I sure hope Reuters has this wrong!
If it is true it is truly insane!
For new readers, in the waning months of the Obama Administration, Obama made a deal with Australian Prime Minister Turnbull to take off their hands somewhere between 1000-2000 migrants being held in detention on offshore islands.
Australia does not want to give them asylum and bring them to their mainland, but Obama thought it was a swell idea for them to be distributed to American cities and towns!
We are told by Reuters that Trump agreed to honor the deal in a phone call with the Australian prime minister yesterday.
Again, Australia does not want these mostly Muslim illegal aliens who attempted to reach Australia by boat!
(See our past posts on the ‘Australia deal’ here.)
Here is Reuters:
President Donald Trump has confirmed that his administration will honor a refugee resettlement deal with Australia, a source close to the Australian government said on Sunday.
Trump spoke by telephone with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull earlier on Sunday, officials in both countries said, one of a number of conversations the new U.S. president held with world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The Australian government source told Reuters Trump confirmed the deal to resettle asylum seekers currently held in offshore detention camps to the United States would go ahead.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration had said the United States would take a substantial number of the 1,200 asylum seekers, who are held in the procession centers on remote Pacific islands in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, after Turnbull agreed to resettle refugees from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
U.S. Homeland Security officials have begun assessing the asylum seekers, although it was unclear when those found to be genuine refugees would be resettled. [Australia obviously found none who are legitimate refugees!—ed]
Many of those in Australia’s offshore camps have fled conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere.
Senator Grassley and Rep. Goodlatte identified the nationalities as the following: Iran, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan and “stateless” (probably Rohingya), here.
So what kind of a deal is this Donald?
We get Australia’s rejected asylum seekers (house, feed, clothe them on our dime) and a bunch of illegal aliens not even in the US from Central America being held in Costa Rica go to Australia. What do we get out of that deal???
I’m guessing there is a strong caveat that Reuters may not want to focus on and that is that the ‘refugees’ must get through our surely stepped-up security screening when they clearly didn’t get through Australia’s.
Just in case….