Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains largely funded by government contracts

10/29/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Since we are closely following the controversy in Wyoming (see our previous post), let’s have a look at who exactly has expressed an interest in being the federal government contractor wishing to do business and resettle clients in Wyoming—Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains (LFSRM) sometimes known as Lutheran Family Services Colorado. (Why they need to operate under two names is beyond me!).

Rocky Mountain ‘Lutheran’ CEO Barclay makes just short of $200,000 in salary and benefits.

Let’s not tip our hand prematurely!

We first became aware of their role when it was learned that officials there were unhappy to be prematurely mentioned in publicity surrounding Wyoming Governor Mead’s proposed plan. They wanted the plans for Wyoming to be kept secret from the general public until they were further along.

“The largest refugee resettlement agency in the Rocky Mountain region.” they have “offices located in Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Greeley/Evans and Fort Morgan, CO and Albuquerque, NM, and services provided in Wyoming, Montana and Western Nebraska.”

Although they do other work for children and families, they had time to resettle a whopping 1,567 refugees in FY12-13. Learn more here.

LFSRM is a subcontractor of the much larger Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS) headquartered in Baltimore, MD. Just the other day we noted that LIRS has taken down its reference to an office in Casper, WY:

Note that in this post we wrote in July, LIRS linked a Casper, Wyoming office (Gillette and Casper are two cities mentioned as possible resettlement sites). However, if you go to LIRS website today the link has been erased. Have they given up? Or, are they just laying low until the political storm blows over?

Could they possibly have already been bringing in those Somalis we wrote about here?

Funded almost entirely with taxpayer dollars!

Lutheran Family Services RM is not a privately-funded church group, it is a quasi-government agency which is 84% funded by tax dollars.

Let’s visit their most recently available Form 990 here.

Their gross revenue was $12,915,054

$10,812,318 comes from government contracts.

Although they don’t list grants they do list government contracts on page 9 (they took the word “government” out in this Form 990, but I checked previous ones to be sure in which they did categorize the majority of their income as from “government contracts.”). LOL! I think these so-called ‘non-profits’ are increasingly sensitive and don’t want you to know how much they depend on tax dollars. This is a business not a charity!

When you visit that previous Form 990, check out the big jump Barclay’s salary took in just two years from 2010-2012!

CEO James Barclay makes a cool $199,330 in salary and benefits and 4 other top executives are in the 6-figure category including James Horan who runs their refugee branch. (page 8). Barclay made $172,267 two years earlier.

Then here are some of their expenses (rounded numbers). Without your cash they could not exist!

Nearly $5 million in salary, benefits and employment expenses were paid out.

Occupancy and other office expenses approached $900,000.

$259,000 went for travel expenses (what for just the Rocky Mountain region?).

$55,000 was spent for conferences.

And, they even spent $32,000 lobbying (for what? more money from government?).

Cheyenne, WY: Citizens to rally for states rights and against federal government sending refugees to Wyoming, Saturday Nov. 1

10/29/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Show your support, meet in beautiful Cheyenne, Wyoming on Saturday November 1st! http://www.cheyenne.org/listings/index.cfm?listingID=79

As regular readers know, we have been writing on and off for months about the federal government and a Lutheran resettlement contractor with plans to resettle refugees in the last state in the nation without a formal resettlement program.

Over a year ago, Republican Governor Matt Mead appeared very hot on the idea, here, when he sent a letter to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement stating that the State of Wyoming has elected to pursue a resettlement program.

See our complete archive on the fire storm his letter created by clicking here.

This is a press release making the rounds in Wyoming for Saturday’s rally. If you can’t attend, find other ways to lend support.

CONTACT: Info@CitizensProtectingWyoming.org 307 . 441 . 4230

CAPITOL STEPS RALLY – SAT., NOV. 1st, 11-1:30 & EDUC. EVENT – 7pm

______________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NOV. 1st CHEYENNE CAPITOL RALLY – REFUGEE IMPACT ON WYOMING?

Casper, Wyoming – October 28, 2014 – Citizens Protecting Wyoming (CPW) – a non-partisan non-profit – calls on elected public servants and candidates listed on the November ballot, to address and listen to citizen concerns about “any” Wyoming Refugee Resettlement Program (RRP) or plans.

A rally dedicated to this purpose is scheduled from 11:00am -1:30pm on Saturday, November 1st by the State Capitol steps, followed by a Honk & Wave and a 7:00 pm educational event.

