Refugee contractor Episcopal Migration Ministries
is 99.5% funded by you, will close some offices, by Ann Corcoran 6/16/17
This is old news from back in April
and I don’t know if they have changed their minds about closing offices after
it was announced by the Dept. of
State on May 26th that the number of
refugees being admitted to the US is going to tick up to 1,500 a week.
Since the refugee contractors are
paid by the head to place refugees in your towns and cities they may feel there
is some hope for their finances to pick up with an increase in paying client
(aka refugees) arrivals.
(As of June 11th, 47,434 refugees have been admitted to the US in FY17.
This is 9,328 refugees since the supposed moratorium began and 17,312 since
Trump was inaugurated.)
However, office closure news isn’t
the primary reason I’m posting this news. I’m posting it because a reader
has solved a mystery I’ve been wondering about for years—why is there no Form 990 (the IRS form
required of non-profit groups) for Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)?
Before I get to the answer.
Here is what the Episcopal News Service reported on April 4th (they are looking ahead to FY18
and even lower numbers of refugee clients):
As a result of changing U.S. policy that lowers the number of refugees
to be resettled in this country annually by more than half, Episcopal Migration
Ministries will be reducing the size of its affiliate network by six sites in
the next fiscal year. Currently, the Episcopal Migration Ministries network
consists of 31 affiliate locations.
Episcopal Migration Ministries is a
ministry of the Episcopal Church, and is one of nine national agencies
responsible for resettling refugees in the United States in partnership with
the government.
“We are disappointed that we need to
take these steps, but the current situation leaves us no choice,” commented the
Rev. Canon E. Mark Stevenson, director of Episcopal Migration Ministries. “We have
reduced our national core staff by 22% due to funding cuts and we are now
looking at a similar cut in our network of affiliate partners through which
refugees are resettled. While difficult, the decision making
process regarding these reductions has been carried out carefully and
strategically, with the welfare of refugees at the forefront of our minds.”
As Episcopal Migration Ministries prepares for fiscal year 2018, six offices will not be included in the resettlement plan
submitted to the government. The affiliates, and the Episcopal dioceses in
which they are located, are: Refugee One, Chicago, IL (Diocese of Chicago);
Lutheran Social Services of Northeast Florida, Jacksonville, FL (Diocese of
Florida); Lutheran Social Services of ND, Fargo, ND (Diocese of North Dakota);
Lutheran Social Services of ND, Grand Forks, ND (Diocese of North Dakota);
Ascentria Care Alliance, Concord, NH (Diocese of New Hampshire); and Ascentria
Care Alliance, Westfield, MA (Diocese of Western Massachusetts). More here.
Readers this does not mean that the
entire refugee program in, for instance, Fargo, ND is closing. Many of these
contractors double up in places where the flow coming in is pretty
lucrative. See the page from the State Department’s affiliates
directory. You will see for Fargo, for
instance, that EMM shares an office with Lutheran Immigration and Refugee
Service. Presumably LIRS will stay in business.
If you are wondering what the DFMS
stands for in the lefthand corner of two entries, it is for EMM’s other name
Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. You see how tricky this
gets when trying to figure out what these secretive agencies are doing while
using different names and housing their money in difficult-to-find
places! (BTW, I was told by a DOS employee nearly ten years ago that
there are no financial audits done of this particular group of federal
contractors.) They are not passing the
plate on Sundays for their refugee program!
Take, for example, my quandary about
trying to find EMM’s Form 990. Here is what one reader spotted in a lengthier story from Episcopal News Service in April:
The executive order’s impact on EMM’s bottom line is especially drastic
because EMM is a unique ministry of the Episcopal Church, both structurally and
fiscally. While not separately incorporated, as is Episcopal Relief &
Development, EMM receives very little money from the church-wide budget,
instead receiving 99.5 percent of its funding from the federal
government. Its main office is housed at the Episcopal Church Center in
New York.
EMM takes the
prize! 99.5% of its funding is from you. And, you have no way of knowing
where your money is going!
And, come to think of it, where is
the ACLU on the issue of separation of church and state? Hmmmm?
The next highest contractors run at
the 97%-98% federal funding level (US Conf. of Catholic Bishops, USCRI and
LIRS).
Endnote: With all of this news about
EMM closing offices, one wonders why the DOS is contemplating opening a new EMM office in
Charleston, WV?
The nine federal contractors that
depend largely on tax dollars to do their charitable good works are these:
No comments:
Post a Comment