Visas for family “reunification” explained

A few days ago I reported on Somalis in Minneapolis who are angry that the US State Department/Homeland Security are making it harder for them to bring their “families” to the US.    I explained that the P-3 program had been suspended in 2008 when it was learned that tens of thousands of Africans (mostly from Somalia) had gotten into the US fraudulently—they lied about their family relationship.  The program is still partially closed.   And, now the I-130 visa process has added some hurdles which has ticked-off the would-be migrants (and their lawyers) even further.

Since these visa application processes are all ‘greek’ to those of us on the outside, I appealed for help in understanding the I-130 visa and the I-730 visa as it relates to “refugees.”    A kind reader with experience has sent us the following explanation (emphasis mine).   This will be filed in our ‘where to find information’ category for your future reference.

I-130’s

This is the name used for a form to apply for the legal immigration of certain relatives of  certain types of US legal residents. It is not a part of the US refugee resettlement program. It’s an application for a permanent visa based on family relationship criteria.

Any  US citizen can petition for parents, spouse , minor children, single adult children over 21, married children , and siblings. (spouses and minor children of beneficiaries are included on the visa)

Depending on the relationship to the petitioner,there are various waiting times based on the number of pending applications.

Parents, spouses and unmarried minor children are eligible for “immediate” visas and it’s just a matter of the actual processing time (although  it’s usually several months to a year).  Older children have a much longer waiting period and for siblings, the wait hovers around 10 years .

Legal permanent residents (green card holders) can only petition for spouses, unmarried minor children. Those are not “immediate” visas, but are subject to another waiting list but is usually 3-4 years),

Visas  are initially adjudicated by the visa center here in the US simply based on documentation presented with the application, and then (provided they are initially approved) , once they become “current” , sent overseas to the nearest embassy/consulate for final decision, based on a face to face interview and documentation.

The US petitioner is also required to file an “affidavit of support” (showing financial ability to support the applicant (s)) which precludes the applicants from accessing any public benefits upon entering the US. (this is a whole other issue, since  actual enforcement of those affidavits varies greatly from state to state and many legal visa recipients do access public benefits).

At one time, in the P-3 program, US relatives who were US citizens were barred from utilizing the P-3 process and required to file I-130’s. Refugee advocates successfully lobbied to have this rule changed, thus US citizens could file P-3 applications.  While no longer required to, they could still also simultaneously file I-130’s  as a back up in case the applicants failed to meet refugee criteria (one does not preclude the other). In my experience, most US relatives chose not to file the I-130s and , instead, rely solely on the P-3 process which, as you know, confers refugee status and eligibility for all available public benefits and puts no onus of financial responsibility on the US anchor relative.

I-730’s

This is where the lines can get a bit blurry.

This is a US visa called “following to join.” There are 2 categories:

Visa 93 (US relative was admitted as a refugee)
Visa 92 (US relative was granted political asylum in the US)

Applicants are limited to spouses and unmarried minor children (not parents, siblings, married or over 21 kids).

Relationships must have existed prior to granting of US petitioner’s status (some tricky parts here!).  Application must be filed within 2 years of granted status.

Visas 92/93 can be filed simultaneously with  P-3 applications.

Those applications are initially approved  by US immigration processing centers (there are only a couple who do these) and sent to the local embassy/consulate for final adjudication. The applicants are under no requirement to provide any proof of refugee claims themselves,  but only proof of relationship to the petitioner.  If the visa is granted, they are admitted to the US under “derivative refugee/asylee” status.  Affidavits of support are not required, and they are eligible for public benefits subject to the petitioner’s income (again,… my experience showed a large amount of  easily-conducted fraud).

International Institute of New Jersey will file for bankruptcy

“Nowadays nonprofits have to rethink their strategy”  (a soon-to-be former staff person at this resettlement agency).

I couldn’t agree more!

The International Institute of NJ (IINJ) is an affiliate of the resettlement contractor, one of nine volags, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) headed by Lavinia Limon* former director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Clinton Administration (the revolving door at work again!).  By the way, if you are new to refugee industry-speak, VOLAG stands for voluntary agency, but there is nothing much voluntary about them anymore—contractors like USCRI are almost completely funded by tax dollars.  Now it is crunch time—the tax dollars are running out and so agencies like IINJ are closing their doors.

Here is the story Monday from the Jersey Journal:

A Jersey City-based nonprofit that provides immigration services is drastically downsizing because of cuts in government grant funding.

Employees at the International Institute of New Jersey (IINJ), a nonprofit located at 1 Journal Square Plaza in Jersey City, spent today packing boxes to move to a smaller office because of a $800,000 cut in federal and state aid, IINJ Executive Director Catherine Tansey said.

The organization’s overall yearly budget had been $1.8 million, Tansey said.

The organization had also fallen seven months behind in rent, owing its current landlord more than $46,000, officials said.

[.....]

“Nowadays nonprofits have to rethink their strategy,” said Sophia Rossovsky, 53, director of IINJ’s training center. Rossovsky said IINJ needs to improve its fundraising efforts among private donors.

Ms Rossovsky probably doesn’t understand that it was supposed to be that way from the beginning—-the resettlement agencies were supposed to be using large amounts of privately raised money, but have over the years drifted into simply reaching into the US Treasury’s pot of gold.  You can see from the most recent available Form 990 for IINJ (here) that they were almost completely dependent on your money.

INJJ that year received $2,435,781 from state and federal government coffers while only raising $44,000 from private sources.  What is that —something like 2% came from private money?

A day after that report above, the Jersey Journal reports that the International Institute is in even worse shape.  Now they are closing completely and filing for bankruptcy.  I’m not a lawyer but I wonder how a non-profit that was almost completely funded by government could actually file for bankruptcy?

Reversing comments they made yesterday, officials with the International Institute of New Jersey (IINJ), a Jersey City-based nonprofit that provides services for immigrants, said today the organization will be closing by mid-June and declaring bankruptcy.

* This isn’t the first of Lavinia Limon’s subcontractors to have problems, in 2008 we reported that the International Institute of Connecticut was closed (at least for a time) due to media reports that refugees were not being properly cared for.  You can visit the most recent Form 990 for USCRI here.  They received $27,857,423 from the US taxpayer and privately raised $321,530 (about 1% raised privately? check my math!).  $749,900 went to the International Institute of NJ.   Ms. Limon’s pay package that year was just over $200,000.

By the way, here is the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s payout to New Jersey resettlement agencies for 2009.

Hey, here is a thought!  Maybe the city of Manchester will get lucky and the International Institute of New England will go broke too!

New website compiles data on huge increase in number of refugees and immigrants in the Midwest

It isn’t just happening in Western New York state!

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune (hat tip: Joanne):

A new online database from the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs* offers some revealing information about immigrant and refugee populations in Minnesota and across the Midwest.

The interactive site (immigrationtaskforce.hhh.umn.edu), will be unveiled Wednesday before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.**

It pulls together data from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Office of Refugee Resettlement and from published reports from research organizations such as the Pew Center and the Brookings Institution.

The information was compiled this semester by University of Minnesota Professor Kathy Fennelly and graduate students from her Immigration and Public Policy class.

Their report highlights immigration trends across 12 states: Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Ohio and Wisconsin.

“There’s a lot of interest in having current data,” Fennelly said. “Sometimes we have all sorts of opinions about immigration that aren’t based on data. There are groups that are hungry for data. We have created this website for exactly that purpose.”

Check out the study it’s very interesting—and I think you will be shocked at the high numbers!

Just a reminder we have a category entitled, “where to find information,” and this post with links is filed there.  This is also posted in our category “legal immigration and jobs!”

* Former Asst. Sec. of State for PRM, Eric Schwartz (a Soros protege), left the State Department recently to take a job at the Humphrey School, here.  Obama then appointed another globalist, Anne Richard, to the job.

** Michelle Obama is on the Board of this global organization, here (take a gander at all the big corporations represented on the board).  Tamar Jacoby (remember in 2009 when NumbersUSA called Jacoby and Grover Norquist Republican “traitors” ?) is also involved, here.

US Bishops on their knees begging for more taxpayer dollars

Your tax dollars!

I guess they didn’t learn from the recent controversy over free birth control and Sandra Fluke‘s attack on Georgetown University (and the Catholic Church) that once you take Caesar’s money, Caesar expects payback.    Yesterday I posted at my other blog a story about how the Bishops are back lobbying Congress for your tax dollars for their “charitable” work.  (See my post on their groveling expedition last year here).

Then last night I found this interesting little nugget when re-reading that scintillating 2008 Annual Report to Congress on the Refugee Program.  Although this is a tiny drop of the millions the USCCB gets from the federal treasury, it is enlightening.

In 1988, the Bishops set up a legal clinic ostensibly for the poor IMMIGRANT (what about poor Americans?).  Fine and dandy if that is what they want to do with their parishioners’ charity, but about a half million dollars of their budget every year comes from all of you.   Here is the history of CLINIC:

In 1988, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) established CLINIC as a legally distinct 501(c)(3) organization to support a rapidly growing network of community-based immigration programs. CLINIC’s network originally comprised 17 programs. It has since increased to 201 diocesan and other affiliated immigration programs with 290 field offices in 47 states.  The network employs roughly 1,200 BIA accredited representatives and attorneys who, in turn, serve 600,000 low-income immigrants each year.

CLINIC doesn’t just help the poor IMMIGRANTS with their legal needs, it gets political.  Here, for example, they are opposing the Arizona Law.

Asylee Hotline funded by feds

For readers who don’t know about asylum, it is the other side of the refugee coin.  Refugees are screened abroad and we fly them here, asylum seekers arrive on their own steam at our borders and ask for asylum.   Refugees get all their welfare goodies almost immediately, asylum seekers must first be granted asylum then they can sign up for public assistance (subsidized housing, job training, food stamps, medical care, etc.).

Here Open Borders immigration lawyer Jason Dzubow tells us about how the number of asylum seekers is mushrooming.   When the Kennedy/Biden Refugee Act of 1980 was passed and signed by Jimmy Carter, asylum seekers were a rarity — the odd Russian ballet dancer for example.   In 2011, 74,000 asylum seekers “found their way” to our borders (top three sending countries—China, Mexico, and India).   They claimed political, religious, or sexual orientation persecution in their home countries.  In reality, most are economic migrants making up whoppers about being persecuted!   [By the way, I reported here that I think NGO's are actually giving these "asylum seekers" guidance.]

Back to that little nugget about CLINIC and its taxpayer-funded grant in 2008.  They got a quarter of a million bucks for an asylee hotline where an asylee could call in and find out how to “access benefits and services” (where to find the local welfare office) (p. 36):

Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., ($250,000) for an asylee hotline. The Catholic Legal
Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) operated an asylum hotline, which provided outreach and
service referral to individuals granted asylum. During FY 2008, the multilingual operators
received a total of 4,131 calls from asylees who were uncertain on where to access benefits and
services. Unlike refugees who come with a direct link to the voluntary resettlement agencies,
asylum seekers have no such connection.

You paid $60 per phone call.  And, you can bet some were from asylum seekers looking for a lawyer!

Here is my question, if this is a needed service, why are we giving tax dollars to an unaccountable-to-the-taxpayer non-profit group?  This project could just as well be run from a hotline at the Dept. of Health and Human Services (where presumably our elected officials would have oversight).  Is it just to continue to keep federal government tentacles in the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, so they won’t squawk so much when the likes of Sandra Fluke insists that Georgetown University give students free birth control?

You pay for refugee “community organizing”

I haven’t mentioned ECBOs in awhile but noticed a week or so ago that they were still busy and being funded by you.

By the way, I’m going away without computer for a few days so this will be my last post until maybe Monday.  Also I won’t be able to post your comments until then.

Back to ECBOs—Ethnic Community Based Organizations. We have a whole category I started sometime back on these mini-ACORNS. [Remember ACORN, Obama, Wade Rathke and the Breitbart bust?---ed].  They are community organizing groups that you fund with your tax money and they organize their “ethnic” groups in various cities across the US.

Last week I told you about the ECBO “Somali Community Center” in Nashville which became the “Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee” presumably because they got into grant trouble under the old name and they wanted to look more “inclusive,” but it’s still headed by Somalis.

Here is what the Office of Refugee Resettlement says about ECBO’s:

This program provides assistance to refugee community based organizations and other groups that address community building, facilitate cultural adjustment and integration of refugees, and deliver mutually supportive functions such as information exchange, civic participation, resource enhancement, orientation and support to newly arriving refugees (and other refugees that maybe in need of such assistance regardless of their resettlement date) and public education to the larger community on the background, needs and potential of refugees. In short, the purpose is to promote community organizing that builds bridges between newcomer refugee communities and community resources.

As regards to the first part of that statement, one might wonder if it wasn’t the job of the Volags in the first place to help refugees adjust and integrate.  Surely community colleges could do that too through English language programs.  And, I’m not sure why we need to spend money on public education to teach Americans what the refugees need (again, isn’t that the job of the agency that has chosen your city as a resettlement site)?

Of course, the “civic participation” part is about getting them ready to vote and in the meantime teaching immigrants how to demonstrate and make demands.

But, it’s that last line that is so telling—it’s about teaching refugees to tap into the wide variety of social welfare programs we now have in place.  It’s teaching them how to get their stuff!

Go here and check out the list of those ECBOs being funded with your tax dollars.

Comment worth noting: reader asks when will refugee problems come to Montana?

Reader, Carol, asked that question in response to my previous post on Boise, ID.

It occurred to me that it’s been awhile since I told you where you could get information on your state programs.  Here is the list of State Refugee Coordinators at the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

I urge all of you to write or call your coordinator and ask for a copy of their most recent PLAN for your state.  Technically all states must have an approved plan every year!  If they say they have no PLAN for this year, tell them you want the most recent PLAN approved by ORR.

Also, you should visit WRAPS from time to time to check on the numbers and nationalities of refugees being resettled where you live.  I mentioned WRAPS here recently.   Go here then scroll down to the data base for ‘Arrivals by Destination City by Nationality by FY’ for the stats for the last five years.

Note that Montana has only had a few refugees resettled in recent years—then continue scrolling to the states that follow in the alphabet—Nebraska, Nevada and New Hampshire—and note the THOUSANDS dropped-off from every corner of the world.

Visit our ‘where to find information’ category for other fun facts.

Immigration and jobs continued: foreign college students taking low wage jobs

If you are wondering why the unemployment rate is so high for teens and college students looking for summer jobs—look no further than the State Department’s Summer Work Travel program that imports 100,000 kids from abroad each summer.  They work cheap and are described as virtual slaves to big business.  The Center for Immigration Studies will hold a panel discussion on the program in Washington, DC on March 13th.   Read all about it here.

If you are trying to help legitimate refugees find scarce jobs you should be telling your legislators in Washington that this program stinks!

When did the US State Department become the headhunter for big business?

ORR: Where is the annual report?

Here we go again, BY LAW (here) the Office of Refugee Resettlement is required to send to Congress an annual report three months after the close of the previous Fiscal Year on September 30th—that means by January 31st of the next year.

The last annual report prepared by ORR (Department of Health and Human Services) and available to the public is for FY 2008, here.  That means that ORR is now BEHIND FOR THREE YEARS!  They owe Congress the reports for 2009, 2010 and 2011.  

