Ms. Livon was in charge of the DHHS ORR program in the 1990’s during the peak of the Bosnian refugee migration to the US.

But there’s more coming from gadfly Chris Coen of Friends of Refugees about the complete lack of oversight of the federal humanitarian refugee program:

The most important thing is for (the State Department) to enforce the rules that they already have and they’re not doing that,” said Chris Coen, who runs his own refugee support group, Friends of Refugees. “I see these same problems all over the country. It’s a lot worse than you think.”

The State Department is looking into how the institute handled the resettlement of 64 refugees from the Karen ethnic minority, who arrived in Waterbury last summer. Many of the problems it is believed to be examining — poor housing, missed medical appointments and poor documentation — are similar to those it raised “serious concerns about” in 2006.

Coen says that in 16 months from July 2002 through October 2003, the State Department completed only 12 monitoring reports of resettlement agencies.

But the State Department says it does more than that and has increased the number of reports it does every year since 2003. That year, its Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration monitored 21 programs. This year, it is scheduled to monitor 57. But whether the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, with a budget of $1.08 billion, has the power to do more than restrict the number of refugees any agency processes is questionable.

We have been in contact with US Senator Joseph Lieberman’s Washington office and they have assigned a staff person to investigate the matter.

In an email exchange with Senator Lieberman’s office we noted the following:

Both Ann Corcoran of Refugee Resettlement Watch and we at ACT are pleased to hear that the matter we raised is being followed up on by you and the Senator’s staff. This could prefigure a wider investigation, perhaps through a GAO audit of the VOLAG contractual program of the Department of State, BPRM and Department of Health and Human Services ORR, that may be lacking in oversight controls.

You can be sure these volags get more funds in addition to the half of $850 for their “administration” and just so readers aren’t mislead and think that these are poor struggling outfits, a little check of USCRI’s 2006 Form 990 reveals the following:

USCRI’s gross income was $18,352,000. $16,905,312 was from government grants (that’s you the taxpayer) while another $675,868 included government contracts.

Total compensation of officers was $358,587 and other salaries were $2,966,521. Other pension, payroll and employee benefits amounted to around $809,000. Rent was $572,367. Travel $213,680. Conferences and meetings $168,559. You get the picture. You are paying for all this and they complain that it is too little to do a good job caring for refugees.

And as far as Ms. Limon’s “whoop-de-do” comment regarding salaries. Yes indeed, she didn’t have to worry about her salary which comes out of this same government pot of cash. In 2006 her salary and other compensation was $195,478. That is up about $20,000 from the previous couple of years.

Oh, I almost forgot, they also said they spent $1,000,000 for lobbying. I guess that was for more refugees and more money.

In defense of Ms. Limon, her salary isn’t as large as another of her peers. The President of the International Rescue Committee (another of the top ten motherships), George Rupp, received according to Guidestar in excess of $325,000 in salary and compensation in 2005. But, of course his volag was receiving over $88,000,000 from the taxpayers.

Here is my fix! US State Department take a smaller number of refugees and be sure each family or family unit has a church or other such group sponsoring them, caring for them, and helping them assimilate and cut these refugee industry middlemen out!