So why is that significant? Never in the history of the Refugee Act of 1980 has a CEILING been breached. That happened because the US Supreme Court unconstitutionally changed refugee lawwhen it set exceptions to its concurrence that Trump did have the legal right to cap refugee numbers.
As we wait for the Presidential determination for FY18, I thought you might like to see how many refugees we have as of this morning and where they went. We broke through the 50,000 ceiling in July. 2,282 have been added since.
Groups like the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and International Refugee Assistance Project, with their lawsuits through friendly courts, have so perverted the legal process that has been in place since 1980 for admitting refugees that there is even more reason for President Donald Trump to simply suspend the USRAP for FY18 which begins in 22 days.
Here is the latest crowing at the New York Times about how the recent 9th Circuit decision will allow more refugees to be admitted to the US.
But, but, but….
No where does the NYT article mention that the Supreme Court did affirm the President’s legal right to set a CEILING for the fiscal year and that Trump did set it once he was sworn in at 50,000. We are now at 51,726 (as of this writing). This is the first time in the history of the program that the ceiling has been exceeded.
Rebecca Heller, Yale law 2010, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project is “thrilled.”
Any day now Donald Trump could set the CEILING for Fiscal year 2018 that begins on October 1 making moot so much of this legal wrangling.
All of this language created out of thin air by the Supreme Court—this “bona fide relationship” BS—is not in refugee law.
My argument again is that since the courts (including the Supremes) have so mangled refugee law (with the help of these political agitators) that the program should be suspended beginning October 1 to give CONGRESS and the President time assess the program and to regain their Constitutional authority to write and administer law!
The Refugee Act of 1980does not mandate any number that a President must admit. He can set the level at zero! He can do that without any executive order via his September ‘determination’ required under the Act!
If he sets the level at zero at the outset, he also takes away any claim the contractors have to having been promised (via contract/agreement) by the Dept. of State that they will be getting a certain number of paying clients (aka refugees) in the coming year.
Here is the New York Times helping to further muddy the public’s understanding of how refugee admissions to the US are processed.
LOS ANGELES — A federal appeals court on Thursday reopened the country’s door to thousands of refugees who had been temporarily blocked by President Trump’s travel ban, and also upheld a lower court decision that had exempted grandparents and other relatives from the ban. [Thousands in 22 days?—ed]
The ruling, from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Seattle, was cheered by refugee resettlement organizations,*** and clarified, for now, who was covered by the ban.
In June, the Supreme Court allowed parts of President Trump’s executive order temporarily barring all travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries, and all refugees, to take effect while the court considered arguments over whether such a ban was constitutional. But the court said the government should let in travelers and refugees with a “bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States,” without fully defining what that meant. [There is no “bona fide” relationship standard in refugee law! Bona fide dies when the executive order dies unless Congress rewrites the law and the President signs it!—ed]
[….]
They also said that working with a resettlement agency*** meets the standard for a “bona fide” relationship with an entity in the United States.
[….]
The United States refugee resettlement program virtually ground to a halt at the end of June as a result of the travel ban. Since then, the government has frozen the applications of individuals already assigned to a resettlement agency, unless they could show ties to a close family member in the United States. Some 24,000 refugees were affected, the court noted in its opinion.
The court mandated that the government resume resettling refugees in the United States beginning in five days.
Becca Heller, director of International Refugee Assistance Project, an organization that provides free legal assistance to refugees abroad and has sued the government over the ban, said Thursday, “I am thrilled that two courts have now recognized the importance of the decades-old relationship between refugees and the American families, communities and organizations that help them resettle.”
The Dept. of Justice said they will appeal (to the Supreme Court) this latest legal overreach by the 9th Circuit.
If the Leftist resettlement agencies*** had never gotten involved, accepted the 120-day moratorium, it would be long over now and they would be back to their normal process.
And, so since this whole exercise will be moot shortly, what have the refugee advocacy and contracting agencies*** gained from these legal machinations?
They have gained an enormous anti-Trump media campaign, that’s what!
*** For new readers, these are the Federal contractors/middlemen/employment agencies/propagandists/lobbyists/community organizers? paid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities listed below. Under the nine major contractors are hundreds of subcontractors.
The contractors income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, but they also receive myriad grants to service their “New Americans.”
If you are a good-hearted soul and think refugee resettlement is all about humanitarianism, think again!Big businesses/global corporations depend on the free flow of cheap (some call it slave) labor. It is for this reason that Republican leaders of Congress are supportive of an uninterrupted flow of refugees into America.
The only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove these contractors/Leftwing activists/big business head hunters from the process.
As far as I know, all of the contractors below supported the lawsuits that Ms. Heller and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society filed.
…..in September the rubber meets the road!
I haven’t the time or energy tonight to sort out the latest details of what the Supreme Court did today and I’m not losing sleep over it. I’ll have updates tomorrow after I make an early run to the airport. What happens to your towns and cities is up to Tillerson and Trump in the remaining weeks of the fiscal year, not the Supreme Court! But, what I want to leave you with tonight is this…. Donald Trump’s State Department (with orders from the White House) can slow-walk refugee admissions for the next 2 months and 12 days.
