06/20/2013
Did you know that today is World Refugee Day?
It is natural to feel sympathy for people driven from their homes by wars and calamities. It is just as natural to feel indignation at the way our sympathy has been parlayed into crude money rackets and multiculturalism-advancement schemes by leftist political activist groups ranging from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to GLAAD.
The indefatigable Ann Corcoran of Refugee Resettlement Watch has been tracking the issue for years. In honor of World Refugee Day, Ann has posted a factsheet summarizing all that’s wrong with our refugee programs under 26 headings.
Samples, more or less at random:
12. Assimilation is no longer a goal for any agency involved in refugee resettlement — government or private contractor. The private contractors’ engagement with the refugee is so short — less than 4 months in most cases, that nothing approaching assimilation could even be considered. The term “assimilation” is no longer a part of government lexicon and does not even occur in dozens of recent reports and papers generated about refugee resettlement. The operative term in vogue now is “integration” with its clear intent of maintenance of ethnic identity.And:
22. Refugee resettlement is profitable to the organizations involved in it. They receive money from the federal government for each refugee they bring over. They have almost no real responsibilities for these refugees. After 4 months the “sponsoring” organization is not even required to know where the refugee lives.Please read all 26 points to learn how generous, charitable feelings have been manipulated into support for shady scams that advance the nation-wrecking program of the Cultural-Marxist Left while lining the pockets of unscrupulous operators.There are 9 main major refugee resettlement organizations (“Volags,” from “Voluntary Agency”) with approximately 450 affiliated organizations throughout the country; many are run by former refugees.
Below are the nine Volags that operate today:
Below are some of the sources of income for Volags:
- US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB),
- Lutheran Immigrant Aid Society (LIRS),
- International Rescue Committee (IRC),
- World Relief Corporation,
- Immigrant and Refugee Services of America (IRSA),
- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS),
- Church World Service (CWS),
- Domestic and Foreign Missionary Service of the Episcopal Church of the USA,
- Ethiopian Community Development Center (ECDC).
The program is so lucrative that in some towns the Catholic Church has lessened support for traditional charity works to put more effort into resettlement. It uses collection offerings to promote the refugee resettlement program.
- $1,850 per refugee (including children) from the State Department.
- Up to $2,200 for each refugee by participating in a U.S. DHHS program known as Matching Grant. To get the $2,200, the Volag need only show it spent $200 and gave away $800 worth of donated clothes, furniture or cars.
- The Volag pockets 25% of every transportation loan it collects from refugees it “sponsors.”
- All Volag expenses and overhead in the Washington, DC HQ are paid by the U.S. government.
- For their refugee programs, Volags collect money from all federal grant programs — “Marriage Initiative”, “Faith-based”, “Ownership Society”, etc., as well as from various state and local grants.
(One of Ann’s commenters notes that a couple of her points are out of date. In both cases, says the commenter, the present situation is worse than Ann says.)
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.