You have surely heard all the numbers flying around this morning about how many refugees from the seven originally banned countries have entered the US. The numbers vary somewhat based on what day (and even time of day) one checks the State Department data base at Wrapsnet.
We heard a couple of days ago from Stephen Dinan at the Washington Times that 77% of the refugees admitted in the week following Judge Robarts’ decision are from the banned countries.
By the way, when I did numbers yesterday I went back to the day after the EO was issued (January 28th until yesterday) and the percentage was less than 50% from the 7 originally banned countries, so in recent days the Dept. of State has rushed in more from the seven targeted countries increasing the percentage.
Trying to recreate Dinan’s numbers for 2/3 to 2/9 I get 75% not 77%. But, that small discrepancy doesn’t matter because it depends on when in the day on the 9th or even the 8th Dinan ran numbers.
But, that is not the point of this post!
Just this morning Donald Trump tweeted that 72% came from those 7 terrorist-infested countries.
Does the President not know that it is the UN and his own State Department (DOS) admitting them? Does he not know that he has the power to reduce the cap (the ceiling) on the entire program right now? He did reduce Obama’s proposal of 110,000 to 50,000, but he could go lower and stop this rush in from these countries.
As of today we are at 34,430! Cap it now at 35,000!
(35,000 is not that far off of Bush’s post 9/11 number of 39,554, see here)
This reduction, across the board, was not addressed in the recent court wrangling because Trump clearly has the power! (LOL! Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter gave it to him in 1980!).
Of course a lowering of the ceiling won’t stop all those coming in from the seven terrorist hotspots, but the majority of those entering the US from Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Iran are through the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.
Where is Tillerson? Where is Trump’s White House staff? Would someone tell him!
After all, the majority of Americans are on Trump’s side with this EO.
This post is filed in our Trump Watch! category as well as ‘refugee statistics’ and ‘where to find information.’