Help! Send money right now, says Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society!

It is “an unprecedented crisis!”

Mark Hetfield, CEO HIAS

I suspect all of the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors*** are doing this—end-of-year appeals for money for 2018. I just happened to see HIAS’s appeal yesterday.

Because fewer refugees (paying clients) are expected to enter the US in the coming year, and because (if it’s true) the tax law changes are such that it’s less attractive to make charitable donations in 2018 and beyond, we are seeing the big push here.

This is what Mark Hetfield, CEO of HIAS, said in an urgent e-mail:

Screenshot (1224)

These are screenshots so links are not hot! Don’t miss that Hetfield is blowing their horn (#3) about suing the President!

How are they doing financially?

Because I haven’t checked lately, I figured it was time to see how HIAS’s latest tax filing looked. This is their Form 990 (filed September 25, 2017).

I like to look at two things. First I check out page 9 where they report how much they receive in federal funding for their charitable good works. They did raise over $17 million in private donations, so that is good and better than most of the other contractors (as a percentage of their income).

That travel loan fee is really your money too. Refugees are loaned their travel fare to the US and the contractors act as collection agencies and try their best to get the loan collected because it is to their financial advantage since they get to keep a cut of anything they extract from the poor people they have placed in your towns.

All of the airfare loan collection should go back to the federal treasury, but the US State Department gives the contractors this little extra bennie!

Government grants are obviously taxpayer dollars as is the loan processing fees. I don’t know what service fees are but I would guess they are related to refugees and therefore, could be taxpayer dollars too, but I don’t know. HIAS does better (on a percentage basis) than many other of the contractors do at raising private dollars for their ‘good works.’

And, I like to look at the salaries page. They have some pretty big salaries to feed, so folks better send in their $50 ASAP.

They aren’t at the level of the International Rescue Committee as we reported here recently, but they are up there!

I’m waiting for an announcement that the top staff will take pay cuts so refugees won’t be left in the lurch.

If you feel squeamish about seeing someone’s salary, don’t. If they were a truly private corporation this would be none of our business, but they aren’t. As a non-profit group, especially one so heavily taxpayer funded, we, who help pay their salaries have a right to know what we pay. We are permitted to know what our elected officials are paid and this is no different. They work for the taxpayer!

We have a very large archive on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, go here. (They dropped the longer name a few years ago and call themselves simply HIAS now.)

And, this just in, see that they are working hard on The Hill (I hope using none of your taxpayer dollars!). By the way, members of Congress make $174,000 a year. I wonder do they know that Mark Hetfield, a CEO of a taxpayer-funded non-profit group, makes nearly twice as much?

***These are the nine federal resettlement contractors that monopolize placement of refugees in your towns and cities with the help of hundreds of smaller subcontractors. Here is an accounting I did over the summer of their financial positions. Note that some are almost exclusively funded by you.