I thought this thing was dead until I happened across this story at the Financial Review by Dougal Robinson from Melbourne, Australia.
The nerve of Aussie’s suggesting that if the US reneged on the deal, this might strain relations with Australia.
See our previous posts on the insane deal, here (posts dated 2016 and 2017).
Remember when you read this that we are talking about illegal aliens who attempted to get to Australia, but that country refused to admit them to their mainland and they are in detention elsewhere.
The Australians did not want these mostly Muslim illegal aliens! They were not granted asylum in Australia! So why are they our problem?
This has got to stop! There should be no DEALS involving refugees where our US State Department wants something from another country, but those getting shafted and suffering the consequences are local communities that must put up with unwanted aliens moving to their towns!
Here is what the Financial Review said three days ago. Damn it! These are NOT REFUGEES, they failed Australia’s asylum process! (Emphasis below is mine, you can tell I’m outraged when I write in red!)
Australian diplomats in Washington face an unenviable assignment: to convince the incoming Trump administration that more than 1000 refugees on Manus Island and Nauru should be resettled in the United States. While the Australian government wants the planned refugee resettlement to occur, circumstances will force it to consider the importance of this issue relative to many other topics needing discussion with the new administration.
The refugee resettlement deal, announced by the Turnbull government and Obama administration after November’s presidential election, faces growing opposition among members of Mr Trump’s party. Three congressional Republicans have already stated their opposition to the deal. If more Republicans express similarly critical views in coming days and weeks, it will become increasingly difficult for Mr Trump to carry out an Obama-era agreement that seems at odds with his comments on refugees and Muslim immigration. [Note that Obama’s State Dept. made the deal AFTER the election!—ed]
Brian Babin, a hard-right Texas congressman and member of the House Freedom Caucus, said he was “confident President-elect Trump will do everything in his power to put an immediate stop” to a refugee deal he described as “madness”. It is improbable that Babin, a junior member of Congress first elected in 2014, was foreshadowing the internal thinking of incoming Trump administration officials who are invariably focused on other priorities.
Of more concern are the other outspoken opponents of the deal: Senator Chuck Grassley and Representative Bob Goodlatte, influential Republicans who have spent several decades in Congress….
[….]
Australia will in all likelihood be asked to do much more than foot the bill for vetting and resettling the refugees in the United States, and accepting US-controlled refugees from Central America into Australia as currently planned will do little to assuage the new administration. A new commitment could be needed on one of Trump’s priorities, such as increased Australian engagement in the fight against ISIS. In these circumstances, the Trump administration could sell the resettlement as a pre-done agreement and point to an enhanced Australian alliance commitment. Security concerns could be alleviated by references to comprehensive vetting by Homeland Security officials and Australia’s strict standards on border control. [So Australia wouldn’t help fight ISIS unless we take 1,000 mostly Muslims that Australia doesn’t want!—ed]
Confirming that Trump can do what he wants with refugee admissions, this sounds like a threat from the Financial Review (or whoever they are writing this for!):
A final scenario is that this becomes a totemic issue due to Trump’s focus on immigration and ISIS. If several more Republicans in Congress, especially the senior and influential types, speak out against the deal then its fate may be sealed. As President, Trump can unilaterally scrap the deal without congressional approval. (Professor Niels Frenzen, an immigration expert at the University of Southern California school of law, notes that overseas refugee admissions are “pretty much subject to the unfettered discretion of the President”.) Such a rejection would be humiliating and problematic for Australia, a loyal US ally, and dominate evolving discussions of the alliance.
Sounds like blackmail to me!
More here.
Once again, Obama is leaving Trump with a foreign relations problem wholly of Obama’s making!