for them around the country.  I was going to list the Top Ten recipients of the money that one could say USCRI launders to subordinates (Does anyone in the federal government follow the money to be sure it is used properly?  Are there federal audits?), but I am too lazy.  Check the dollar figures yourself in Schedule I.
On their list of grantees is the College of Southern Idaho which received $807,380 (passed to them by USCRI).  If they had other income (gifts, fundraiser income, etc.) we have no idea because there is no Form 990 for CSI Refugee Program.
I did check to see if some of the other USCRI beneficiaries have filed separate Form 990s and the answer is yes!
So where is CSI’s?  This arrangement with the College of Southern Idaho is a strange one!
We have many posts on Ms. Limon, click here for our archive.
Note to the New York Times reporter who was in Twin Falls on Tuesday evening.  I hope you are doing your homework! The finances!  The secrecy! The revolving door! The big business interests!  The lobbying push by USCRI and others for 100,000 Syrian ‘clients’ for them! All of it!

Petition to the White House: Bring in 65,000 mostly Muslim Syrians to live permanently in US!

Editor:  I know some of you who have subscribed to RRW don’t like getting too many e-mails in one day, but honestly this issue is reaching a fever-pitch and we must at least try to keep up with the news being driven by the events in Europe and the uptick in lobbying activity by Obama’s federal refugee contractors as they push for massive numbers of refugees, especially Syrians, to be admitted to the US in fiscal year 2016 which begins on October 1 (in a few short weeks).  As a subscriber you will be getting more e-mails that are directly generated by wordpress.  Also, if you are a longtime reader and think we are repeating too much information, keep in mind that we have hundreds (yesterday thousands!) of new readers every day and they need to be brought up to speed.  ***Update*** If you would like to keep up with more news that interests me, but I can’t post, follow me on twitter, here @refugeewatcher.

Here then is additional confirmation that the nine major federal refugee contractors*** are going warp speed to press the Obama Administration to bring 65,000 Syrians to the US in the closing months of the Obama Administration.  I know the number 65,000! sounds like insanity (and it is), but remember these are hard left NGOs that are working to change American communities by colonizing them with third world ‘diversity’ and to top it off they are paid by the head to do it—by you, the US taxpayer!

They need to get as much done as possible in case a certain Republican is elected in 2016.

Yesterday we told you about the International Rescue Committee David Miliband’s press release pushing for 65,000 (and remember the UN is picking the Syrians from their camps and that so far of the 1,400 or so we have admitted since January 2012—95% are Sunni Muslims).  The percentage jumps to 97% for this year.  They are not clamoring to save Christians!

Lavinia Limon
This is Lavinia Limon the CEO of USCRI. She was Bill Clinton’s director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. To learn more about her see our many posts over the years here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/?s=Lavinia+Limon

Now we see that another contractor, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), has started a White House Petition asking Obama for 65,000 Syrians!
Time is of the essence!  Obama will be sending his annual “Determination Letter” (for FY2016) to Congress for consultation in a few short weeks.  Congress usually rubber stamps whatever the President asks.  You must make sure they don’t rubber stamp it this time!
Here is the White House Petition (no mention of persecuted Christians!):

Resettle Syrian Refugees in the U.S

By the end of April 2015 , the UN estimated 6.5 million people had been displaced in Syria, while more than +4 million refugees had fled to countries such as Lebanon (1.2 million), Jordan (608,000) and Turkey (1.75 million) and thousands more in Europe.

Germany expects to accept 800,000 asylum seekers this year, four times more than in 2014 and more than any other EU country. The US has so fare admitted less than 1000 Syrian refugees.

United States of America; the most powerful nation, the largest economy, and the champion of democracy and human rights should stands for its values .

The International Rescue Committee has argued for the U.S. to accept at least 65,000 refugees.

We are asking the President and the government to pledge to resettle at least 65,000 Syrians by 2016.

As of this writing they have 10,180 signatures and hope to reach 100,000 this month!

See our petition here.

Citizens concerned about what is being done to their communities are only asking for a say in how much resettlement they get, while the contractors are looking to virtually double the number of needy people to be “seeded” into unsuspecting towns. (In recent years, Obama has admitted about 70,000 refugees each year from all over the world, 65,000, of course, would nearly double the number for FY2016).
For our thousands of new readers, here (below) are the nine major refugee contractors that like to call themselves Voluntary Agencies but are largely paid by the US taxpayer to colonize American towns.  These nine phony non-profits (quasi government agencies!) are choosing the towns where Syrians will be resettled.
If you are affiliated with one of the six (in red) so-called faith groups, it is time to ask what the h*** are they doing to America in your name!

