Lawrence Bartlett, State Department refugee chieftain sidelined?

The federal refugee contractors, that altogether receive over a half a billion a year of your money to place refugees in your towns and cities, must be using reporters at Reuters to get their messages out to the public.

Screenshot (1242)
I laughed when I saw that Reuters used a shot from when Bartlett headlined the Heritage Foundation ‘educational’ panel discussion on the US Refugee program last September. I had planned to do the same thing (use a shot from the panel discussion). When Heritage held this event, with inside the beltway types, I knew they had no clue about what was really happening with refugees in your towns and cities.   https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/09/14/is-the-heritage-foundation-selling-you-out-on-unus-refugee-admissions-policy/

 
Here we have news that Lawrence Bartlett, some of you have seen his advocacy for more refugees (and antipathy to local citizens) first hand, has been sidelined at the US State Department.  Later in the Reuters story he says, not so fast!
 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. official who has been a defender of refugees has been sidelined within the State Department in what some advocates and former officials fear is part of the Trump administration’s goal of limiting refugee resettlement in the United States.

Lawrence Bartlett, head of refugee admissions at the State Department’s Population, Refugees and Migration bureau, is now on a temporary assignment at another office, a State Department spokeswoman said.

Bartlett’s future leadership of the refugee office has been in doubt for months. He is now a temporary senior adviser at the State Department office that handles requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Sending a civil servant of his experience and rank to that office is unusual, according to current and former U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A current official described such a re-assignment as a form of internal exile like being sent “to Siberia.” 

Really! Is that why the State Department has an abysmal record and reputation for not answering FOIA requests?  Either they do nothing there or they work really hard to figure out what not to tell you. When they do tell you, it is YEARS later! Is that why it is like Siberia?
Bartlett says he has “NOT been permanently reassigned.”

Yeganeh Torbati
The Reuters go-to gal for Hans?   https://twitter.com/yjtorbati

Bartlett did not respond to a range of questions about his new role, but did say he has not been told the assignment is permanent.

“I can assure you that I have NOT been permanently reassigned from my position with the refugee program,” Bartlett wrote in an e-mail to Reuters.

Refugee advocates say Bartlett was a strong and effective advocate for the resettlement program inside the Trump administration.

I found this little nugget (below) interesting. Here we learn that the State Department Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration bureaucrats chit-chat via e-mail regularly with their contractors.  Hey! what about us! We pay for all this, why can’t we see those e-mails.
Gee maybe we could FOIA them!

Since approximately November, Bartlett has not been included on communications between the State Department and outside refugee agencies that he normally would have been, one person involved in refugee resettlement said.

Keep reading here.
Reuters quotes Hans (again). So is Hans Van de Weerd the conduit for getting anti-Trump messages out of the DOS and Homeland Security and to Reuters?
See my complete Lawrence Bartlett archive here. Prior to being assigned to the FOIA office, Bartlett was in Puerto Rico for a month, here.

Federal refugee resettlement contractors blast Trump for ending 'temporary' status for Salvadorans

The Temporary Protected Status (legal!) program is designed to give a break (usually 18 months) for nationals, from another country who are already in the US when the natural disaster or civil war happens, to stay here until the country is on its feet again.
In March, Salvadorans (and El Salvador), will have had a 17 YEAR break.
For 17 years hundreds of thousands have had time to produce nearly 200,000 more children, get jobs, drivers licenses (and I will bet vote!).  See USCIS on TPS for El Salvador here.
Calling the program ‘temporary’ is a joke.
It has to end sometime and the Trump Administration has decided that September 2019 is it!
The Leftwing Open Borders activists, including obviously refugee resettlement contractors***, have been working toward amnesty for a decade or more and the Salvadorans would have been a recipient of such an amnesty.

Matthew Soerens
Matthew Soerens of World Relief says El Salvador will be destabilized when they lose all of those US dollars Salvadorans send home—US dollars that leave the US economy! 

In the Gang of Eight bill they would have been essentially hired by the feds to do for the newly amnestied what they do for refugees—get them signed up for their services (aka welfare). And, it would have expanded their Left-leaning political power through their immigrant dependents.
So it is no surprise to see them complaining now!
Here is the Christian Post reporting on our old pals:

Christian leaders and organizations are speaking out against the Trump administration move on Monday to terminate protected status for thousands of El-Salvadoran immigrants who have been allowed to live and work in the United States for over a decade. [For over a decade, you mean nearly two decades!—ed]

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen on Monday made a decision to terminate “Temporary Protected Status” that has allowed El-Salvadoran immigrants to legally work and live in the U.S. since two earthquakes struck the Central American country in 2001. The move could affect up to nearly 200,000 people and it’s a move that prominent evangelical leaders pressured the Trump administration not to make.

The administration claims the decision, which takes effect in September 2019 after an 18-month transition period, was made after an “inter-agency consultation process” determined that “the original conditions caused by the 2001 earthquakes no longer exist.” Yet, human rights advocates are warning that El Salvador is not economically able to sustain a massive return.

“But the reality is that El Salvador is among most violent countries in the world & among poorest in Western Hemisphere,” Matthew Soerens, the director of church mobilization for the evangelical refugee resettlement organization World Relief, tweeted on Monday. “It will be significantly destabilized by sudden insertion of so many returnees & by sudden halt of remittance money sent home by workers in US.”

Bishop Joe S. Vásquez
Bishop Joe S. Vásquez

So how long must we be blackmailed by threats of a destablized El Salvador? How long must we watch US dollars leave the US economy in the form of remittances? And why should refugee contractor World Relief care?  These are NOT refugees.
But, if they do care so much, World Relief (and the US Bishops) could do the really brave thing and instead of living in comfort/collecting handsome salaries and bullying Americans into ‘welcoming’ the stranger, go to El Salvador and help the people where they live!

And, of course the US Bishops whine! (See that they got $95 million from taxpayers in 2016 for their Christian charity for migrants, here.)

“The decision to terminate TPS for El Salvador is heartbreaking. As detailed in our recent delegation trip report to the region, El Salvador is currently not in a position to adequately handle the return of the roughly 200,000 Salvadoran TPS recipients,” Bishop Joe S. Vásquez, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee on migration, said in a statement, adding that the decision will “fragment American families.

Fragment American families! The families could go together to their homeland!
For my Evangelical readers, you may not know that there is a Leftwing Open Borders Evangelical consortium.  You need to do a little research to see if your church is involved.

The Evangelical Immigration Table, a coalition evangelical organizations that represent millions of believers across multiple denominations, also pressured the Trump administration to extend the TPS program for El Salvador until a permanent legislative fix can be enacted through Congress.

More here.
***These are the nine federal contractors who are paid by you to place refugees in your towns. If there were millions given amnesty in the coming years those groups listed below would be hired by the feds to help them get settled and get their taxpayer-supplied stuff.

There can be no immigration reform as long as taxpayers finance these political agitation groups masquerading as humanitarian charities: