Posted by Tina
A Texas based non-profit organization that recently was awarded almost $300 million in grant money to temporarily house migrant youths entering the country illegally reportedly failed to properly disclose its lobbying activity on its tax returns:
A Texas-based organization that has been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts by the Obama administration to house illegal immigrant children not only lobbied the federal government, but also failed to properly disclose the activity.
After The Daily Caller inquired about its lobbying disclosures, BCFS, a San Antonio-based nonprofit, now says it may correct its tax forms to properly disclose its lobbying expenditures.
The Obama administration, through the Department of Health and Human Services, has tapped BCFS, formerly known as Baptist Child & Family Services, to provide security and other services to unaccompanied children at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, and Ft. Sill army base near Lawton, Okla.
BCFS has become the largest provider of such services for the child immigrants, who are part of a massive influx of mostly Central Americans that has put the Obama administration on its heels.
Tax records for the company reveal that a “no” answer was checked for tax years 2006, 2007, and 2009 although records obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics show they paid “Williams & Jensen $190,000 in total in 2006, 2007 and 2009:
In response to the primary section of BCFS’s IRS 990 forms which asks whether organizations spent money on lobbying, the organization checked “No” in every year in which it lobbied.
Piferrer — a former spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry — explained, saying that the lobbying expenses were instead reported in the statement of functional expenses. The claim was partially true. The organization did not report some of the lobbying expenses in that section during the years they were incurred. But on its 2011 and 2012 tax forms, it reported around $190,000 in lobbying expenditures even though records show it did not spend that amount on lobbying during those years.
Piferrer said that in previous years, BCFS reported lobbying expenses under the “professional fees” line-item. However, such fees usually include legal fees and not lobbying expenses.
A few days ago we posted an article questioning the organizations claim as being faith based, noting an absence of church association on its web pages despite having “Baptist” in its name. Given this story refers to the organization, BCFS, as being “formerly known as Baptist Child & Family Services,” I assume they no longer use the long form as their official name, however, and earlier story at Fox News only compounds confusion about the name.
In early July Fox posted an update to a story about BCFS security forces that were threatening doctors and nurses, warning them to keep their mouths shut about the condition of the children:
Editor’s note: The contractor running the refugee camp at Lackland Air Force Base is “BCFS,” not “Baptist Family and Children’s Services” — as noted in a previous version of this story.
Is it possible that there are two separate organizations or is BCFS desiring to separate itself from its original Baptist oriented name? Either is possible.
You may recall the early July story suggested an unsavory situation for the healthcare workers that were brought in to deal with the children:
“There were several of us who wanted to talk about the camps, but the agents made it clear we would be arrested,” a psychiatric counselor told me. “We were under orders not to say anything.”
The sources said workers were guarded by a security force from the BCFS, which the Department of Health and Human Services hired to run the Lackland Camp.
The sources say security forces called themselves the “Brown Shirts.”
“It was a very submissive atmosphere,” the counselor said. “Once you stepped onto the grounds, you abided by their laws – the Brown Shirt laws.”
She said the workers were stripped of their cellphones and other communication devices. Anyone caught with a phone was immediately fired.
“Everyone was paranoid,” she said. “The children had more rights than the workers.”
She said children in the camp had measles, scabies, chicken pox and strep throat as well as mental and emotional issues.
There is something strange about this organization. Since we are awarding them with big blocks of taxpayer money I think we have good reason to question. According to the Daily Caller by 2009, HHS had already given BCFS $7.8 million mostly for new shelter programs for unaccompanied children. It suggest to me that the plan to exploit the law that was originally passed to prevent human trafficking has been in the works for a number of years. The fact that the radicals currently in power don’t think in terms of America but in terms of the global community makes this idea entirely possible…it takes a village. (America must pay)
The Honduran President, Juan Orlando Hernández, has said that the message from the Obama administration has been mixed and unclear:
In an interview with Time before Obama met with the leaders of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador at the White House on Wednesday evening, Hernandez said, “The lack of clarity of U.S. immigration policy” was one of the primary factors compelling migrants to make harrowing journeys to the United States.
He said smugglers and coyotes are “disgracefully” convincing Hondurans to make journeys to America by telling them, “Now is when you can bring your child from Central America.”
“So my call to the United States is that it defines these rules with clarity,” he said.
The Brightbart story quotes Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) who attended the annual conference of La Raza and told them that DACA was a “down payment” and Obama would take more steps to “stop the deportation of our people.”
Our people? Is this guy an American or not?
