Bill cunning into Great America. Welcome this laurious Monday afternoon in the tri State.
Coming up later, we'll be an expert on the southern border. Also,
someone from Afghanistan is going to talk about how the isis K has reinstituted
itself in Afghanistan and they were behind the bombing and the killing of one hundred
and seventy five Russians. And I saw in court this morning the four individuals
involved, and I'm not sure the Russian security forces read them their miranda rights.
One guide didn't have an ear that was chopped off and fed to them,
and three others were beaten to within an inch of their life. And
that's a failure again of the Biden administration to do what it did in Afghanistan,
and so much more. And of course Reds Baseball kicks off on Thursday
about to five am and continues until at least midnight and maybe beyond. But
until then, as you may know, there are several non government organizations called
NGOs that assist in the assimilation of those who show up at their door from
whether immigration or not is not a status that to be determined. And Catholic
Charities of Southwest Ohio is one of those mngos along with many others including the
Urban League and Salvation Army to transition from where they these immigrants where they were
to where they're going to be in the future. And Tony Stewart is the
CEO of Catholic Charities of Southwest Ohio. Tony Stewart, welcome, I think
for the first time to the Bill Cunningham Show. And first of all,
can you inform the American people what is the mission of Catholic Charities of Southwest
Ohio. Sure, Bill, thanks for having me on. Catholic Charity Southwestern
Ohio's mission is to serve empower people in their times of vulnerability through God's love.
We do this through a wide range of programming that is all focused in
our local communities. What kind of specific help do you give the immigration community.
Can to be specific about food, housing, clothing, work requirements,
things of that character. Sure. Well, first, let me just share
that Catholic Charities has a wide variety of programs, so we serve nearly twenty
thousand people a year of from all backgrounds and ages, from early childhood to
older age, whether that's through food pantries, mental health programming, parenting education,
family support efforts, seniors and caregiver supports, and a collection of our
programs are related to migrants, specifically to provide humanitarian assistance to those who come
through our doors. But when I read some of the commentators online, there
has been some suggestion that Catholic Charities, along with many other NGOs, are
an attraction allure that illegal immigrants are encouraged to come here because there are social
welfare agencies such as Catholic Charity. He's funded in part by the federal government
to provide these services that but for Catholic Charities this a large influx of illegal
immigrants now called newcomers would not exist. Is that true? I would say
absolutely not. The situation of migration is an issue that needs to be dealt
with through Congress and through the administration. We essentially serve whoever comes through our
doors, regardless of their backgrounds, and I could certainly attest that nobody is
coming to our particular area just because we exist as an agency. There are
many organizations within the Greater Cincinnati area that serve whoever comes through their doors,
say Vinci to Paul, other food pantries that just serve people. They as
they need through their humanitarian needs. And we don't have a role in how
people get here, so we don't try to recruit or have any role,
and who's coming through the border or other locations, we simply serve them when
they arrive here. Does the federal government pay Catholic charities? Some have used
the term a boatload of money to do this and it's a money maker for
Catholic charities? Is that true or false? That is also false. We
do receive funds, yes, from the federal government, to do very specific
programming that is related to migrants. The two programs that we receive as an
agency, one is our refugee Resettlement program. This is a program that's been
operating a broad daylighte for decades now, since the Vietnam War, essentially to
resettle a handful of refugees, most of whom who've been languishing in refugee camps
for many, many years, to come over for resettlement. In a given
year. We'll settle a few hundred families in a year, and this is
done through a contract with the federal government. But to say that it's a
body maker, I can certainly declare that it does not. It doesn't even
pay the bills for the program. We rely on a great deal of private
contributions from the community, people who want to be a part of this mission,
and many many volunteers. We have over eight hundred volunteers a year that
work with ussy Catholic charities and many in kind donations furniture, just clothing.
We hobble together a lot of resources to make these programs work. The funds
that we get from the federal government to help with the refugee resettlement program don't
cover the whole thing. The people who are doing this work are essentially social
workers who could certainly be making more money I imagine working some other place in
the for profit world. So these are people who are doing this because they
love the mission, they love helping other people. They want to see the
Gospel put into action. The other program that we run that receive some federal
support is are case management for unaccompanied children. So those kids that the federal
government determines, for whatever reason, to be placed at a household and about
a two hundred mile radius around Cincinnati. What they are placed here, we
receive notification and are asked to provide some basic case management services to ensure that
the kids are safe, that they're not being exploited, that they're not victims
of human trafficking. We just try to provide some basic case management to make
sure these kids are okay. Well, one of your essentially what we do.
One of your guys told me that in reality, Catholic Charities of Southwest
Ohio is financially unconnected to other Catholic Charities groups around the country, and that
if the money from the Feds did not come for the refugee resettlement or the
case management of children, if that didn't exist at all, Catholic Charities financially
would be in better shape. So you don't make money on this. Is
that fair to say, yes, we don't make money on this at all.
I mean, we couldn't run those programs without the federal support, but
we're certainly not making any money off of it. And we couldn't run those
programs if we didn't have a number of other supports, people who want to
be a part of the effort and help make it all happen. But that
is also true that we operate independently of all the other Catholic Charities agencies in
the country. Catholic Charities is an entity of the local dioceses at which they
exist. So we do, of course support each other at our mission to
promote the Gospel and to help those in need. That's why we exist.
But we operate completely independent of each other, and our sole mission is to
support the poor and vulnerable in our local communities. That is entirely our focus.
