Episcopal bishop lectures Trump while earning taxpayer millions to bring migrants into US
Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon to President Trump during an inaugural prayer service, coupled with her church’s advocacy for humanitarian immigration programs, reveals a striking hypocrisy — one that could be seen as self-serving and even a conflict of interest.That’s because the federal contracting arm of the church, Episcopal Migration Ministry (EMM), is paid to bring in people on resettlement programs that Trump has temporarily paused and targeted for re-evaluation.EMM budget figures for 2024 are not available yet, but in 2023 it earned $53 million from various taxpayer-funded government programs to resettle 3,600 individuals.EMM “sponsored” 6,400 individuals from 48 countries in 2024.The leading nationalities were Afghans under a special humanitarian program, refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and others in smaller numbers from seven distinct special resettlement programs.There is even a contingent from Vietnam.
True, EMM resettles fewer than 10 individuals from Vietnam annually, but it raises the question: Why, 50 years after the end of the Vietnam war, we are still running a taxpayer-funded program to help people immigrate from Vietnam to the US?Unlike everyday immigrants, these new arrivals receive government assistance and, most importantly, are immediately eligible for all forms of welfare, such as Medicaid and cash assistance, on the same basis as a US citizen.Further, they can immediately sponsor friends and relatives under a recent Biden expansion of the refugee resettlement program.Office of Refugee Resettlement was projecting 656,500 new arrivals in 2025, who would fall under its care.Clearly this is a program wildly out of control.In an wild understatement, a 2012 Government Accountability Office report quotes an official noting that “funding is based on the number of refugees they serve, so affiliates have an incentive to maintain or increase the number of refugees they resettle each year rather than allowing the...