A quick primer for new readers: The Refugee Contractors « Refugee Resettlement Watch

A quick primer for new readers: The Refugee Contractors « Refugee Resettlement Watch
"It just occurred to me, when writing my post earlier this morning about State Department secrecy, that new readers are probably lost and confused by the many names of local organizations placing refugees in your towns.

First, there are nine major federally funded ‘non-profit’ groups that receive funding (some as much as 98% of their budget) from mainly the US Department of State (Population Refugees and Migration) and the Office of Refugee Resettlement which is in Health and Human Services.  (An aside: it is critical to pay attention to Trump cabinet picks for State and for HHS). 
Smaller federal grants come from other agencies as well.

Here they are:

• Church World Service (CWS)
• Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
• Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
• Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
• International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
• US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
• Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)
• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
• World Relief Corporation (WR)

Then working for them are hundreds of subcontractors scattered across 49 states.  
Go here to the government’s data base of resettlement subcontractors (aka affiliates) working in your state.  Below is a screen shot of the Connecticut page.

See the abbreviation in the left hand corner of each entry. 
That stands for the major contractor over this particular subcontractor.

Obviously USCCB is the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. 
CWS is Church World Service. 
Not so easy to identify is DFMS. 
That is the other name (don’t ask me why!) for Episcopal Migration Ministries and it is Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (scroll to bottom of page here).  
My personal guess for why there are two names is that it has to do with their financial structure (keeping their finances hard to track?)...
Gigantic money machine you need to know more about. Read on!