Readers, more important, in my opinion, than the so-called ‘travel ban’ portion of the Trump Executive Orders held up in our power-hungry court system, is the issue of the President’s power to set the CEILING on refugee admissions for the year.
My contention is that he has the right to set the CEILING and change the CEILING without any Executive Order.
The Refugee Act of 1980 says only that he must “consult” with Congress on an annual determination. If he changes the number throughout the year (the law envisions a wish to increase the number and is silent on the issue of decreasing it) he must notify Congress.
Since the number set annually is a CEILING (not a target), then there would be no need to even announce any lowering of the number during the year, nor would there have been a need to address a procedure for lowering the incoming numbers in the original law. The Dept. of State and Homeland Security would simply just bring in fewer numbers.
The dirty little secret is that for years, the refugee industry has tried to turn the CEILING in to a target, but at least Frelick is honest.
Frelick of Human Rights Watch (a pro refugee organization) knows that this garbage (the Buffalo story mentioned it again) we keep seeing that there is a minimum 50,000 refugees required under the Act is inaccurate, see what he said here.
It’s the media, the contractors, and the bureaucrat holdovers who are busy bluffing the White House by counting on the fact that no one there understands the program and its history!
And, now as for the missing CEILING data…..
I’ve been following the program since 2007 and Presidents have never reached the CEILING in those years. Obama came pretty close several times, but he was under the ceiling—by huge numbers—in two years in particular.
See this chart (below) from Wrapsnet for 2006-2016. Pay close attention to the columns for CEILING and the ultimate admission numbers. See the gap! It varies from year to year under the CEILING.
In FY11 Obama set the ceiling at 80,000 and came in with 56,424 (a shortfall of 23,576).
In FY12 Obama’s ceiling was 76,000 and he ultimately admitted 58,238 (a shortfall of 17,762).
Did anyone sue President Obama for leaving thousands “stranded in war-torn countries”? No!
There were NO lawsuits and no screams (at least in public!) from the contractors!
Look at this same chart for the end of March 2017 (at that point Wrapsnet still lists the last CEILING set by Obama (110,000) his highest ceiling by far). I discussed it here.
Now here is the chart for the end of April 2017. I discussed it here. See the note! **FY2017 ceiling is currently in litigation.
Today, I decided to have a look at Trump’s numbers for May because of my earlier post today about the contractors getting excited by increasing numbers coming in, but what did I find when I checked this monthly update?
Can you see what is missing?
Incompetence or an effort to obscure the facts?
Did you see it? They have removed the CEILING column arguably the most useful number from this particular data base.
Why? Is it a deliberate attempt to hide facts? Or, just some dumb mistake by an underling at the Refugee Processing Center (aka Wrapsnet)? You decide.
And, one last thing, for a chuckle, note how extraordinarily high the numbers were for October, November, December of FY2017 compared to the previous ten years. Do you think the outgoing Obama Admin. was in a hurry to pour as many refugees in to your towns and cities as they could before getting out of Dodge? You betcha!