Mike Ellmore, a CPW representative from Gillette stated, “Concerns we are hearing across the state range from refugee problems communities around the US are having, including health, safety, cultural conflicts, drains on welfare, medical, community and educational programs.”

Don Barnett, the keynote speaker flying in for the rally and evening educational/organizing event said, “The program (RRP) places significant unfunded costs on state and local taxpayers in the form of social services which must be provided.

The recent US Ebola outbreaks have sparked renewed attention in Governor Mead’s September 2013 letter to Washington, D.C. committing, “The State of Wyoming has elected to pursue …. and participate in that program … .” (http://refugeemead.com).

Foregoing pubic knowledge, input or agreement, Mead is set to allow Wyoming to become the last state in the US to have a RRP forced upon the citizens by the Federal government implemented United Nations programs.

In a March 2014 public letter (bit.ly/OuI4vE), Mead states that Wyomingites would be involved in RRP discussions and decisions and that, “I welcome the participation of all citizens.” After seven months of Mead not providing a public venue, the CPW is responding to the growing concerns voiced by Wyomingites by facilitating the citizen-government dialogue on Nov. 1st at the State Capitol (details below.)

Ace Halstead, CPW Public Relations, reported, “Wyomingites want the truth. Mead’s office has recently responded with a RRP “Fact Sheet” which demonstrates his apparent continued avoidance of actual factual matters of this issue. This shows me a lack of transparency and serves only to misdirect from reality and create additional unnecessary confusion.”

Karen Bogart, CPW of Casper noted, “A permit was secured for the 11:00am -1:30pm rally on Saturday, Nov. 1st at the State Capitol steps (Updates here: http://on.fb.me/1wb30Ki). RSVP for a 7:00pm Educational – Motivation – Citizen Training is also offered (on.fb.me/1vyxw25). Discounted motel rooms are available. More event/hotel details: www.CitizensProtectingWyoming.org. Contact/Donations: info@CitizensProtectingWyoming.org

###

Wyoming citizen asks county health trustees to oppose refugee resettlement for the state

10/27/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Why introduce the program to Wyoming when states with refugee resettlement are having problems? That is the gist of what Michael Elmore, a representative of a citizens’ group, told Campbell County Health trustees last week.

Why talk to a hospital board? Because county health departments/hospitals are on the front lines of taking care of newly arrived refugees with myriad health problems.

Just this morning I see a report from Philadelphia where Children’s Hospital is reporting on the Burmese refugees the hospital must clear of health problems at taxpayer expense (or is it at the expense of the hospital?):

The CHOP (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) Refugee Program works with three of the 3 resettlement agencies to care for Burmese children who come to Philadelphia within the first 30 to 60 days of their time in the U.S. CHOP physicians perform physicals, give immunizations and ensure the children will have no medical barriers to enrolling in school.

Regular readers know that we have been following the controversy in Wyoming for months.

In September of 2013, Republican governor Matt Mead wrote a letter to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement expressing his intention of welcoming a resettlement program and thus making Wyoming the 50th state in the nation to invite in the UN, the US State Department, the US Dept. of Health and Human Services and a Lutheran resettlement contractor to change the demographic makeup of the state.

For new readers, see our entire archive on the Wyoming controversy, here. Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains*** wanted to keep the plan a secret until it was further along.

The latest from the Gillette News Record:

A representative for Citizens Protecting Wyoming, a group opposed to the state looking into adoption of a foreign refugee program, took his argument to the Campbell County Health trustees on Thursday.

During the public comment time, Gillette native Mike Elmore told trustees he hoped they would “share some of my sentiments on this” after he filled them in on the issue.

[….]

The U.S. Department of Health’s Refugee Resettlement Program “offers support for refugee victims seeking haven within the United States — including victims of human trafficking, those seeking asylum from persecution and survivors of tortures of war,” he said.

While it’s a nice idea, Elmore said the program is “a giant money-making machine using religious organizations, under the guise of federal contractors and a nonprofit organization.”

Six of the nine agencies that carry out the refugee resettlement work in the United States “like to paint themselves as faith-based charity organizations … affiliated with Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopal churches, along with two evangelical groups and one group even tied to reformed Judaism,” he said.

[….]

Elmore said these agencies rake in millions of dollars in federal grant money each year while pretending to be nonprofit organizations.

Because of that alleged corruption in the system, it’s impossible for state agencies to approach the issue of refugees in the proper way, he said.

