….but they know the odds are not good that the Secretary of State will buck the White House on the number of refugees to be admitted to the US in the coming fiscal year.
However, as the deep-staters (and their contractor buddies***) feed news to Politico, indications are that Pompeo could at least keep the shrinking Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration at the State Department.
Here is Politico which appears to have a direct pipeline in to the refugee industry both inside and outside of government.
Trump’s refugee crackdown plans put Pompeo on the spot
The secretary of state may be forced to choose between his boss and his workforce.
[The workforce is the staff at the State Department that has completely bought in over the years to the notion that there are never enough refugees coming to the US.—ed]
A Trump administration debate over whether to clamp down on refugee admissions into the U.S. is forcing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to make a tough political choice between pleasing his employees — or his boss. [LOL! How about sticking with the Prez and dumping this particular group of employees!—ed]
President Donald Trump’s top diplomat could side with Trump and other anti-immigration hard-liners and agree to proposals that slash the number of refugees the United States admits and gut the State Department bureau that deals with them.
But in doing so, he could alienate many State Department employees who strongly oppose those moves, while disappointing foreign governments unhappy that the U.S. is not doing more to deal with a global migration crisis.
Pompeo’s record as a Republican congressman suggests that he will support lowering the annual cap on refugee entries to 25,000 or less, as well as a separate proposal to downgrade his department’s refugee bureau. But advocates for more liberal refugee policies are holding out hope that he might defy expectations now that he is America’s chief diplomat with a more global perspective and bureaucratic turf to protect.
One person close to Pompeo acknowledged that dynamic, saying that while the rabble-rousing Pompeo of Congress would have “no problem” backing a sharp new limit on refugee admissions, now that he’s at the State Department, “going along with a cap that low is probably tough for him.”
An administration proposal believed to be backed by Trump adviser and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller, and set for debate among key administration officials later this week, would slash by nearly half the current cap of 45,000 refugees who can be admitted into the U.S. per year. That ceiling was itself down from a 110,000-person cap proposed during President Barack Obama’s final months in office. The reductions come as the global migration crisis is worsening, with a record 69 million people displaced, according to the United Nations.
[See my previous post—busting the Obama 110,000 refugees mythology.—-ed]
Lawmakers and advocates are hoping above all that Pompeo’s sense of pride will keep him from ceding authority over refugee issues — not to mention a big chunk of his budget — to others in the administration, such as the 32-year-old Miller.
[….]
In Congress, Pompeo supported action to ban and block funding for U.S. refugee resettlement and used rhetoric that many human rights activists consider anti-Muslim. In 2016, he co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed suggesting that governments should limit migration in part to preserve “their nation’s culture and character.”
Heavily vetted! How about this Iraqi poster boy who shot a cop in Colorado just last week?
Politico:
Like Miller and other immigration hard-liners, Pompeo cast his past calls to restrict refugees as an issue of national security, even though advocates for refugees say they are the most heavily vetted group of people allowed to immigrate to the United States.
Pompeo has also worked hard to ingratiate himself with Trump and appears to prize his close relationship with the president, whose policies he has enthusiastically supported.
“Most of us see Pompeo as more of a purer Trump loyalist than Tillerson was, so I don’t think there would be any big surprises if he went along with whatever the White House wants on this,” one State Department staffer said.
Refugees as pawns for other diplomatic purposes?
The contractors have a new talking point they are pushing and that is that we need a “robust” refugee resettlement program so that we can manipulate other countries in to doing things we want them to do.
In other words, you get to have third worlders quietly dropped off in your town so that diplomats can wheel and deal with foreign governments.
Politico continues….
“It’s a bargaining tool: We’ll take a certain number of refugees. These are the things you will do for us,” explained Melanie Nezer, a top official with HIAS, one of several organizations that helps refugees.
I have argued for years that the US Refugee Admissions Program should be about humanitarianism only and not for diplomatic power plays and fat CEO contractor salaries!
“Why give away a $3.4 billion budget account that is used to address crises but also helps State wield influence with other countries and within international organizations?” asked Anne Richard, who led the refugee bureau as an assistant secretary of state under Obama.
[….]
Activists worry that Pompeo will listen to top State Department staffers who are [Stephen] Miller allies and who control much of the refugee-related information that flows to the secretary. They include Andrew Veprek, a relatively new deputy assistant secretary in the refugee bureau, and John Zadrozny, a new member of Pompeo’s Policy Planning Staff.
Former White House officials familiar with Miller’s tactics suspect he orchestrated Veprek’s and Zadrozny’s placement at the State Department to exert more influence over the administration’s immigration policies. [Duh! Of course! Elections have consequences and this is what the victorious should be doing! Trump should be doing more of it!—ed]
Neither Veprek nor Zadrozny replied to requests for comment. But State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert dismissed the notion that the pair could misguide Pompeo as “ridiculous.”
Staffers dismissed the possibility of any widespread internal State Department campaign to push Pompeo to protect the refugee program.
*** As usual here are the nine federal contractors that have been calling the shots for decades regarding the number of refugees to be admitted to the US.
I post this list nearly every day for the benefit of new readers….
Numbers matter because they are paid on a per refugee head basis!
Another low year, perhaps lower than this year’s 20,000 plus year, could completely blow to smithereens the budget of one or more of these federal contractors which are demanding a cap of 75,000. (Obama had a cap LOWER than that in 3 consecutive years, see here.)
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)!
From most recent accounting, here.
- Church World Service (CWS) (71%)
- Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)(93%)
- Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) (99.5%)
- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) (57%)
- International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular) (66.5%)
- US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular) (98%)
- Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS) (97%)
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) (97%)
- World Relief Corporation (WR) (72.8%)