On Latino Fox this morning President Hernández along with the Presidents of Guatemala and El Salvador said the criminal human trafficing problem exists in Central America, Mexico and the US so it is a “shared” problem requiring “investment” similar to the investment the US made in Columbia:
Ending his speech before a pack audience at CSIS, the President of Honduras said more aggressive cooperation is needed and warned “we will not be able to solve this problem unless we go tobelio the root and this requires an integral task, one that is based on the principle of shared responsibility. The U.S.A. is responsible, and we are responsible, and we facing up to our responsibility.”
Just send cash would have been easier but that’s not how diplomacy works. The lack of leadership in America is at the root of this problem but I don’t believe incompetence or stumble bumming is the cause. I believe the President meant it when he said he wanted to “fundamentally transform” America. I believe he wants to redistribute as much cash as he possibly can as President. I also believe the President has little respect for our checks and balances form of government or the Constitution, which he has said was too limiting. I believe this President is using his phone and his pen to undermine our nation and its borders. The man who began with so much promise has done what he promised but I don’t think it is what was expected of him.
Watching this administration operate is mind blowing even to many Democrats now who question his motivations and ability to serve as our President. The organization in the middle of this human crisis on our border may just be a bird of the same feather.
If the IRS hadn’t been so busy harassing conservative and religious groups to keep them from participating in the 2012 election they could have had the manpower to catch real tax cheats instead.
In the mean time up in Boston a few people showed up for a stop the illegal immigrant rally. Actually, they’re reporting it was between 5,000-10,000. Check out the pictures and the videos.
Boston ‘Teeming With Protesters’ in Giant Rally Against Housing Illegal Immigrants in the State:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/07/26/boston-teeming-with-protesters-in-giant-rally-against-housing-illegal-immigrants-in-the-state/
George Will’s response to his fellow conservatives on the immigration issue is magnificent.
“I think we ought to say to these children, ‘Welcome to America. You’re going to go to school and get a job and become Americans. We have 3,141 counties in this country. That’d be 20 per county.
“The idea that we can’t assimilate these 8-year-old criminals with their teddy bears is preposterous.”
http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/27/george-will-says-u-s-should-welcome-illegal-children-mocks-supporters-of-deportation/#ixzz38gyTYwZq
The libertarian CATO Institute has also done good work on this issue:
“This study finds that increased enforcement and reduced low-skilled immigration have a significant negative impact on the income of U.S. households. Modest savings in public expenditures would be more than offset by losses in economic output and job opportunities for more skilled American workers. A policy that reduces the number of low-skilled immigrant workers by 28.6 percent compared to projected levels would reduce U.S. household welfare by about 0.5 percent, or $80 billion.
In contrast, legalization of low-skilled immigrant workers would yield significant income gains for American workers and households. Legalization would eliminate smugglers’ fees and other costs faced by illegal immigrants. It would also allow immigrants to have higher productivity and create more openings for Americans in higherskilled occupations. The positive impact for U.S. households of legalization under an optimal visa tax would be 1.27 percent of GDP or $180 billion.”
http://www.cato.org/publications/trade-policy-analysis/restriction-or-legalization-measuring-economic-benefits-immigration-reform
George Will speaks for most Americans when he writes: “The idea that we can’t assimilate these 8-year-old criminals with their teddy bears is preposterous.”
But the issue isn’t eight year olds with Teddy bears.
The issue is a government that refuses to enforce our laws and a party that politicizes the issue for political power and blocks all efforts to make laws that support Americans and offer a LEGAL means of entry into our country.
The immediate issue is the increased numbers and the reasons for the sudden surge that include gang members and criminals. The immediate issue is those carrying diseases that are pretty serious and the methods used to deal with that. The issue is a secretive government that won’t allow media or our representatives in to see what is happening. The issue is the impact this will have on local schools and services.
The issue is the extremely poor leadership that brought us to this, another crisis, and no sense of urgency to do anything about it…inviting always more pouring across the border.
The issue is terrorists posing as kids to enter the country.
The issue is that we don’t have an adult in charge who gives a damn about the American people.
The CATO report is good but was published in 2009 and its purpose addressed the issue of immigration broadly rather than from the perspective of conditions now facing us:
A useful tool for legislators seeking to reform our border policy but not very helpful to address the problems going on in this moment in time, including pressure on local communities, criminals and gang meembers turned loose on our streets, persons with diseases turned loose on our streets, the opportunity for terrorists to enter the country under the guise of fleeing dangerous conditions, and the generally accepted reality that most will never show up for their court date but will become the new dreamers eligible for “free” college in President Obama’s alternate universe where all American kids are “privileged” and deserve to be taken down a peg to even things out.
As I said above the issue isn’t immigration reform, something we desperately need to do after securing our border and enforcing our current law.
The issue is the politics of a president who refuses to uphold the laws of the land and who panders to minorities and in the process helps to create crisis on our border and the chaos and cost for local communities which must deal with his mess.
Goerge Will addressed most of those issues. He thinks you’re being a drama queen.
From the New York Times:
“Why the Border Crisis Is a Myth
By VERONICA ESCOBAR JULY 25, 2014
EL PASO — TO hear the national news media tell the story, you would think my city, El Paso, and others along the Texas-Mexico border were being overrun by children — tens of thousands of them, some with their mothers, arriving from Central America in recent months, exploiting an immigration loophole to avoid deportation and putting a fatal strain on border state resources.
There’s no denying the impact of this latest immigration wave or the need for more resources. But there’s no crisis. Local communities like mine have done an amazing job of assisting these migrants.
Rather, the myth of a “crisis” is being used by politicians to justify ever-tighter restrictions on immigration, play to anti-immigrant voters in the fall elections and ignore the reasons so many children are coming here in the first place.
In the last month, about 2,500 refugees have been brought to El Paso after crossing the border elsewhere. The community quickly came together to support the women and children and Annunciation House, the organization coordinating the effort.
Contrary to the heated pronouncements, this is nothing we haven’t seen before. Groups of refugees arrive by plane and are processed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. When they are released, Annunciation House takes them to a shelter where they get a shower, a place to sleep, meals and even health care — all provided by volunteers and private donations.
The families of the refugees also help, often paying for travel costs and taking them into their homes. The refugees then move on, to Florida, Georgia, New York or elsewhere.
While the numbers of refugees arriving in El Paso are a fraction of the number arriving in McAllen, in southern Texas, the chain of events is generally the same. Like El Paso, South Texas is not the permanent destination for these refugees. And the response from McAllen’s citizens has been generous, too.
The same can’t be said of our politicians. What we are hearing from Austin and Washington is an almost Pavlovian response to immigration concerns. My governor, Rick Perry, a Republican, announced this week that he was sending 1,000 National Guard soldiers, at a cost of $12 million a month, to bolster the border.
And despite President Obama’s efforts to work with Central American leaders to address the root causes of the migration, his recently announced request for $3.7 billion, supposedly to deal with these new migrants, contains yet more border security measures: Almost $40 million would go to drone surveillance, and nearly 30 percent of it is for transportation and detention.
In Texas, state legislators and the Department of Public Safety are planning to spend an additional $30 million over six months to create a “surge” of state law enforcement resources, an expenditure that some in our state’s Capitol would like to see made permanent.
The costs are significant. Every day we detain an undocumented child immigrant, it costs Immigration and Customs Enforcement — i.e., the taxpayer — $259 per person, significantly more than we spend to educate a child in a middle-class school district.
Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
The irony is that this cash-intensive strategy comes from leaders who consistently underfund health care, transportation and education. And they ignore the crucial fact that children crossing our borders aren’t trying to sneak around law enforcement: They are running to law enforcement.
What is most alarming, however, is the attempt to erode rights and protections created by intelligent, humane legislation.
The debate is centered on the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a law signed by President George W. Bush to provide legal and humanitarian protections to unaccompanied migrant children from countries other than Mexico or Canada. The act passed with bipartisan support, yet the “crisis” is now being cited by some of the same legislators who supported the law as a reason to repeal or change it.
This effort to take away rights that were granted when there was significantly less anti-immigrant fervor isn’t just shortsighted and expensive, it’s un-American. We can debate the wisdom of providing greater protection to Central American children than to Mexican children, but there can be no doubt that giving safe haven to a child facing violence in a country that cannot protect its most vulnerable citizens is what a civilized country, with the resources we possess, should do.
Our border communities understand this. I hope the rest of the country, including our leaders in Austin and Washington, can follow our lead.
Veronica Escobar, a Democrat, is the county judge in El Paso.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/26/opinion/why-the-border-crisis-is-a-myth.html?module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Opinion&action=keypress®ion=FixedLeft&pgtype=article&_r=1
Chris: “Goerge Will addressed most of those issues. He thinks you’re being a drama queen.”
Is that supposed to scare?
Chris Cillizza, writing for the same paper thinks, “President Obama’s competence problem is worse than it looks”.
Does that make you and George Will full of beans?
(Can we please get beyond evaluating the messenger?)
NYT Veronica Escobar: “Rather, the myth of a “crisis” is being used by politicians to justify ever-tighter restrictions on immigration, play to anti-immigrant voters in the fall elections and ignore the reasons so many children are coming here in the first place.”
Yeah those crazy right wingers like Chris Collizza:
Tina: “There is a myth about Ellis Island immigrants that says America has always taken in immigrants as if without question or rejection.”
There is? I’m not aware of any such myth. Most people are aware that the history of immigration in America is pretty racist and ugly.
Some people learn from our history’s mistakes, and try to do better, to fulfill our nation’s promise. Others shout angrily at busloads full of children. I already know who you side with.