Elmore said Mead wants to bring a federally funded program to the state, but that decision eventually will place more tax burden onto Wyoming citizens. It will also bring health impacts, such as the spread of diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis, hepatitis B and gonorrhea, he said.

Wyoming is the only state without a refugee program, but “49 states are in and 49 states have problems,” Elmore said, adding that he asks all members on the hospital board to write a letter to the governor asking him to not bring such a program to Wyoming. [The Governor does not have the final say, thumbing their noses at states’ rights, the feds and their contractors can just open up shop anyway. However a lack of “welcome” from government officials will have a chilling effect on any plan.—ed]

***Lutheran Social Services is a subcontractor of Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS). Note that in this post we wrote in July, LIRS linked a Casper, Wyoming office (Gillette and Casper are two cities mentioned as possible resettlement sites). However, if you go to LIRS website today the link has been erased. Have they given up? Or, are they just laying low until the political storm blows over?

Resettlement plans are very often being driven by federal contractors (like LIRS) looking for fresh territory.

WND: Will Wyoming cave to wishes of Governor and invite refugee agency to set up shop?

10/06/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As regular readers know Wyoming is the only state in the nation that does not have a refugee resettlement contractor working to bring in third-worlders.

At the same time the US State Department, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHS) and their contractors are always scouting out fresh territory as they wear out their welcome in some overloaded locations where they say “pockets of resistance” have grown.

Recently the Wall Street Journal reported that Somalis were moving to Wyoming anyway—looking for greener pastures for social services. We reported that news here.

Now, World Net Daily’s Leo Hohmann (see our archive of some of his detailed coverage of the refugee program by clicking here, Hohmann was one of the first major reporters to reveal how much federal money the “church” contractors are receiving) has done an investigative report on a subject of great interest to RRW—the plans by Republican Governor Matt Mead to bring diversity to Wyoming.

However, when Wyomingites got word of the plan all hell broke loose and the Governor is now reportedly just “exploring” the plan to turn over some of Wyoming’s sovereignty to the feds.

Here is Hohmann’s report posted last night:

The Republican governor of Wyoming, the only state that does not participate in a federal program to resettle United Nations refugees, is considering jumping into the fray despite recent problems with Muslim refugees becoming radicalized in Minnesota and Massachusetts.

Gov. Matt Mead has requested information on the U.N. program that assigns refugees displaced by war and ethnic conflicts to various host countries. The U.S. accepts more foreign refugees than all the rest of the world’s countries combined, a State Department official told WND, and many of them come from worn-torn Middle Eastern countries like Iraq and Somalia.

WND reported last month that a new wave of Muslim refugees will be coming to American cities soon from Syria, up to 75,000 of them over the next five years.

The fact that Mead is checking into the program has fueled controversy in the nation’s least-populated state, which is also 85 percent white.

Facebook pages have popped up and local newspaper editorial pages have been abuzz with questions about Mead’s decision to “explore” the possibility of opening an international refugee resettlement office in Gillette that would be operated by a Lutheran agency serving as a government contractor.

The topic of refugee resettlement for Wyoming became a primary election debating point for Mead:

At a July 15 debate with Haynes, Mead, a former U.S. attorney for Wyoming who was elected governor in 2010, insisted no decisions had been made on whether to start a refugee resettlement program.

But Mead sounded like a man who’d made up his mind to pursue a refugee program when he sent a Sept. 5, 2013 letter to Eskinder Negash, the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In that letter, a copy of which has been obtained by WND, Mead informed Negash that “The State of Wyoming has elected to pursue a Public-Private Partnership model of a Refugee Resettlement program and to participate in that program through the Office of refugee Resettlement (sic).”

Mead went on to write that “This formalizes the work of the many interested persons and organizations across many years. Wyoming will designate a Refugee Resettlement Program Coordinator in the near future.”

Continue reading, there is a lot of good stuff in here that applies to your community as well.

Pay attention to the issue of secrecy surrounding the Wyoming plan by the would-be Lutheran contractor in addition to the lack of information about the real cost of the program to local taxpayers. By the way, you will see that the spokesperson for the governor is still peddling the illusion that bringing in the Lutheran agency means they are dealing with a private church group instead of the reality—Lutheran Social Services Rocky Mountains is an arm of the federal government!

Then near the end, Mike Elmore, a Gillette area rancher echos the sentiments of virtually every critic of the refugee resettlement program run by the US State Department (UN!):

“I’m not a bigoted or racist person, but we have our own problem, here in Gillette, we’re one of the best cities in Wyoming, but what are we looking for, unskilled labor? I’m concerned that the U.S. at this point in time can’t be everybody’s keeper. Let’s take care of our own people first.