What that says to me, is that the ORR doesn’t want Congress and the public to know how bad things are—how few refugees are employed and how many are on welfare.

Check back here periodically to see when we might see some new (albeit old by the time you see it!) hard data on the program.

And, if you know any public interest lawyers willing to look into this matter, send them my way!

Kentucky: Iraqi terror suspect lied on refugee application

NO!  Imagine that!  He failed to tell the overseas processing entity in Syria that he was a member of a terrorist organization.

Readers, you know how this story began with the arrest of two suspected Iraqi refugee terrorists last summer, here.

One of the accused has already admitted he is guilty.

Now comes the latest on his accomplice, here, at the Bowling Green Daily News.  And, by the way, this failure to properly screen Muslim refugees is what has slowed the entire refugee resettlement program to a crawl in recent months.

An Iraqi refugee facing federal terrorism-related charges is now accused of falsifying information on refugee admission papers he filed in Syria in 2009 and on his application to register for permanent residence status that he filed in Bowling Green in 2010.

A federal grand jury in Bowling Green indicted Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 24, of Bowling Green, on Wednesday in a superseding indictment adding the two perjury charges to 10 previous charges filed in May that accuse Hammadi and a co-defendant, Waad Ramadan Alwan, 30, also of Bowling Green, of attempting to provide material support and resources to terrorists in Iraq. Alwan pleaded guilty in December to all 23 charges against him. An April 3 sentencing date is set for Alwan.

The latest charges against Hammadi allege that he “denied having previously engaged in terrorist activity and having previously been a member of a terrorist organization,” according to Wednesday’s indictment.

How did they know he was lying?  They found his fingerprints on an IED used against American troops in Iraq, but only after we had let him live among us.

And, you can be sure he was receiving much more of America’s social safety net then the subsidized housing noted here:

Hammadi lived in Section 8, government-subsidized housing on Flanigan Court before his arrest. He entered the country in July 2009 in Las Vegas and moved to Bowling Green in December 2009.

So, he was first resettled in Nevada and then migrated to Bowling Green (to work in a chicken plant there? or to hook up with his fellow Iraqi terrorist?).

Fun with Numbers!  Have a look at the US State Department’s data base here.  First, look at the one for Iraqis since 2007.  We resettled 390 Iraqis in Nevada and 1,183 in Kentucky.  California got the most Iraqis since 2007—14,953!

Then scroll down and have a look at the data base on what nationalities went to what cities and towns.  Bowling Green (a meatpacking town) got 2,688 refugees from all over the world over the last ten years.  Las Vegas (where our Iraqi terror suspect was first resettled by a government contractor, maybe Catholic Charities, but I didn’t take time to look it up) received 3,876 refugees in ten years.

Readers, this is our 519th post on Iraqi refugees since July 2007, visit our Iraqi refugee archives here.

Fun with numbers: find out how many refugees came to your town in last 5 years

Just this morning as I wrote the previous post on an Iraqi woman who beat her daughter, I had a close look at some databases at the US State Department’s Refugee Processing Center.

They have a database where you can see how many refugees and from what countries were resettled in your town.  And, I mean town!  Apparently the cities are overflowing with immigrants and the State Department is busy spreading new refugees out to even small towns.   They want to make sure you too experience the joys of multiculturalism.

Keep in mind, a refugee might be resettled in a particular town, but they are free to move after in some cases 3 months (it’s called secondary migration).   No one tracks where they go (this is America you will be reminded by open borders activists), but the problem is that, assume they are receiving treatment for TB where originally resettled, there is no way of knowing if they continue the meds after moving.

So those resettled in your town may no longer be there, or conversely they have attracted secondary migrants to come to your town and the numbers of a particular nationality are now larger.

Go here and scroll down to “Arrivals by destination city by nationality” open link to a ‘fun’ database.

This post will be archived in our ‘where to find information’ category.