How Global Refuge Blurs Line Between Politics and Philanthropy — and Why It Should Retire to History
In the 1930s, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service was established to bring Lutheran victims of Eastern European communism to safety in the United States. This noble effort, born in the shadow of World War II, welcomed refugees who wanted to Americanize and had a deep connection to local communities — in this case, a shared faith.
However, as Eastern Europe cast off totalitarianism and religious persecution of Lutherans waned, the organization should have ended its mission after evacuating Hungarians fleeing Soviet oppression in 1956. Instead, it developed a clear case of “March of Dimes Syndrome.”
The organization evolved into today’s Global Refuge, a zombie entity with an ambiguous, expansive mandate. The name change signals a shift from aiding a specific community to a “global” mission, where the US is seemingly responsible for accommodating anyone who arrives. Dropping “Lutheran” also suggests a shift in funding — from the donations of Midwestern churchgoers to federal and state largesse, most recently $221 million in 2023.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Tim Rosenberger is a legal fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Charles Yockey is a Manhattan Institute policy analyst and Budapest Fellow at the Hungary Foundation.
Photo by VERONICA G. CARDENAS/AFP via Getty Images
