Lutherans announce departure of CEO Hartke amid claims of financial irregularities, poor management

02/14/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Linda Hartke is the second refugee contracting agency CEO in a matter of months to step down apparently involuntarily from the leadership of one of nine federal refugee contractors.***

She follows Lavinia Limon (USCRI) who was, we heard from sources, “pushed out” last October (see here). No explanation was ever given about Limon’s departure, but it came at about the same time that investigations into LIRS had commenced.
This is what Michael Patrick Leahy is reporting at Breitbart this morning:

Linda Hartke is out as CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, three months after Breitbart News first reported on an internal investigation into claims of financial irregularities and harassment at the embattled non-profit under her leadership.

“Today, Linda Hartke, President and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), announced her departure from LIRS after eight years of service,” LIRS said in a memorandum sent to its donors, Lutheran congregations, and the U.S. government on Tuesday.

lirs-leadership-acadmey (1) — Hartke and LIRS brought refugees to lobby Congress last June for more refugees and more funding. On our dime? https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/06/26/refugee-contractors-brought-refugee-lobbyists-to-washington-again-last-week/

A source familiar with the operations with LIRS tells Breitbart News that the Board of Directors fired Hartke on Thursday of last week, a consequence of the findings of the internal investigation into her tenure as CEO.

[….]

“The issues related to Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIaRS) are widespread but are rooted in the main areas of financial mismanagement and the incompetence of leadership,” a source familiar with the operations of the refugee resettlement industry told Breitbart News in November, adding that “seven key areas” were the focus of the internal investigation:

Financial Mismanagement

Failure to Address Financial Irregularities Discovered by Independent Audits

Wasteful Spending

Concealment of Taxable Income

Timesheet Fraud

Budget Grant Fraud

Large Severance and Settlement Payouts to Avoid Public and Board Reporting

The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) has contracted with LIRS and eight other voluntary agencies (VOLAGs) to resettle refugees admitted into the United States under the Refugee Admissions Program. Over the past several decades, federal payments to these VOLAGs have averaged about $1 billion annually.

Virtually all of LIRS’s revenues come from the federal government.

Continue reading here and see LIRS leadership efforts to make her departure sound so warm and fuzzy.
Yes, LIRS is a federally funded resettlement agency that I have followed for years sucking down on average 95% and up of its funding from you, the US taxpayers (see my most recent accounting, here). We sure hope that in addition to the Dept. of Health and Human Services looking into its grants management that the US State Department is doing the same! And, where the h*** is Congress?

Not such a happy place to work!

Just yesterday, I came across the Glassdoor and got a few screenshots of comments from employees that let you know what an internal mess was going on there in recent months.
Here are just three of those. (When you read these, consider that all this was going on while you paid for it including Hartke’s over $300,000 annual income/related income package.)

Screenshot (1273) — Yikes! Unkindest cut of all—likening her to Trump!

LIRS near you? Then this is what you must do….

Be sure to go here and see LIRS’s subcontractors working in 23 states. See if you have an affiliate near you. It is up to you to make sure your people know about the turmoil at the top of this food chain! LIRS headquarters is where your local agency gets most of their funds. And, it is LIRS headquarters that works with the US State Department to choose which refugees are to be placed in your towns and cities.

*** These are the nine federal contractors paid by you to place refugees in to hundreds of towns and cities via their subcontractors (see directory of offices).
They sit down with the Dept. of State every week in Washington to divvy-up the incoming refugees to be distributed (unbeknownst to you) to your towns. Although, due to the Trump slowdown, there are fewer to divvy-up each week.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place those refugees and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.

Center for Immigration Studies: Feds have long ago usurped States' Rights when it comes to refugee resettlement

01/24/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Don Barnett writing at the Center for Immigration Studies today explained in detail how states are forced to accept and pay for third world refugees admitted through the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) to the US and sent to 49 states.
Read this (these are the opening points in the ‘backgrounder’) and then ask: Where is Congress?
(Emphasis below is mine):

The State of Tennessee filed a lawsuit against the federal government in March 2017 claiming that the refugee resettlement program was an imposition by Washington over which the state had no control.1 The lawsuit is pending, but it highlights a deep problem with how the refugee resettlement program has evolved since the passage of the Refugee Act in 1980.

tenth amendment — The Refugee Act of 1980 has been so modified by illegal federal regulations that the states have lost their ability to control their own budgets.

This Backgrounder traces the history of the federal-state relationship regarding refugees, identifies flaws, and proposes solutions. Among the findings:

~Repealing regulation 45 CFR 400.301 could have the immediate effect of allowing states to withdraw from the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) and end initial resettlement activities in the state.2

~Today, states that withdraw from the program find the program continues in the state with the potential to operate on a larger scale than before withdrawal and with no state participation.

~As implemented, states have a limited and ill-defined role in the federal USRAP.

~Congress has shirked its responsibility to fully fund the refugee resettlement program.

~The federal government has shifted much of the fiscal burden of refugee resettlement to states. Three years of reimbursement for the state portion of welfare programs used by refugees in the state, such as Medicaid, TANF and SSI, was authorized by the 1980 Refugee Act. This support was ended entirely.

~The Act authorized Refugee Medical Assistance (RMA) and Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA) for three years for refugees who do not qualify for cash welfare and Medicaid. This support was gradually scaled back; today RCA and RMA are available for only eight months.

~This cost shift to the states means the federal government is, in effect, using state funds to operate a federal program. In cases where a state asks to withdraw from the program, continuation of the program means the state has lost its ability to control its own budget and is deprived of its sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment.

~Consultation among “stakeholders” about where refugees are to be settled is ill-defined in the USRAP. At times there is no meaningful consultation with state authorities.

~The federal government uses a legally questionable regulation (45 CFR 400.301) rather than statutory law to allow private non-profits to operate in a state where the state has asked to withdraw from the program.

~By one reading of the law, prior to 45 CFR 400.301, there was no authority to resettle refugees in states that chose to withdraw from the program. In other words, prior to 1994 when 45 CFR 400.301 was introduced, the states were — knowingly or not — participating in and paying for a voluntary program from which they had every right to withdraw at any time with the expectation that no refugees would be resettled in the state.

Serious students of the USRAP, continue reading here.
And, I repeat! If there is no reform of the entire US Refugee Admissions Program in the next three years, simply reducing the numbers as the Trump Administration is doing is meaningless in the long run.
The President can and must, as part of any immigration reform, issue regulations in keeping with the original law wherever possible, and, or, tell Congress to rewrite the law if it is in our national interest to continue it at all.

If no permanent fix….

…..when President Trump’s term ends, refugee agencies and advocates will push for even larger numbers of refugees to make up for what they will dub the lost Trump years.

Looking for something to do? Get this information into the hands of your state governors and legislators!

Refugee contractors planning 'Week of Action' against Trump

01/17/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Where is Congress? The US taxpayer should not have to pay ‘non-profit’ groups who engage in Leftwing community agitation against the President!

Cut their funding, for goodness sake!

Adding insult to injury they are aligning themselves with the hardest of the Hard Left like CAIR, the ACLU, Indivisible, and Move-on.org. in the upcoming #NoMuslimBanEver event!
Just now I did my regular visit to the Refugee Council USA (lobbying consortium for refugee agencies) website and see this huge banner headline:
Screenshot (150)

We told you about their anti-Trump rally last fall, here. Now they plan a week of it in various locations around the country.
nomuslimban ever
And, RCUSA directs people to this ACTION TOOLKIT.
You need to go to the toolkit and take action too—just use their model!
Also, see if a rally is being planned near you, if so, counter it in some way! The important thing, no matter how you do it, is to get the message to your fellow patriotic citizens that these groups (including many of your own faith-groups) do not speak for you!
Here are the opening paragraphs of the toolkit that is obviously supported by the nine federally funded refugee contractors*** that make up the guts of RCUSA. (Remember Church World Service is their piggy-bank)

Screenshot (152) — I could be wrong, but as of this writing I think they have left this open in edit, if so, have fun! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uj1iUjNh-5QcJEaK9G4pP2k80Ef6EPzCC1X-GGHr7rw/edit

***The federal refugee contractors that are all members of the secretive RCUSA.
Readers, you have two choices: speak up or quit your church!
If you are a member of one of these faith groups (btw, many mainstream Protestant churches are member communions of Church World Service) and disagree with them joining CAIR etc. against the President, you must start to speak up in your church or synagogue! The cultural Marxists knew they had to get to the churches to change America and they are doing it!
The number in parenthesis after each is the amount of their income provided by you (from the US Treasury) in 2015.
It must end! Are they going to be ‘humanitarian’ groups helping refugees or are they Leftwing community agitators? If Anti-Trump community organizers, cut them loose from the federal teat!
They can have their free speech, but not with our money!

This post is filed in my ‘What you can do’ category, here. You will find lots of ideas you can do from the comfort of your homes!

Utah: Struggling refugees now look on refugee camps in Africa with longing

11/13/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“Life got harder for me when I came to America…Most of the time, I wish I could go back to the refugee camp in Africa.”

Congolize refugee

Update November 15th: See how many from the DR Congo we have brought in already, here.

This story represents one of my major reasons for writing RRW for the last 10 years.

The do-gooders want ever-greater numbers of refugees admitted to the US despite the fact that many will live in poverty while many of the CEOs of the major resettlement agencies are raking in large 6-figure salaries.

Damn it! If you ‘humanitarians’ care so much for the world’s downtrodden, why do you need to be making salaries in excess of $200,000, $300,000, $500,000 largely funded by the US Treasury?

Nigeria Refugees Miliband — For the camera, IRC CEO David Miliband shows compassion for children in Nigeria, but where is the compassion for refugees his organization dropped off in Utah and are now living in squalor or are homeless. Doing well by doing good, Miliband makes $591,846 annually. Photo: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3349940/Refugee-kids-bring-David-Miliband-knees-Nigeria.html

And, readers, it isn’t refugees like these in Utah that should be criticized or castigated (they were sold a bill of goods), it is the refugee industry (the globalists) that obviously turns a blind eye to the refugees they brought in previous years.

Instead of admitting only the number of refugees communities can afford or otherwise accommodate, the nine contractors*** always want more. Why?

Because the newly arriving refugees bring-in money by the head to the resettlement agency and that is the primary reason they are so angry at Trump. He has reduced the number of their paying “clients.”

From Deseret News where the story features refugees from the DR Congo.

For new readers, back in 2013, here, Obama’s State Department said it would help clean out UN camps in Africa by bringing 50,000 from the DR Congo to Anytown, USA. We may have already exceeded that number.

When he felt hopeless, the Bible’s words lifted him up and renewed his faith that God had a plan for him. He prayed that the Lord would deliver his family to America.

If he ever made it there, he imagined, he would have a home of his own with a large backyard, where he could tend a garden and watch his children play.

Instead, this is Ngunza’s reality: He lives in a tiny, roach-infested apartment with his wife and 11 children. His job slicing meat at a local deli pays just above minimum wage, which barely covers his monthly rent, and leaves him precious little to feed and clothe his family.

Instead of dreams, these days Ngunza only has fears – that he won’t be able to provide for his family’s basic needs and still keep a roof over their head.

“Just like in the camp,” he says, “I feel trapped all over again.”

Where are you Senator Mike Lee? Why don’t you take the lead and call for an investigation of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program!

[….]

On its face, the resettlement program is a feel-good story, a symbol of America’s commitment as a global citizen, and for refugees, the epitome of the American Dream.

[….]

Utah is the only state that allocates funding for resettlement agencies – the International Rescue Committee and Catholic Community Services – to offer case management services for a full two-year period. During this time, they provide refugees with job training, housing placement and English language lessons, and more, all with the goal of helping refugees reach self-sufficiency as quickly as possible.

Nevertheless, despite the best of intentions, the Deseret News has found that many refugees are living well below the poverty line. Some are facing eviction. Others have become homeless.

In part, that’s because it is very difficult for arriving refugees to find jobs that pay a living wage and housing they can afford.

It is not the Mormon church doing the resettling in Utah, it is Catholic Charities and the International Rescue Committee (IRC is headed by David Miliband, a Brit, who pulls down a cool $500,000 plus a year salary).

Aiden Batar, director of Migration and Refugee Services at Catholic Community Services, says he does not know how many refugees in Utah are homeless or living in poverty. Neither does Poulin with the International Rescue Committee. [Of course they don’t—see no evil!….–ed]

[….]

At the Road Home shelter, the Deseret News met a Congolese refugee family of 11 evicted from their apartment three months ago who have been unable to find another place to live. At an apartment complex in South Salt Lake, a single mother named Feliz, also from the Congo, has been unemployed for two months after losing her job as a maid at a downtown hotel, and she has struggled to find other work.

