The Trump Administration is on target to blow past its own 50,000 admission determination number in 2 weeks!
As we reported here, just as the Memorial Day weekend was getting underway, the US State Department announced to its contractors that it was going to open the refugee spigot wide again for the remaining months of fiscal year 2017 (the year ends on September 30th).
That means some of the federal refugee contractors, like this one in Ohio, may need to hire back some employees they had earlier let go, but there is still a question about how quickly Trump’s State Department and Dept. of Homeland Security can get the processing ramped-up abroad.
I had been waiting for the Trump White House to correct the mistake about opening the spigot, but their silence now signals that the White House is in agreement with the ramp-up!
From WKSU. The International Institute of Akron is a subcontractor of one of nine major contractors (USCRI***in this case):
President Obama authorized 120,000 [No! It was 110,000!—ed] refugees for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30.
President Trump cut that in February to 50,000. But the State Department sent a memo in late May telling refugee groups they would no longer be restrained by weekly quotas.
Liz Walters of the International Institute of Akron says resettlement numbers have always ebbed and flowed, with the agency resettling as few as 25 and as many as 130 a month. She says how many will be coming now depends on what happens overseas.
“The big question mark is how many folks have been in process overseas and how quickly they can start to schedule those folks for travel or at what point they finish up their security clearances and can get them here before the end of the fiscal year.”
[….]
Walters notes that Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year [begins Oct. 1, 2017—ed] includes funding to resettle 50,000 refugees, the minimum under the law.
As far as I can tell, there is no legal minimum!
I’m not lawyer, and perhaps there has been some case law or regulations that I don’t know about, but as I read the Refugee Act of 1980, there is no requirement for any specific number after 1982. Here (below) is the Act on admissions. There is a lot of discussion about procedures if the President needs to ‘up’ the numbers, but I don’t see any prohibition about going below 50,000!
Be sure to read the law yourself and see that “consultation” is with the House and Senate Judiciary Committees and as far as I can see only requires the President to supply them with information.
I repeat!
Do you see how clever the refugee industry propaganda machine is—we are only talking about admission levels, not reform of the whole program.
The only way to force Congress to scrap/reform the Refugee Act of 1980 is for Donald Trump to set the admissions number at zero for FY18 and tell Congress, no more until they get to work. Heck, make them work through the month of August!
He also has the power to stop the flow right now without any Executive Order.
Today the Trump admission level is at 47,434 (Wrapsnet) and, at the admissions rate announced on the eve of Memorial Day, he will thus blow past the 50,000 mark (set by him) in 2 weeks!
***By the way, USCRI is approximately 97% funded by you—taxpayers! See here.