And, once we pass the 50,000 cap (aka ceiling), then the Supreme Court will be effectively running the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.
Refugees arriving over the Presidentially-determined ceiling of 50,000 are the responsibility of nine unelected judges who have decided that relatives can’t possibly be terrorists! The ceiling has been a cornerstone of the refugee program for 37 years and last week the Supremes took it upon themselves to lay out fuzzy parameters for exceeding the ceiling set by President Trump that no President in at least a decade has exceeded (maybe ever!).
I just checked the latest numbers at Wrapsnetand see that as of today we have admitted 49,255 refugees this fiscal year. (The fiscal year ends September 30th).
We should hit 50,000 within a few days. So, will the members of the court begin getting the daily Presidential security briefing when that happens? And, come to think of it, who tells the Supremes that they have exceeded their Constitutional authority? Hmmmm?
Here are the top ten ‘welcoming’ states (so much for Texas trying to get out of the program):
Just so you know, 3 states and the District of Columbia got less than 10 each (Mississippi–6, Hawaii–3, DC–2, and Wyoming–0).
This post is filed in my‘Supreme Court’archive.
A word of caution! All of these reports being leaked out about conversations between the White House and the State Department must be viewed with a skeptical eye.
That said, this story sounds plausible because we know that Stephen Miller, a longtime Trump aide and expert on immigration and refugees, is a key White House strategist on the subject. The 31-year-old Miller has been at Trump’s side since the earliest days of the Trump campaign.
We also have gotten previous suggestions that Tillerson aide Brian Hook (a Bushie) is soft on the refugee program, see here. Could Hook be the source for the discord story? Now that the Supreme Court has added a new wrinkle by doing away with the whole concept of a Presidentially-designated CEILING that is a cornerstone of the Refugee Act of 1980, we can imagine that disagreements are surfacing between the White House immigration hardliners and the DOS which is largely being run by career bureaucrats who loved Obama and Hillary.
I suspect it is the ‘careers’ who put together the bragging graphic, here. Ten Pittsburghs is going to sell the USRAP? Did the Secretary’s office ever eyeball it before it was posted?
Here is what Politico is reporting:
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson argued with senior White House aide Stephen Miller over immigration issues last week in a second recent clash with the White House.
Miller pushed Tillerson and the State Department to be tougher on immigration and make changes to the programs they control, according to four people familiar with the conversation in the West Wing. John Kelly, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, was also present.
It is pretty outrageous to attribute the news of discord to “four people familiar with the conversation.” One person might have leaked it back to the DOS and three career bureaucrats are then “familiar with the conversation” and presto! Politico has a story with four sources! The lead Politico reporter, Josh Dawsey, quoting “four people familiar with the conversation” says on his twitter page that he is a “cigar & bourbon” kind of guy (what is that on his shirt?). Politico welcomed him in December with this comment: “We are very excited to welcome Josh to the newsroom on December 12, and to turn him loose on Washington and the incoming Trump administration.” http://talkingbiznews.com/1/wsj-reporter-dawsey-hired-by-politico-to-cover-white-house/
[….]
Miller has been holding meetings to address how to further curb the entry of refugees into the United States, per two administration officials, and has closely worked with senators on legislative proposals to sharply cut other forms of legal immigration. [ I sure hope to learn that reform of the US Refugee Admissions Program is on the Administration’s list of legislative proposals! If it isn’t than we will never see any real reform!–ed]
[….]
This week, CNN reported that the White House has proposed moving the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs to the Department of Homeland Security, along with its bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. [See my post here.—ed]
Those are among the State Department’s biggest functions and are among the government’s largest immigration arms. They control refugee vetting and releasing passports, among other issues.
[….]
Tillerson has grown increasingly frustrated at the White House and chafed at taking direction from younger Trump aides and not being able to implement State Department policies and offices like he would like, people familiar with his thinking say. [Who the heck are “people familiar with his thinking?” Dawsey could be making up this whole story!—ed]
Tillerson has grown especially agitated that less experienced figures like Miller – who previously worked on the Hill for attorney general and former Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions – have been giving him commands.
The former ExxonMobil CEO was promised autonomy by Trump and is fond of reminding others of that.
More here. Politico reporter Dawsey has a lot of nerve reporting that Miller is somehow less experienced than Tillerson about immigration and immigration law! Endnote: I think it’s time for all of us in the blogosphere to start highlighting especially young reporters (Dawsey is only 5 years out of Journalism school!) who act like kingmakers (or destroyers) and report stories based on ‘sources familiar with someone’s thinking!’
Charleston, WV citizen activist, Brenda Arthur, pointed us to this interesting and useful pageat the US State Department website—it is a review of the work of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) for 2016.
By the way, PRM is still being run by career bureaucrats who have close ties to the resettlement contractors*** and have longtime ideological leanings toward ‘welcoming’ large numbers of third worlders to America.
This graphic (below) is very useful. Remember though that the US State Department (DOS) share of the costs for refugee resettlement is only a portion of the cost of admitting an average number (about 64,000 is the average over the last ten years) of refugees to the US each year.
Greater amounts of your tax dollars go to the Dept. of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement for refugee welfare and for awarding grants to contractors for myriad activities. There is another chunk that goes to the Dept. of Homeland Security for ‘screening’ refugees around the world. Go here, the artwork is useful! But, 10 Pittsburghs? And, this is Trump’s DOS bragging!
More than ten times the population of Pittsburgh!
*** Resettlement contractors receive the majority of their funding from taxpayers via PRM and ORR. One of the contractors is 99.5% funded by you, others are well up in the range of 95% plus. There can be no real reform of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program if these ‘non-profits’ continue to call the shots. The minute a new Administration signals a slowdown for a few years, the contractors, which receive funding on a per (refugee) head basis, put their community organizer hats on and run to the Leftwing media screaming bloody murder.