“Life got harder for me when I came to America,” says Feliz. “I constantly worry that I will be evicted and my family will end up on the street. Most of the time, I wish I could go back to the refugee camp in Africa.”

It is a huge article, go here for more.

Dear Donald, maybe it’s time for that repatriation fund we talked about years ago. Set up financing for unhappy refugees to go home! LOL! take it out of the salaries of the top executives of the refugee industry!

What you can do! If you live in Utah (or otherwise have contact with the Senator), call on Senator Mike Lee to launch an investigation!

***The nine federal contractors that monopolize all resettlement in the US are below. Go here to see a recent accounting of their finances and salaries.

100 members of Congress sign letter to Prez: we want 110,000 refugees!

11/06/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This was posted a couple of weeks ago, but I hadn’t seen it until today when the IRC (a resettlement contractor) was crowing about it on twitter.

Yasmine taeb — Friends lobbyist Yasmine Taeb came to her job for the Quakers from the Center for American Progress (Podesta!). No surprise. https://www.fcnl.org/people/yasmine-taeb

The top story at google on the letter is at the Friends Committee.

If you didn’t know, the Friends (aka Quakers) are very pro-more-immigration. They are involved in defending the Palestinians in the Middle East as well (story for another day).

News from the Friends Committee on National Legislation. I’m sure you might have guessed if your member of Congress was on the letter, but we are grateful to the ‘Friends’ for listing them for us.

In response to the Trump administration’s announcement of a historically low refugee admissions goal for 2018, over 100 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to the White House calling on the administration to increase the refugee admissions goal from 45,000 to 110,000. Additionally, this letter expresses concern over a proposed “assimilation standard” for refugees.
FCNL Legislative Director for Human Rights and Civil Liberties Yasmine Taeb made the following statement….

The letter to the president can be found below. [I did not count the signatures, they said 100.—ed]

Dear President Trump,

We write to express our deep disappointment in your decision to set the Presidential Determination (PD) for Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2018 at 45,000. We strongly urge you to reconsider this decision and increase the refugee admission level to 110,000 for Fiscal Year 2018. Further, we are alarmed by proposed changes to the resettlement process to require refugees to meet an assimilation standard and ask you brief us at least 30 days before any such changes are made.

As you know, the world is in the midst of the largest refugee crisis in history. An unprecedented 65.6 million people across the globe have been forcibly displaced from their homes because of violence, persecution, and war. Approximately 22.5 million of those individuals are refugees, and more than half are children. The U.S. has a moral imperative to welcome refugees, who are the most thoroughly vetted people who enter our country. America taking a leadership role during this crisis bolsters our credibility as a nation of immigrants founded on the promise to welcome those seeking a better life.

As both Republican and Democratic administrations have confirmed, the United States screens refugees more stringently than any other traveler allowed to enter the United States. The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) has safely and successfully resettled more than three million refugees from around the world to American communities across the country since 1975. Refugee applicants must undergo a robust and thorough screening process that takes roughly two years and involves our nation’s top security and counter-terror experts. The exhaustive vetting process includes checking fingerprints and other biometric data against terrorist and criminal databases and multiple interviews through multiple Federal agencies.

Since the enactment of the 1980 Refugee Act, the average annual goal for refugee admissions has been 95,000. In Fiscal Year 2016, the U.S. resettled approximately 85,000 refugees, and the Presidential Determination for Fiscal Year 2017 was 110,000. During the worst refugee crisis in the world, these resettlement numbers pale in comparison to the support our allies are providing and our moral leadership commands. Since Executive Order 13769 was signed, the number of refugees coming to the United States each month has dropped precipitously. Australia, Norway, Canada, Sweden, and Finland all accept more refugees per capita than the United States, with Canada pledging to accept 300,000 refugees in 2017. Failing to do our part to alleviate this global crisis undermines our leadership, diplomacy, and national security.

In addition to the U.S.’s moral responsibility, supporting our allies and partners, whose resources are being strained by hosting large numbers of refugees, promotes security and stability at home and abroad. Twenty national security leaders, including Henry Kissinger, Michael Chertoff, Madeleine Albright, and Leon Panetta wrote a letter in 2015 noting that “resettlement initiatives help advance U.S. national security interests by supporting the stability of our allies and partners that are struggling to host large numbers of refugees.”[1] By doing more to host and assist refugees, the United States would help safeguard the stability of nations like Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, which are hosting the vast majority of Syrian refugees. This can help reduce regional instability and potential for conflict and terrorism. Additionally, severely limiting the number of refugees the U.S. admits perpetuates extremist organizations’ false narrative of a war between Islam and the West.

