Episcopal Bishops Lobby Lawmakers for Their Budgetary Survival
Episcopal Bishops Lobby Lawmakers for Their Budgetary Survival
09/25/2019 ~ Ann Corcoran
Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) is one of the nine federal refugee contractors that the State Department hires to place refugees in your towns and cities.
A year ago their future as a federally-funded ‘non-profit’ was in jeopardy because the Trump Administration said some of the nine might not survive the cuts. Well, all nine did survive to lobby for another day.
If Trump comes in with even lower refugee numbers for this coming fiscal year that begins next Tuesday, EMM’s millions of federal dollars could be in jeopardy again.
EMM is 99.5% funded with taxpayer dollars! See here. And, here.
Thus a group of Bishops trooped to Washington yesterday to make a plea to Congress for more refugees (and therefore more federal dollars for their ‘Christian charity!’)
Note that media accounts rarely, if ever, mention their is a monetary connection to their religious and humanitarian zeal.
From Episcopal News Service:
Bishops meet with federal lawmakers to advocate for Episcopal Migration Ministries, refugees
[Episcopal News Service] Five Episcopal bishops traveled to Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 24 for meetings with senators and representatives from their dioceses to advocate for preserving the U.S. government’s refugee resettlement program at a time when the Trump administration is considering cutting the program further.
https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org...ps-300x200.jpg
Episcopal Bishop’s lobbying contingent
The bishops represent a diverse group of dioceses.
Rio Grande Bishop Michael Hunn’s diocese touches 40 percent of the U.S. border with Mexico, and the group also included
Maine Bishop Thomas Brown, West Virginia Bishop Mike Klusmeyer, Northern Indiana Bishop Douglas Sparks and Bishop Mark Van Koevering from the Diocese of Lexington in Kentucky.
They were accompanied by staff members from
The Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations, which organized the visits. They met with both Republicans and Democrats. And their appeals carried the weight of the church’s decades of experience resettling refugees in the United States through Episcopal Migration Ministries, or EMM.
“This is certainly not a partisan issue, from my standpoint,” Hunn told Episcopal News Service after concluding his meetings. “It’s a moral issue of how we care for the stranger among us.”
EMM is shrinking and is getting desperate:
EMM once oversaw 31 resettlement affiliates in 26 dioceses, but now that number is down to 13 affiliates in 11 dioceses. The ongoing uncertainty over future resettlement levels poses additional challenges for EMM and the other eight agencies.
Now get this, the Bishops got their talking points from the Episcopal Church’s Government Relations (lobbying) office (are we paying for that too?).
The five bishops in Washington to advocate for EMM and the refugee resettlement program gathered in the morning for a briefing, in which Office of Government Relations staff members outlined talking points that invoked church policy positions as determined by General Convention resolutions. The bishops also received biographical information about the lawmakers they were meeting.
So who advocates for you, taxpayers, who don’t want your hard earned dollars going to ‘church’ groups advocating far Left political positions? No one!
https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org...tary-survival/
