Pennsylvania public radio skews the news on refugees, what else is new

Sometimes I want to scream because the media bias is so blatant on the issue of the US Refugee Admissions Program. This story from WYYY by Laura Benshoff is a case in point.

Entitled: ‘In 2017, Pa. resettled nearly 1,000 fewer refugees than previous budget year,’ the title alone is deceptive!

Reporter Laura Benshoff did not do her homework on refugee program

Sure it might be 1,000 fewer than last year and that is because last year (FY16) was an outlier!

It was the ONE year that Obama was attempting to pour refugees in to the country at a higher than normal rate.

When I checked Wrapsnet just now, that is the US State Department’s data repository, I found that the average number of refugees placed in PA over the last ten years was 2,568 per year. (BTW, her numbers from the PA refugee office do not match the federal data, so it is unclear what numbers the PA refugee office is using.)

We do know that Pennsylvania, over ten years, is in the top ten refugee placement target states (turning red states blue!) in the nation.

Here is WYYY:

This year, a combination of pauses, new federal policies and screening procedures dramatically cut the number of refugees finding new homes in Pennsylvania. From 3,679 in budget year 2016, the number fell to 2,698 in 2017, a 26.7 percent decrease, according to the Pennsylvania Refugee Resettlement Program.

That drop-off appears especially steep due to an uptick in refugee arrivals during President Barack Obama’s last year in office. Local refugee resettlement agencies say the decline was also driven by Trump administration policies that could have long-lasting effects.

Does Miller-Wilson know that her own organization added to the chaos and confusion with its lawsuits filed against the President?

Now this next bit made me laugh. We have a HIAS employee complaining about how the “government’s back and forth with the courts” made their work harder. IT WAS HER ORGANIZATION, HIAS, THAT INITIATED THE LAWSUITS!

“It’s incredibly mercurial, it’s incredibly capricious, and it’s incredibly hard to manage,” said Cathryn Miller-Wilson, executive director of the refugee resettlement group HIAS, of the federal government’s back and forth with the courts over refugee policy this year.

And, let me add that this whole refugee system, based on a per refugee head payment to the contractors, is flawed because it will be “incredibly capricious” as each year the President has the power to set the arrival numbers.

The FACT that the contractors have become so dependent on high arrival numbers for their budgetary survival is their fault! (See my previous post, will HIAS head honchos take pay cuts?)

Ms. Benshoff really drank the koolaide the contractors served up with this line:

The president also lowered the total number of refugees allowed into the country each year from 110,000 to 45,000.

Let’s jump to the facts on the 110,000 Obama number. Obama admitted no where near 110,000 in any of his eight years in office! He proposed 110,000 as he was literally walking out the door in the fall of 2016!

Notice what the tricksters at the DOS have done here. Obama set the FY17 ceiling as he was walking out the door at 110,000. Note that he had 7 previous years where he could have done the same. Why didn’t he? Trump legally reset it at 50,000, but the DOS left the 110,000 there because they want to make Trump look as mean as they possibly can compared to their dear leader Obama, and so that their media lackeys can continue to write about Obama’s 110,000 level that was really pie in the sky. 110,000 could never have been accomplished.

Benshoff continued quoting from Margaret O’Sullivan:

O’Sullivan’s organization is a subcontractor to USCRI (Lavinia Limon). USCRI is 98% funded by taxpayer dollars. They are likely losing more than a million bucks.

“We’re all concerned about the number itself, and the unevenness with which we’re actually receiving word and being asked to resettle refugees,” said Margaret O’Sullivan, executive director of Nationalities Service Center in Philadelphia. “That’s our job, to be ready.”

For those of you who continue to believe that the Refugee Program has no cost to state taxpayers (that it is solely a federal program), this next line should disabuse you of that notion.

As a result of the downturn, O’Sullivan described cutting or losing around a million dollars from the group’s budget related to refugee resettlement this year, due to reduced state grants and lower resettlement numbers.

If you would like to read more, go here.

Again, beating a dead horse, but this program, run like a ponzi scheme, based on the number of paying clients (aka refugees) being admitted each year and nine contractors paid based on the number, must be abolished!

And, you won’t find any sympathy here for their budget problems now, because they got fat and lazy on taxpayer dollars (they raise very little private charity) and apparently never planned for a downturn.

There will be no longterm reform of how refugees arrive (and are placed in your towns and cities) in America until these nine, Leftwing community activist groups, are removed from the federal dole.

Click here to read the full article on its original website.