Let's say Tony Bender shows up from Yugoslavia. He's got a wife and
three kids, and he shows up at Catholic charities kind of walk us through
the intake process. English is the second or third or fourth language. He
can speak fluent to fluent Romanian. That's about it, and does he work,
does explain the process. So when Tony Bender shows up from Yugoslavia,
what happens? Yeah, Well, really, the types of services that a
viagrant could receive really depends upon their status. So if an emmigrant family has
no particular migrant status that we, like anybody, would just provide some basic
humanitarian assistance, food, clothing, just whatever support they might need and not
even know, honestly, if we wouldn't even ask those questions, If that's
just the kind of service that they would need, do you make them work.
I mean a lot of people say, well, you're on the public
dole in a sense, although this is private and you don't have to work.
How do you take someone and say, you've got to be self supporting,
you've got to function, and this isn't a place for you to live
the rest of your life. How do you get how do you transition them
out of Catholic charities? Sure, so, if an immigrant is coming as
a refugee, it does have a status where they're allowed to work, for
instance, and we were bringing them in or they were brought to us as
a refugee for us to resettle, then we're going to provide a comprehensive resettlement
process for them with volunteers and SOOL classes, job readiness support, whatever we
could do to help them integrate fully into the American society and to be contributing
members of our communities. And I would highly state that we have a high
success rate and the refugees that we've worked with have well established themselves in many
ways and are building a better Cincinnati for all of us. So this started
more than a half a century ago with the Vietnam situation, and the last
two or three years there's been some hot white lamps on the whole process.
And you're saying, and you know where the bodies are buried. You've been
at this for a long time. You're the CEO of Catholic Charities of Southwest
Ohio, and everything you're telling me is Number one, Catholic Charities doesn't make
any money on this at all. It's not a big money maker. Number
Two, it's run by essentially hundreds of social workers and others assisting these communities.
And number three, the goal is to get them from where they are,
which is in need, to where they're not in need, which might
take six months, a year, two years, or three years. And
then there's another influx. Have you noticed an influx the last year or two
of additional refugees from many parts of the world, that is an uptick of
the need that you have. Yeah, well, no, you're right.
I think you defied our work very well there. And you know, we've
seed a variety of waves come through in recent years. So, for one,
the Afghanistan situation, you know when the Taliban horrifically took over that country
and Afghans were being evacuated out of any of those Afghans that were ended up
in Cincinnati for whatever reason. You know, we had no say and who
would come here, but those that the federal government determined would end up in
Cincinnati. We helped them resettle and get their new lives started, and it's
really exciting just to see where they are about two years, two and a
half years later. The Ukrainians would be another example of leeing the war of
course with Russia, and our support for them as they try to make a
new life at least until their country is hopefully a peaceful place again. So
we seed ways like that where we've been directly involved in helping people build new
lives here locally. And Tony start about the children. One of the worst
things about what's happening on the collapse of our southern border is literally hundreds of
thousands of children from newborns to fifteen sixteen years old that are being sexually trafficked
all over the place. They might be working in sweatshops sixteen hours a day.
Farming communities may take them and force these children to work, and that
is am I fair to say, that is not what Catholic charities does.
What Catholic charity stops the human trafficking and exploitation. It doesn't incentivize it explain
that process. That's absolutely right, Bill, I mean that's the tragedy is
that kids who are migrating on their own, who are left vulnerable, whoever
would want to prey on them or exploit them. The lack I think of
an orderly and humane immigration system, which is a federal problem, is what's
causing a lot of this. But we try to pick up the pieces,
and so when we have the capacity to provide some case management, to keep
an eye on these kids, make sure we know where they are, that
we could report that they're safe, that they're they're in a school, someplace,
that they aren't being sex trafficked. I mean, that's the space that
we want to be in to protect these children as much as we possibly can.
So, Tony Stewart, as far as you're aware, once an unaccompanied
child gets to Southwest Ohio Catholic Charities, to your knowledge, has any of
those children been sex trafficked or used or abused in any fashion to your knowledge,
to my knowledge, no, anybody who is on our case role,
we're we're the ones that are trying to make sure that that does not happen.
Tony Stewart, thank you for setting the record straight. And what is
your website? If those listening to our dulcet tones now this Monday afternoon want
to assist in some way to provide goods or services or volunteer labor, whatever
it might be. What is your website? Sure, it's ccsw o h
dot org. Invite people to see more what we do and certainly to get
involved. You know, we at Catholic Charity see ourselves as a large family
of staff, volunteers, supporters, partners in the community who all want to
build a greater Cincinnati and together I think we're doing that. You know.
One thing I've assisted over the years are pregnancy centers, in which women that
are in crisis when they're pregnant can go to a pregnancy center and they have
a case worker. There's reasons a sonogram might be shown, this is your
baby, this is what the baby looks like. You're a healthy mom,
you have a healthy unborn baby, and pregnancy centers step up and say,
Okay, what do you need? How can we help you? Is that
the similar philosophy of Catholic charities? Yeah, I mean I would say that
we very much work in concert with many pregnancy care centers and certainly support them
in the mission in the Gospel command to protect human life from conception until natural
death. You know, we we do this together for the community where the
pregnancy sitters just do amazing work helping mothers in need and saving on board life.
We we like to support them in other ways through our humanitarian assistance to
those moms, to provide mental health counseling wherever we can to those women I
need. So we were really in this together. Catholic Charities to Southwest Ohio,
Tony Stewart. No relation to the great NASCAR driver to my knowledge or
your knowledge. Is that correct? To my knowledge? Note you wish you
were, but nonetheless Catholic Charities to southwester Whiow and Tony Stewart. Seriously,
thank you for setting the record straight this afternoon. Thank you, Thank you
Bill for having me on. And God bless and God bless America. Let's
continue with more if a line becomes available five and three, seven four nine,
seven thousand or pounds seven hundred, Bill Cunningham News Radio seven hundred wlwle
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