After all, the Supreme Court has already gone way beyond its Constitutional authority and literally written a whole new program for admitting refugee relatives past the 50,000 CEILING, so Trump can just ignore them. He is within the law!
DHS can very carefully (VERY carefully) examine each potential refugee through the remainder of the fiscal year which ends September 30th.
So don’t get bogged down in minutia that ends with the fiscal year (when the EO ends), begin now to look at FY2018. In September, the White House sends its ‘determination’ to Congress for CONSULTATION. The determination that is being crafted at this very minute (with the contractors’*** help) will say how many refugees and from what parts of the world we will admit them.
You need to hammer the White House and your member of Congress and US Senators about what you think—NOW! If you think it should be zero (or whatever), say so!
In September we will know if Donald Trump and Congress have any intention of reforming the monstrosity that the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program has become. ***Federal contractors/middlemen/lobbyists/community organizerspaid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities. At this minute they are sending ‘abstracts’to Washington which are their personal wish lists and plans for who will be ‘welcomed’ to your towns.
Because their income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, the only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove the contractors from the process. I have ideas on how to do that, but no one in Congress every asks!
Justice Clarence Thomas: “compromise will invite a flood of litigation….” Oh, wasJustice Clarence Thomas right—what a hash has been made in the courts as the fight goes on to define “bona fide relationship.”
Are you as sick of this as I am? Go here to read my previous post on the judge in Hawaii (the state that only “welcomes” a tiny number of refugees) who thinks he has the legal right to write refugee law (just as the Supreme Court did as well!).
This just an hour ago from Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court has asked the State of Hawaii to respond by Tuesday at noon to President Donald Trump’s motionto block a judge’s ruling that prevented his travel ban from being applied to grandparents of U.S. citizens and refugees already being processed by resettlement agencies, the court’s public information office said on Saturday.
In a court filing on Friday, the administration asked the justices to overturn Thursday’s decision by a U.S. district judge in Hawaii, which limited the scope of the administration’s temporary ban on refugees and travelers from six Muslim-majority countries.
Don’t get too hung up on the grandparents part of this, the important point for followers of RRW is the question of whether a federal refugee contractor*** is a “bona fide entity.”
See all of my previous posts on the really really dumb thing the Supreme Court did in the first place in my category: Supreme Court. ***Federal contractors/middlemen/lobbyists/community organizerspaid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities. Because their income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, the only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove the contractors from the process.
Update: By the end of the day we are now over the President’s ceiling by 194, and I think it would only be fair if HIAS set up an office in Hawaii and resettle all of those over the ceiling in that state! After all, Hawaii isn’t getting its fair share—only 3 so far in FY17.
I really don’t mean to turn RRWin to HIAS Watch***, but it is Mark Hetfield, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society’s well paid CEOwho is setting himself up as the leading spokesman for the refugee industry. Here(below) is his statement on the decision by the Hawaiian rogue judge. Hetfield gets an award: https://www.hias.org/blog/adl-hebrew-union-college-honor-hias-work-behalf-refugees If the Trump administration allows one judge in Hawaii to prevail, after deciding all by himself, what a “bona fide relationship” is, we might as well call it quits and go to the beach (for life!).
There is no legal standard because the Supreme Court literally made it up on the fly!
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society:
SILVER SPRING, Md.—On Thursday, July 13, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson issued an important ruling in Hawaii halting the implementation of portions of the Trump administration’s executive order banning refugees and travelers from six Muslim-majority countries.
As a result of this ruling, refugees with assurances from U.S.-based resettlement agencies are now officially considered to have “bona fide” relationships with a U.S. entity, as defined by the Supreme Court. The Trump administration had previously interpreted the Supreme Court order to mean that refugees with such ties would not be permitted entry on that basis alone.
In his decision, Judge Watson wrote that “an assurance from a United States resettlement agency, in fact, meets each of the Supreme Court’s touchstones,” and that “bona fide does not get any more bona fide than that.”
Additionally, the Court expanded the administration’s overly narrow interpretation of which close family ties would qualify to be exempted from the refugee ban, which had originally excluded even grandparents and grandchildren.
HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield said, “This is a common-sense ruling which correctly interprets what the Supreme Court explicitly wrote. Critically, thousands of refugees escaping precarious and dangerous situations should now have the chance to find the safety promised to them in this country.”
More here. Rep. Keith Ellison was the ‘draw’ at NY anti-Trump rally sponsored by HIAS.
Remember readers, this is all about their “compensation,” about money (taxpayer money!) for each refugee they place in your towns. It is about their office overhead, their staff salaries, their travel budgets, and their ability to put on anti-Trump rallies like this one.
***This gives me an idea. Readers are always asking me what they can do. Here is something: Start a “watch” for each of the nine contractors. Pick your favorite from the list below and write your own blog! If I can do it, so can you!
If you decide to choose HIAS we have a huge archive on them here (a good place to start!). Federal contractors/middlemen/lobbyists/community organizerspaid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities. Because their income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, the only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove the contractors from the process.
