DHS says they can’t handle 50,000 refugees for FY18, but 40,000 is okay!

It is not okay with me and thousands of American taxpayers who want to see the program abolished or reformed! Just dickering over numbers is a fools errand—unless of course the White House and Congress have no intention of seriously investigating the program, ever!

Donald Trump announces his Candidacy for President
Dumb political move: 50,000 (or 40,000) third worlders beginning to arrive in 10 days gets Trump nothing! The Left will still hate him and it will do nothing to satisfy Americans looking for relief from the financial and cultural burdens the program creates.

This is a huge disappointment.

Suspending the program in light of Harvey, Irma and Maria (when Americans are hurting and need housing and help) would have been the sensible thing to do in this non-election year.

Does bringing more poverty to America at this time make political sense?

And, does anyone really think that when the entire Congress and a third of the Senate is up for election in 2018, they will lift a finger to investigate and reform? Of course not!

This article at Politico (thanks to Joanne) tells us why the White House has been remiss in following refugee law and getting the decision made in a timely fashion.  Here we are right up to the deadline and the dickering continues….

And, Trump doesn’t get it!

He will get s*** at 40,000, or 50,000, anyway.  He might as well suspend the program and tell Congress to review the law! He has the power to do that!

Politico:

Department of Homeland Security officials have warned the White House that they may have trouble processing 50,000 refugees next year, putting additional pressure on President Donald Trump to lower the cap on refugees entering the United States to the lowest point in decades.

In private meetings with White House officials in recent weeks, DHS officials have raised logistical concerns about handling 50,000 refugees in fiscal year 2018 if the president decides to maintain the cap that he imposed as part of the travel ban, according to two administration officials.

One of the administration officials said the department was swamped with a backlog of asylum applications, which have skyrocketed in recent years. In June, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had roughly 275,000 pending “affirmative” asylum cases — when someone arrives in the U.S. and requests safe haven. The figure amounts to a more than 600 percent increase in the backlog compared with December 2013.

The pressure from DHS comes as Trump faces a vanishing window to make the decision on refugee admissions. According to the statute that governs the program, the president should determine refugee levels before the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.

Though administration officials say Trump has not yet made up his mind, they expect him to lower the refugee cap below 50,000.

DHS has recommended setting the fiscal year 2018 refugee ceiling at 40,000, the administration officials said.

You can read the rest yourself, here.  I have to go get a tooth pulled—highly preferable to reading more about this huge political blunder!

 

Arizona Rohingya refugee story: from poor refugee to political agitator

If you don’t know about the Rohingya, you better learn quickly! You can start your education with my over 200 posts here at RRW.

We have admitted almost 20,000 Rohingya to the US in the last ten years and as their numbers increase they become (like all Islamic ethnic groups) political activists.

Sheraz Islam: from suffering refugee to Islamic political activist! Story and photo here: http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/rohingya-refugees-in-phoenix-ethnic-cleansing-in-myanmar-9701725

This article from the Phoenix New Times features a 25-year-old Rohingya Muslim refugee living in Phoenix who wants to get his mother and 10 siblings here (but for that mean old Donald Trump).

A few things you need to know before reading this story, which the Leftwing media will never tell you.

~The Buddhist government contends that the ‘Rohingya’ are not some special group, but are illegal aliens from Bangladesh (a Muslim country) who decades ago illegally arrived in Burma. The Buddhist leaders of Burma want the country to remain Buddhist and don’t want to be demographically conquered by Muslims.

~Aung San Suu Kyi, the famous Burmese freedom fighter, has not rallied to the Rohingya’s cause which infuriates the Left.

~The Organization of Islamic Cooperation is trying to get its foot in the door in Burma to defend their people and agitate against the government.

~The round of violence that began in 2012 (often cited by the mainstream media) was ignited when a gang of Muslim men raped and murdered a Burmese Buddhist girl (something the media never tells you now), and the Buddhists retaliated.

~As we learned here yesterday, the newest wave of violence was from a Burmese military response to attacks by a Rohingya armed group.

Now to the political agitators at Arizona State.

Here is what I want to know, if they are “ethnic cleansing” in Burma (aka Myanmar), why is that our problem?

Why is that a reason to spend billions of US taxpayer dollars bringing people like Islam here, apparently not to add much to American society, but to political organize for Muslims back home?

BTW, Trump will be supplying more Rohingya activists for mosques and Islamic centers when the first Australian rejects get here (see my earlier post).

From the Phoenix New Times, a new cause, not the Syrian Muslim victims (that was oh so last year), but Rohingya:

Here in Phoenix, Rohingya refugees are wondering why no one seems to be paying attention.

