Day: March 7, 2017

US Catholic Bishops assail Trump refugee slowdown, never mention the millions they are paid!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Actually it is over a half billion the US Conference of Catholic Bishops received from US taxpayers since 2008!

(By the way, I just heard Raymond Arroyo on Fox and Friends say that the USCCB gets millions of tax dollars annually from the federal treasury, but I couldn’t find the clip.  Yeh! Finally that information is getting in to the mainstream media!)
***Update*** Reader Robin has found the clip.  Be sure to watch (click here) at about 50 seconds in when Brian Kilmeade asks why Lutherans and Catholics oppose the Trump refugee slowdown.  Clearly Arroyo has done some homework!
Here is the latest from Catholic News Agency (CNA):

Washington D.C., Mar 6, 2017 / 03:50 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With people fleeing humanitarian crises around the world, President Donald Trump’s new executive order halting refugee admissions is wrong, Catholic bishop and aid groups maintain.

Bishop Vasquez chairs the U.S. bishops’ committee on migration. Last time we looked we reported that 97% of the Bishop’s Migration funds money comes from you—the taxpayers! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/01/11/and-we-almost-missed-it-us-conference-of-catholic-bishops-celebrates-its-national-migration-week/

“We remain deeply troubled by the human consequences of the revised executive order on refugee admissions and the travel ban. While we note the Administration’s efforts to modify the Executive Order in light of various legal concerns, the revised Order still leaves many innocent lives at risk,” Bishop Joe Vasquez of Austin stated March 6. Bishop Vasquez chairs the U.S. bishops’ committee on migration.

“The U.S. Catholic Bishops have long recognized the importance of ensuring public safety and would welcome reasonable and necessary steps to accomplish that goal,” he said.

“However, based on the knowledge that refugees are already subjected to the most vigorous vetting process of anyone who enters the United States, there is no merit to pausing the refugee resettlement program while considering further improvement to that vetting process.”

Here comes the big lie that Trump is reducing the number  of refugees dramatically!  Contractors, like the US Bishops, did just fine on less than 50,000 refugees during 4 of Bush’s years.
But, for only one year did Obama propose the astronomical number of 110,000 (for most of the year he would not be in office!) and that becomes the standard that the ignorant, gullible media goes with!  For the many new readers we get every day, the resettlement contractors, including the USCCB, gets paid by the head to place refugees in your towns. More refugees=more money!

“Resettling only 50,000 refugees a year, down from 110,000, does not reflect the need, our compassion, and our capacity as a nation,” Bishop Vasquez stated. “We have the ability to continue to assist the most vulnerable among us without sacrificing our values as Americans or the safety and security of our nation.”

He goes on to oppose any religious test (like the prioritization of Christians in the first EO) for admission to the US.
Now, here comes a major truth! And, this is why Christians are not prioritized from Muslim countries!

Refugees must first register with the UNHCR to be eligible for resettlement.

Trump should immediately sever our ties with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, save us millions of dollars, and put in place a program where we, the US, chooses our refugees without the UNHCR middle men!
CNA continues……

“The Obama administration policy was to prioritize these groups, but despite this they remain severely underrepresented in U.S. refugee admissions, so it’s clear that a fair outcome is even more important than a stated priority,” he said. [Andrew Walther, vice president of communications and strategic planning at the Knights of Columbus.]

Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan of Antioch has warned that Christians hoping to be resettled in the U.S. or Canada have never even had the chance.

“I personally heard on several occasions from many of our Christian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, that their applications for refugee visas, either to the USA or Canada, are without any response, if not refused by the consulates of the USA and Canada,” he stated.

Never mentioned at CNA News is the financial reason the USCCB does not want to slow the flow for even a short period of time—$$$$$!
Here (below) is just one page of the income the USCCB is getting from you (from 2008-2016).  This does not include the millions and millions of tax payer dollars received separately by individual Catholic Charities around the country.
My screenshot from USASpending.gov captures only 7 of 227 transactions.

For those of you interested in the USAID funding be sure to scroll through the pages and see how much of that money the USCCB gets!

By the way, since the Bishops are exempt from filing Form 990’s we can’t get at their salaries.

Politico: Fight will now focus on 120-day refugee moratorium

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Since the Trump Administration retooled the so-called ‘travel ban’ to take away some of the objections of the Open Borders lawyers and threw out the earlier version of the ban that had been blocked by the courts, Politico is reporting that the pro-refugee industry groups will now focus on the 120-day refugee moratorium.
My personal view is that they don’t have a legal leg to stand on since the President, under the Refugee Act of 1980, has authority to set the number for each fiscal year. Trump did that with his 50,000 ceiling in the new Executive Order.  He has NO LEGAL OBLIGATION to reach the ceiling.

Becca Heller of the International Refugee Assistance Project says they will be seeking “emergency relief” in the next ten days.

As of this morning we are at 37,323 for FY17, 2,193 short of President George W. Bush’s lowest year of 39,554 (Bush had 4 years under 50,000).
Before I get to more on the moratorium and what Politico is reporting, know that the new EO did remove any language that would prioritize entry to the US of religious minorities (like Christians from the Middle East).
So, please return to my discussion of the Lautenberg Amendment (supported by the refugee contractors over the years!) that prioritizes Jews from Russia and religious minorities (non-Muslims) from Iran. In light of the earlier Ninth Circuit court decision (no religious test permitted!), and Trump’s removal of a religious preference from the earlier EO, will Congress move to REPEAL the Lautenberg Amendment? 
Don’t hold your breath!
Here (and below) are some of the key provisions of the new Executive Order regarding the US Refugee Admissions Program.
I believe the 120 days begins on March 16th, the effective date of the order, which means it will end sometime during the week of July 10th. (More on that in my next post.)

Sec. 6. Realignment of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for Fiscal Year 2017. (a) The Secretary of State shall suspend travel of refugees into the United States under the USRAP, and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall suspend decisions on applications for refugee status, for 120 days after the effective date of this order, subject to waivers pursuant to subsection (c) of this section. During the 120-day period, the Secretary of State, in conjunction with the Secretary of Homeland Security and in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, shall review the USRAP application and adjudication processes to determine what additional procedures should be used to ensure that individuals seeking admission as refugees do not pose a threat to the security and welfare of the United States, and shall implement such additional procedures. The suspension described in this subsection shall not apply to refugee applicants who, before the effective date of this order, have been formally scheduled for transit by the Department of State. The Secretary of State shall resume travel of refugees into the United States under the USRAP 120 days after the effective date of this order, and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall resume making decisions on applications for refugee status only for stateless persons and nationals of countries for which the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence have jointly determined that the additional procedures implemented pursuant to this subsection are adequate to ensure the security and welfare of the United States.

(b) Pursuant to section 212(f) of the INA, I hereby proclaim that the entry of more than 50,000 refugees in fiscal year 2017 would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and thus suspend any entries in excess of that number until such time as I determine that additional entries would be in the national interest.

I don’t believe that the President had to give any reason for setting the ceiling at 50,000.

It is vitally important for all of you working in your state legislatures to urge state lawmakers, with concerns about the process of placing refugees in your states, to reach out to Secretary of State Tillerson to ask to be involved in this review of the law. I’m thinking especially of Nebraska, West Virginia, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and North and South Dakota lawmakers! Believe me, the news you are making in the state will not reach Washington unless your elected officials make a concerted effort to get it there!

For all of you working in your communities and in your state legislatures to assure more transparency in the resettlement process, please focus on this section.  We must hold the Administration’s feet to the fire.  Everyone who has a Republican legislature looking to have more input, make sure that those legislators reach out to the US State Department!

(d) It is the policy of the executive branch that, to the extent permitted by law and as practicable, State and local jurisdictions be granted a role in the process of determining the placement or settlement in their jurisdictions of aliens eligible to be admitted to the United States as refugees. To that end, the Secretary of State shall examine existing law to determine the extent to which, consistent with applicable law, State and local jurisdictions may have greater involvement in the process of determining the placement or resettlement of refugees in their jurisdictions, and shall devise a proposal to lawfully promote such involvement.

So, finally this is what Politico said late last evening:

President Donald Trump’s second stab at a travel ban executive order will redraw the battle lines in the legal war his first order set off about a month ago, turning the focus to a small number of lawsuits aimed at the new order’s continued moratorium on refugees entering the U.S.

[….]

So far, most of the media attention has been devoted to early lawsuits in Boston, New York, Seattle and Alexandria, Virginia, that focused mainly on the initial travel ban’s impact on green card holders and visa holders. Now, with the revised order leaving in place a 120-day halt to admission of refugees, other suits may get their moment in the spotlight, such as one filed in Greenbelt, Maryland, last month by refugee aid groups.

Becca Heller of the International Refugee Assistance Project said her group plans to ask the judge to block Trump’s new order before it is set to take effect next Thursday.

“We’ll be amending our complaint and seeking emergency relief,” Heller said. “To me, not much has changed. It’s nice that people with visas get to keep their visas … This is just an indication of why we need multiple legal challenges.”

Moves to block Trump’s new order are likely to play out in courts across the country over the next 10 days, before the new order kicks in.

She must be referring to this lawsuit we mentioned here where I said this:

….their complaints seem to center around the idea that they were promised so many refugees (paying clients) this fiscal year and now they might not get them.

Looking for something to do today? Find out more about the International Refugee Assistance Project and who funds them!
This post is filed in my Trump Watch! category where 57 posts are related to this topic—reform of the refugee program under the Trump Administration.