Read it all and be sure to check the comments!

Click here for all of our coverage of the Wyoming (Gov. Mead) controversy.

Governor still “exploring” refugee program for Wyoming as Somalis move in

09/22/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, this time he has a bigger megaphone—The Wall Street Journal which is well-known for its position that businesses need cheap immigrant labor.

Republican Governor Matt Mead wrote to the Office of Refugee Resettlement last September inviting them to set up shop in Wyoming.

Sheesh, I thought they had enough sense in Wyoming to bring Mead’s misguided plan to a halt!

Remember it was one year ago that Republican Governor Matt Mead wrote to the federal government and invited them in to begin a resettlement program for the only state in the Nation wise enough (until now) to stay out of it!

And, get this, these Somali women arriving in Wyoming as secondary migrants are not shy about saying, if they don’t get more “services” they are moving on to a state that is more generous!

Before I launch into the story, readers need to know there is a big difference between secondary migrants who have already been hooked up with their social services in another state by one of the nine major federal resettlement contractors or their 300 plus subcontractors. They have gotten their job counseling, their kids enrolled in schools, their welfare goodies, their health care.

The secondary migrants have chosen, in our free country! to move on after being acclimated (at taxpayer expense) in another state. That does not mean we have to follow them with goodies (holding their hands) as they shop for new cities and states over the years.

However, setting up a resettlement office in Wyoming, is a whole other matter. It means that refugees will be resettled in Wyoming directly from Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

By the way, check out the statistics here (page 9), according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, zero secondary migrants entered Wyoming in 2013 (so much for their statistics!).

From The Wall Street Journal (hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’):

CHEYENNE, Wyo.—Draped in a brightly hued robe and veil, Amal Hassan certainly stands out from the locals as she walks along the outskirts of this high-plains city, pickup trucks rumbling by.

Somali refugees such as Ms. Hassan are becoming a more common sight here in the nation’s least populous state, the only one without a refugee-resettlement program. Such initiatives provide social and financial services to refugees such as Ms. Hassan, 29 years old, who were admitted legally into the U.S.

Now, with a hundred or so Somali refugees having arrived in Wyoming’s capital city in recent years, the state is wrestling with whether to create a resettlement program, which in other states is typically run jointly with the federal Administration for Children and Families. The idea, however, has stirred sharp criticism from some people, who have called and emailed state officials, expressing concern that crowds of refugees would flock to Wyoming, stretch resources and spread disease.

The issue repeatedly came up during last month’s Republican primary for November’s gubernatorial election, with one of Gov. Matt Mead’s opponents saying refugees would cause problems for Wyoming. The governor, who won the primary, said his administration is merely exploring a resettlement program.

“Unfortunately people don’t understand or deliberately distort what’s happening,” Mr. Mead said recently on a local radio station, dispelling a rumor that the state planned to set up refugee camps. [By continuing to use those inaccurate words—refugee camps—Mead is able to ridicule and denigrate critics.—ed]

Mr. Mead has said that refugees were coming to Wyoming regardless, and the state needed to know which services they were using. [You can see what welfare they are tapping without inviting more in!—ed].

Here the WSJ didn’t find the latest numbers—we have them here. In FY 2014 we have brought into the US 8,278 Somalis (in 11 months). The federal government and its contractors are scrambling to find new territory in which to resettle them as ‘pockets of resistance’ have developed in some states—thus the Wyoming push!

According to federal data, 4,915 Somali refugees arrived in the U.S. during the 2012 fiscal year, the most recent information available. That figure represents the fourth highest total of refugees from any country to enter the U.S. that year, behind Bhutan, Myanmar and Iraq.

Housing is easier to get, but not enough welfare help in Wyoming!

Ms. Hassan, who lives in Cheyenne with her two young sons and is divorced, said she is considering leaving Wyoming if she can’t receive more help.

Read it all.

The Governor says he is still studying the idea, but this is what he wrote to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement last September (looks like an outright invite to the feds to me!):

If you live in Wyoming, you need to get on the governor or end up like Maine! Or worse, Minnesota! Never mind ‘Little Mogadishu’ Minneapolis, ask the people of St. Cloud, Minnesota what happened when a Lutheran federal contractor opened a resettlement office there!

See our entire archive on Wyoming Governor Matt Mead by clicking here.