Immigrant group accepts $1.5M from Venezuela

Critic blasts Casa of Maryland for taking money from ‘a third-world dictator'

Citgo's donation will be spread over three years, beginning next year. It is the biggest corporate donation the immigrant advocacy group has ever received.

The Langley Park center will be run with about $500,000 a year, with $150,000 coming from the Citgo grant, said Jennifer Freedman, Casa's director of development. The center will provide ESOL training, financial literacy education, citizen preparation courses, help in developing minority-owned cooperatives and social services.

It will be the first day-laborer center to include an in-house "vocational training lab," a key to moving the mostly immigrant workers into more highly skilled jobs.

"The goal of this is that better and better jobs means more economical development for everyone," said Mario Quiroz, a Casa spokesman.

The center, which will reside in the basement of an office building at University Boulevard and New Hampshire Avenue, has been held up by renovation delays and permitting problems.

In the meantime, Montgomery County has been paying about $60,000 a year for a temporary Takoma Park center in a trailer across from the Langley Park site. On most mornings, the parking lots draw scores of workers — mostly Latino, many of them illegal immigrants.

Casa runs four other day-laborer centers in Maryland — in Silver Spring, Wheaton, Derwood and Baltimore city — largely with government grants.

About 45 percent of Casa's annual $6.3 million budget comes from government sources, Freedman said: Montgomery and Prince George's counties, the cities of Takoma Park and Baltimore, the state of Maryland and the federal government.

Many of those grants began to shrink last year, and Casa has put more emphasis on boosting private donations.

"Casa believes very strongly in leveraging public funding to attract private funding," Freedman said. "We can't do it without the public money and we can't do it without private funding."

Two weeks ago, the Ford Foundation gave Casa $400,000 for community organizing and for the Prince George's day-laborer center.

Already a lightning rod for criticism from those who oppose funding for illegal immigrants, Casa is being reproached for accepting money from the controversial Venezuelan government.

Brad Botwin, director of the anti-illegal immigrant group Help Save Maryland, sees the grant as part of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's systematic effort to "embarrass the United States."

"This really raises the ante on ‘Who is Casa and what are they trying to do?' This really puts them in a different league," he said. "Everyone knows what Chavez is up to with this stuff… Bottom line is you have a third-world dictator sending money up here trying to make us look bad, that we're not taking care of our poor people. …

"To me, this is seed money to help Gustavo [Torres, Casa's executive director] cause more trouble in Maryland."

Torres said his trip to Venezuela was "totally unrelated" to the Citgo grant. His presentation in November at the Third Venezuela International Book Fair — which had the theme "The United States: A possible revolution" — focused on registering immigrants to vote and what Torres described as "how proud I am working with Montgomery County and Prince George's and the state of Maryland."

He pointed out that he has spoken — by invitation — at conferences in four European countries, and is slated to travel to China in October.

"They want to know how we develop relationships with the local and state governments and how the workers' centers operate," Torres said. "… I know this is polemic for some people, but the donation from Citgo is part of Casa's very aggressive efforts with corporations … because we know the challenge we are facing with governments of Montgomery County, Prince George's and Maryland, the crisis they are facing financially."