One final thing!  This is a list of USCRI subcontractors around the US.  Note they are the contractor operating in Twin Falls, Idaho. This petition tells you exactly what USCRI has in mind for your town—-hundreds, perhaps thousands! of Syrians for each of them! You need to look at the list!
On second thought, one more thing!  Go here to the list of 190 or so refugee subcontractors around the US.   If your town or city is on the list, or even within 100 miles of any of these offices, you are a target!
Contact local elected officials and do some preemptive community organizing and demand that your community have a say in the secretive resettlement process.
I put the word “permanently” in the title of my post because I think some new readers think that we take refugees on a temporary basis.  Make no mistake!  If the civil war in Syria ended tomorrow and the pipeline of Syrians was fully open, the resettlement would go on for years and all those getting in would be US citizens in short order.

Twin Falls, ID: Article tells us why you must demand answers BEFORE refugees begin arriving

….of course the trick will be trying to figure that out!
Twin Falls, Idaho has developed a very active and competent ‘Pocket of Resistance’ in spite of the local media’s effort to denigrate opponents of the UN/US State Department plan to further seed the community with third world refugees.  This round of controversy began in earnest back in April when the local resettlement contractor bragged to the media that Syrian (mostly Muslim) refugees were coming to Idaho.

Jessica Lilley
Jessica Lilley, USCRI field representative, obviously traveled to Twin Falls from USCRI’s Arlington, Virginia headquarters to help organize against the growing ‘pocket of resistance’ that has developed in Twin Falls. Photo: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/jessica-lilley/15/308/3b0

You will have to read the whole article from Friday, here at MagicValley.com for details on the latest news.  I can’t post much of it or the editor will have his lawyers send me another letter, but there is one important thing I want you to see.
First, here are the opening paragraphs:

TWIN FALLS • A refugee center in Twin Falls isn’t likely to go away even if the College of Southern Idaho stops sponsoring its program, officials say.

A local group — the Committee to End the CSI Refugee Center — wants a measure to shutter the center on ballots by May, says the group’s leader, Rick Martin, a widely known right-wing activist [LOL! bias alert!—ed]. They also want to recruit candidates to run for the college’s board of trustees in November 2016 with the goal of phasing out the center.

The group submitted its measure this week to the Twin Falls County Attorney, a preliminary step before the group can begin gathering signatures to get it on the ballot.

Then this!  Once they get a program up and running in your town, it becomes almost impossible to shutter it later because they are in the process of admitting family members of the first group they brought in.  The contractors are usually gleeful to shove that bit of news into critics faces.

Jessica Lilley, a program officer with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants [USCRI—ed], addressed the topic Tuesday during a meeting with the Magic Valley Refugee Advocates, a group formed this summer to support the local program.

“You already have a community of refugees here” with family members still oversees, she said, and the U.S. Department of State will want an agency in Twin Falls to fill the gap as the relatives of refugees resettle in the United States.

She goes on to threaten that they will just drop them off in neighboring towns, but they will end up in Twin Falls anyway.
Continue reading here.

This is why any of you wondering if you might be a target for refugee resettlement need to do your sleuthing and demand a public discussion of the plan coming from Washington BEFORE refugees arrive.

Remember you have a right to know what the UN/US State Department has in the works for your community and they will not be giving your town any advance warning!  It will be up to you to expose the plan.

How might you learn that refugees are (secretly!) destined for your town or city?
First, go here and see if you are located anywhere near the 190 resettlement offices.  If you are anywhere within a hundred miles of one of the government contractor offices, your town is fair game.
If you know anyone in local elected government, call them now and ask if they have heard any news about refugees coming (the feds are getting desperate for fresh territory!).  By law, the resettlement contractor is supposed to “consult” local elected officials, but it might be the most cursory of contacts.
Then you need to check with two local agencies—the health department and the school system—the first two places, especially right now as schools open, where some local official might have the inside scoop.
Another tip-off might be the soon-to-be open new industry, such as a meat packing plant, which wants to employ cheap immigrant laborers.  Federal contractors like USCRI work closely with not just manufacturing type industries or the food industry, but with the hotel industry as well.  They like to give the impression that this is all about ‘humanitarianism,’ but it isn’t.  That is just the cover! Frankly it is ALL ABOUT THE MONEY and about changing America demographically.
For background on Twin Falls, go here.  And, to contact Mr. Martin, see the website, Magic Valley Refugee Watch, here.
For more on USCRI….
See USCRI’s website here.  The organization is headed by Lavinia Limon who was Bill Clinton’s Director of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.  Limon is one of several contractors who have moved in and out of government over their careers resettling refugees.  If you want to know more about her, click here, for our Limon archive.  One of my favorite Limon posts is this one from 2008 when the US State Department did shutter the USCRI subcontractor office in Waterbury, CT for not taking good care of the refugees they had been paid to take care of!

