Refugee resettlement contractor, IRC, closed its
office in Garden City, KS yesterday, by Ann Corcoran, 8/1/18
I’ll
be reporting the news below, but I first want to make my key points up front so
that you don’t fall for the pity-party news story.
“Some call it charity!” Here is a
charitable idea, some of those bringing in fat pay checks, like IRC CEO David
Miliband, could send some of their boodle to staff in Kansas!
The
International Rescue Committee is ostensibly a private non-profit group and
therefore the US State Department can’t dictate that it must close offices
(supposedly they will be closing 3 of 28).
They
might not be getting new refugees at the office in GC that was set up only 4 years ago at the heyday of Obama’s
presidency, but they surely could pay for some staff and a small office to help
those they already dropped off in the town whose major employer is Tyson Foods!
The
IRC is a financial giant as non-profits go. From its 2016 Form 990 we
know they had revenue that year of $736 million and that $494 million was provided to them by you—-the
US taxpayers!
Some
of their top expenses were salaries ($244 million), grants and other assistance
to foreign organizations, foreign governments, and foreign individuals ($296
million) and office expenses ($20 million).
Their
headquarters are in Manhattan, New York (not Manhattan, KS). I mention this
because I wonder: how much could a small office to
aid struggling refugees cost in Garden City, KS? (You will see that the GC
Telegram story is all about how refugees will be left in the lurch.)
The point I am making is that the IRC could very well have kept its
Garden City office open even if new refugees (new paying clients) were not
being sent there by the State Department. They could have continued to help the
refugees they brought in during the first 4 years with other money from their
ginormous pot of money.
But, instead, this news
will be used as one more bit of media fodder to blast President Donald Trump.
(By the way, there are other
contractors working in GC and so this does not mean the end of refugees being
placed there. After all, the slaughter plant run by Tyson Foods needs the cheap
labor!)
From
the Garden City Telegram: Organizations, institutions look to
continue IRC mission - Garden City’s International Rescue Committee office is
on a countdown. Members of the
limited staff have ended their tenures. The Fulton Terrace office has been
packed away, the internet shut down. By the end of the month
[July—ed], the location will close, a decision laid down by the Bureau of
Population, Refugees and Migration at the U.S. State Department due to lower
resettlement numbers in the region.
IRC Site Manager Amy Longa. Did the IRC
find her another job? To Site Manager Amy Longa, it’s a difficult process. She
has said for months that every week has felt like one step closer to the
office’s closing day on Tuesday. “I
was going to say ‘Have a seat,’ but there are no chairs,” she said on Monday,
looking for space in an old conference room.
The
closure’s been an incremental process. The office resettled its last client in
February and has been holding exit meetings with refugees, showing them where
they can find local aid after the office shuts down. Even after the doors
close, Longa and volunteer coordinator Kaitlynn Lagman will finalize office and
program reports.
For
four years, the local IRC office has helped resettle and acclimate refugees to
life in southwest Kansas, particularly in and around Garden City, Dodge City
and Liberal. Staff and volunteers have bolstered a local network of
institutional support for refugees and helped clients reunite with family
members once an ocean away, obtain citizenship, locate housing, employment,
language and healthcare resources and bridge cultural differences or
misunderstandings.
By the end of the year, the number of United States IRC offices will
shrink from 28 to 25, closing locations in Garden City, Miami and Midland,
Texas. Last
year, those three offices were projected to resettle less than 100 clients in
their areas as a result of a recent, mandated cutoff from the Bureau of
Population, Refugees and Migration following restrictive federal immigration
policies, said Tracy Reines, IRC regional director of U.S. programs.
Reines
said the new restrictions were a result of increasingly restrictive immigration
policies set forward by President Donald Trump’s administration in the past 18
months. Much more here.
I’ve
written often over the years about ‘welcoming’ Garden City. See previous
posts by clicking here. And,
new readers might enjoy my David Miliband archive here.
He is a British national, former Labor Party Foreign Secretary, friend of
George Soros and is being paid handsomely by you to change American towns and
cities.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
No comments:
Post a Comment