How did a Reuters reporter get tipped off that the deal was fizzling?
By a ‘refugee’ with a pipeline to western media!
Makes you wonder if these ‘refugees’ will be trouble-makers if they ever get to America.
This news should not come as a shock since we did reach the 50,000 CEILING last week (for FY17) and these ‘refugees’ likely have no “bona fide relationships” with anyone in America or with federal contractors (except maybe the IRC could claim a relationship?).
The story is from AAP (Australia Associated Press):
US officials interviewing refugees held in an Australian-run offshore detention centre have left the facility abruptly, throwing further doubt over a plan to resettle many of the detainees in America.
US officials halted screening interviews and departed the Pacific island of Nauru on Friday, two weeks short of their scheduled timetable and a day after Washington said the United States had reached its annual refugee intake cap.
“US (officials) were scheduled to be on Nauru until July 26 but they left on Friday,” one refugee told Reuters, requesting anonymity as he did not want to jeopardise his application for US resettlement.
In the United States, a senior member of the union that represents refugee officers at US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a Department of Homeland Security agency, told Reuters his own trip to Nauru was not going forward as scheduled.
[….]
The Australian Immigration Department declined to comment on the whereabouts of the US officials or the future of a refugee swap agreement between Australia and the United States, which President Donald Trump earlier this year branded a “dumb deal”.
An indefinite postponement of the deal would have significant repercussions for Australia’s pledge to close a second detention centre on Papua New Guinea’s Manus island on October 31.
Only 70 refugees, less than 10 per cent of the total detainees held in the camp, have completed US processing.
“The US deal looks more and more doubtful,” Ian Rintoul from the Refugee Action Coalition said.
Former US President Obama agreed a deal with Australia late last year to offer refuge to up to 1250 asylum seekers.
[On the backs of US taxpayers!—ed]
The Trump administration said it would only honour the deal to maintain a strong relationship with Australia, and then only on condition that refugees satisfied strict checks.
[On the backs of communities that must absorb these men from terror hot spots—ed]
In exchange, Australia has pledged to take Central American refugees from a centre in Costa Rica, where the United States has taken in a larger number of people in recent years.
[Any fake refugees in Costa Rica are not our problem—ed]
The swap is designed, in part, to help Australia close both Manus and Nauru, which are expensive to run and have been widely criticised by the United Nations and others over treatment of detainees.
[And American taxpayers and communities get the short end of the stick—ed]
[….]
The majority of the detainees interviewed on both Manus and Nauru by US officials in April are from Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan.
More here at AAP.
This is wrong, wrong, wrong!
As early as 2012 I testified to the US State Department that the US Refugee Admissions Program should not be used to solve extracurricular diplomatic problems around the world.
Only legitimate refugees in need of humanitarian assistance should be considered for the program. Instead we repeatedly move certain people (including troublemakers! Uzbeks for instance!) around the world for reasons other than humanitarian ones and that is wrong!
This is what I said (beginning in 2012) in Ten Reasons there should be a MORATORIUM!
7) Congress needs to specifically disallow the use of the refugee program for other purposes of the US Government, especially using certain refugee populations to address unrelated foreign policy objectives—Uzbeks, Kosovars, Meshketians and Bhutanese (Nepalese) people come to mind.
Now it is mostly Muslims held in Australian detention centers we might be bringing to your towns!
Why should helping Australian Prime Minister Turnbull get off a political hook be solved on the backs of US taxpayers?
And why should American communities be saddled with these questionable people as neighbors?
I ask that of the Trump White House and the Heritage Foundation, here, where their expert on refugees seems to see this (diplomacy) as a legitimate purpose of the USRAP—see five reasons the USRAP is good for America as a tool for diplomacy.
See all of my previous posts on the Australia “dumb deal” by clicking here.
Write to the White House. Today you can encourage the President to kill this deal altogether!