Among those trying to spread awareness about the crisis is Sheraz Islam, whose own father died less than a month ago while trying to flee the country for Bangladesh. His family lost their home, their land, and everything they own, he says. And convincing Americans to care, when they may or may not even be able to point to Myanmar on a map, is a challenge.

“Most people, they don’t know who the Rohingya are,” he says. “When we talk to people, we explain that we are an ethnic minority, and the government [of Myanmar] denied us our citizenship.

“We’d like to live in our own country, but unfortunately we had to leave because we are Rohingya.”

LOL! Aung San Suu Kyi not sure she wants the Obama smooch! You can imagine how angry the Left is with Suu Kyi. She is one of them, they think. So how can she not be coming to the defense of Muslims!

Islam is one of roughly 600 Rohingya refugees currently living in the Valley. They make up less than a quarter of the total number of Burmese refugees who have been resettled in Arizona since 2001. Most are Muslims, and arrived after 2012, when attacks on the Rohingya intensified after decades of discrimination.

[….]

After landing in a refugee camp in Sri Lanka, he applied for asylum through the United Nations. The U.S. State Department approved his application, and, a little less than six years ago, he arrived in Arizona. Lutheran Social Services helped get him set up with a job and apartment, and taught him how to turn the lights on and off — he’d never had electricity before.

“We don’t have these kind of things back in our country,” he explains. “They came and they guided us how to use the oven, how to use the microwave, how to use the bathroom.”

Here we go! Rally organized by Islamic Community Centers, what a surprise!

On Sunday night, he and other Rohingya refugees held a vigil on the Old Main Lawn at Arizona State University.

Organized by the Islamic Community Center of Tempe and Islamic Center of the Northeast Valley, it drew a diverse crowd of student activists, local faith leaders, and refugees from around the world. They held up signs calling on Aung San Suu Kyi — the country’s de facto leader, and, ironically, a former winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — to put an end to the violence against the Rohingya.

Lots more here if you feel like reading it.

Again, my Rohingya Reports category is here, posts extend back ten years.

Trump State Dept. gives Aussies information we don’t have….

…..that the first of Australia’s illegal alien detainees have been notified that they will be coming to your towns within weeks!

Trump grin and Tillerson
Australian media learns before we do that Australia’s rejected asylum seekers will begin arriving in unsuspecting American towns within weeks.

That news tells us that the White House has determined to begin admitting a new batch of third worlders on October 1 and thus clearly has chosen to not suspend the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program while Americans are suffering (Harvey, Irma and now Maria).

As of  this writing the Presidential determination and accompanying report (which would outline how many we will take from Australian detention centers) has not been released to us—those paying for it and those who will have to live with the arrivals, reportedly from Bangladesh, Sudan and Burma (Rohingya Muslims)!

Was all of Trump’s ‘America First’ rhetoric at the UN yesterday just that—rhetoric?

Here is the Reuters news this morning about the Obama deal Trump called “dumb,” but nevertheless is apparently honoring starting today in order to save Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s political skin!

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Wednesday the first group of about 50 men and woman held in two controversial detention centers for asylum-seekers on remote Pacific islands will be resettled in the United States within weeks.

Nauru refugees
America! Here we come! The detainees are mostly men who have lived in a men-only camp, some for as long as four years.

The comments mark the first official timetable for when the United States will begin resettling up to 1,250 people held in Australian-run centers on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus island as part of a refugee swap deal struck by former U.S. President Barack Obama late last year.

Australia will begin resettling several dozen Central American refugees within weeks under the deal that U.S. President Donald Trump has described as “dumb” but has nevertheless said Washington will honor.

“There will be about 25 from both Manus and Nauru will be going to the United States and I just want to thank again President Trump for continuing with that arrangement,” Turnbull said in a video statement.

Three sources familiar with the process said about 25 men from countries such as Bangladesh, Sudan, and Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar held on Manus island were the first to be told on Wednesday, with a similar number on Nauru to be told Thursday.

One Sudanese refugee approved for resettlement told Reuters he would leave Manus Island in a few days. [If they are being notified, you know its a done deal!—ed]

Continue here.

This is something we would have expected from Obama, but we didn’t expect Trump to agree to this extremely unusual arrangement—taking another country’s rejected asylum seekers (and mostly Muslims to boot!).

In exchange some Central American economic migrants not even in the US will go to Australia as the benefit we get from the ‘deal.’

For new readers, my extensive archive on the Trump “dumb deal” is here.

If you want to tell the White House what you think, click here. Tell him you should be notified about which cities and towns will be ‘welcoming’ them.