Idaho legislator calls for more transparency by resettlement agency in Twin Falls

I have to laugh!  The headline in the newspaper (MagicValley.com), that has so far not wanted to present all the facts about the UN/US State Department Refugee Resettlement plan for Twin Falls, titles the op-ed from Rep. Stephen Hartgen (R-Twin Falls) ‘Hartgen: Defunding Refugee Program Isn’t the Answer.

hartgen
Rep. Stephen Hartgen. http://www.stephenhartgen.com/

It could more accurately have been entitled:  ‘Hartgen: concerned for security with refugee program, demands transparency of resettlement contractor.’
Hartgen is on the right track! Continue to demand transparency!  In my experience the federal government and its contractors do not want you to know all the facts!

If Rep. Hartgen wants transparency, begin by asking for the FY 2016 Abstract!

At this very moment CSI Refugee Center is finishing up (or has finished) its R & P Abstract for FY2016.  It is a document that should be made available to you, to everyone in Twin Falls, BEFORE it goes to Washington as part of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants’ (USCRI’s) federal funding wish list.
The Abstract will tell you how many refugees and from which parts of the world USCRI/CSI is looking to get them from in FY’16 which begins October 1, 2015, and it will tell what amenities the community in Twin Falls is offering the refugees (you might be surprised by what goodies you are providing refugees).
USCRI is the parent organization of the CSI Refugee Center.  It is USCRI that sits down with the US State Department and decides which refugees are sent to Twin Falls.  Jannus Inc. is included in the discussion.
Idaho is a Wilson-Fish state and as such the decisions that are made exclude Idaho elected officials such as Rep. Hartgen from the decision-making process.  Jannus, Inc., another non-profit group, acts for the state of Idaho.
And, one more thing.  Rep. Hartgen needs to acquire the CSI Refugee Center’s federal tax form—Form 990—which they must be hiding somewhere!

Here is a small snip of what Rep. Hartgen said (I dare not post more or the editor will sic its lawyers on me, as they did here):

Rather, I believe the CSI Board, which consists of locally-elected officials, and the college administration should go further in explaining to the community the center’s operation and in releasing documents on its various aspects and financial affairs. This would go a long way to alleviate concerns about the center and the plan to bring refugees from the Middle East to settle in southern Idaho.

[….]

….The proposed introduction of refugees from Syria has raised many concerns, and not only from Mr. Martin and his group. For one, the world today seems to be a more volatile place of war, insurrections, ideological movements and violence. The Middle East seethes with such incidents and it is not unreasonable for Americans to be concerned for our own country’s security.

Second, many people feel the U.S. government does not seem particularly competent in many tasks involving homeland security. The vetting of refugees does not seem to many to be thorough enough, and the government’s response seems to be little more than “we’re doing the best we can.” Public statements from extremist Islamic group like ISIS about how they intend to use settlement programs to infiltrate America only heighten such concerns. Attacks on American soil lead to further wariness.

Thirdly, a general suspicion of the current Obama administration’s competence and motives is now pervasive among millions of Americans, who simply no longer believe the administration has America’s best interests at heart.

Continue reading here.  (MagicValley.com wants you to see its ads).
Again, Rep. Hartgen is on the right track and should be encouraged!  In fact, he should be encouraged to introduce legislation to get rid of the Wilson-Fish program for Idaho that leaves state elected officials out of the decision-making process.
Incidentally, I don’t know of another resettlement agency that is intimately entwined with a college as this one is, do any of you know of another one? What is in it for the college?  Are they making money off of the refugee program?
This latest round of controversy in Twin Falls began here (back in April) when CSI got all excited by the prospect of Syrian (mostly Muslim) refugees coming to town.
We have written many posts on Idaho, go here for more.
Twin Falls has developed as a Pocket of Resistance’ and concerned citizens there have begun going door to door to educate their fellow citizens about the CSI Refugee Center.  They (Committee to End the CSI Refugee Center) also have a very new website!