In order to make clear that the United States rejects this worldview, we must bolster our refugee program by supporting the world’s most vulnerable people, without discriminating based on religion or nationality. As a nation of immigrants, our country has a long history of welcoming newcomers of all different backgrounds. Any efforts to require refugees meet an assimilation standard misunderstands the purpose of our resettlement program which is to assist the most vulnerable. This is especially true if no additional assistance is provided to ensure refugees are successfully integrated into the fabric of our nation.

The 45,000 PD for Fiscal Year 2018 is woefully insufficient when compared to the millions of people who have been forced to flee their home countries. Establishing a PD of 45,000 is the lowest refugee admissions goal in our nation’s history. This would prevent tens of thousands of people from enriching American communities while seeking safety, protection, and an opportunity to provide a better future for themselves and their families in the United States.

The current global humanitarian crisis requires strong American leadership. To reflect that, we request that you reconsider and increase the PD for refugee admissions level to 110,000 for Fiscal Year 2018. Thank you for your attention to this matter. We look forward to working together with you and your Administration on this critical issue.

Sincerely,

Eddie Bernice Johnson

Donald S. Beyer, Jr.

Earl Blumenauer

Lisa Blunt Rochester

Suzanne Bonamici

Robert A. Brady

Anthony Brown

Michael Capuano

Salud Carbajal

Tony Cárdenas

André Carson

Judy Chu

David N. Cicilline

Katherine Clark

Yvette D. Clarke

Steve Cohen

John Conyers, Jr.

J. Luis Correa

Joe Courtney

Joe Crowley

Elijah E. Cummings

Danny K. Davis

Peter DeFazio

Diana DeGette

John K. Delaney (My rep who has announced he is running for Prez in 2020!)

Mark DeSaulnier

Ted Deutch

Debbie Dingell

Lloyd Doggett

Michael Doyle

Keith Ellison

Eliot L. Engel

Anna G. Eshoo

Adriano Espaillat

Elizabeth H. Esty

Dwight Evans

Bill Foster

Lois Frankel

Ruben Gallego

John Garamendi

Jimmy Gomez

Josh Gottheimer

Gene Green

Raúl Grijalva

Luis V. Gutiérrez

Colleen Hanabusa

Alcee L. Hastings

Brian Higgins

James Himes

Eleanor Holmes Norton

Pramila Jayapal

Hakeem Jeffries

Marcy Kaptur

William R. Keating

Robin L. Kelly

Joseph P. Kennedy

Ro Khanna

Daniel T. Kildee

James Langevin

Rick Larsen

John B. Larson

Brenda L. Lawrence

Barbara Lee

Sander Levin

Ted W. Lieu

Zoe Lofgren

Alan Lowenthal

Stephen Lynch

Carolyn B. Maloney

Doris Matsui

Betty McCollum

James P. McGovern

Gwen Moore

Seth Moulton

Jerrold Nadler

Grace Napolitano

Donald Norcross

Beto O’Rourke

Frank Pallone, Jr.

Jimmy Panetta

Bill Pascrell, Jr.

Donald Payne, Jr.

Ed Perlmutter

Scott Peters

Chellie Pingree

Mark Pocan

Jared Polis

David Price

Mike Quigley

Jamie Raskin

Ben Ray Lujan

Lucille Roybal-Allard

Bobby Rush

Tim Ryan

John Sarbanes

Jan Schakowsky

Adam Schiff

Bradley S. Schneider

Robert C. “Bobby” Scott

José E. Serrano

Carol Shea-Porter

Albio Sires

Louise Slaughter

Adam Smith

Darren Soto

Eric Swalwell

Mark Takano

Dina Titus

Paul Tonko

Norma J. Torres

Niki Tsongas

Juan Vargas

Marc Veasey

Filemon Vela

Nydia Velázquez

Peter J. Visclosky

Timothy Walz

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Bonnie Watson Coleman

Peter Welch

John Yarmuth

Looking for something to do today? If your representative is on the list, tell him or her what you think of the 110,000 refugee wish list.

It doesn’t matter if they don’t listen to you, do it anyway. They need to know that signing a letter like this is not a political freebie!

If you have no rep. on the list, call or write to Delaney!