Month: September 2019

President Trump Sets 2020 Refugee Ceiling at Lowest Level in History of the Program—18,000

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 4 Comments

Here (below) are the key points (I’ll have more to say in the morning!).

***Update*** More on the President’s Determination, here.

LOL! And, by morning we should be hearing the wailing coming from the refugee industry mouthpieces!

By the way, all nine federal refugee contractors work to politically  undermine President Trump on a daily basis. Indeed they hate him just as much for 18,000 as they would if he said zero (as was being considered at one point), so he might as well have gone with zero!

Hot off the presses at the Washington Times this evening:

Trump to cut refugees to 18,000, give localities veto over resettlement

The Trump administration on Thursday proposed cutting the number of refugees admitted next year to 18,000, and called for a major revamp of the program to align it with U.S. interests, including giving localities a say in whether they can accommodate the new arrivals.

The new plan will also reduce the role of the U.N. in picking America’s refugees, and instead give priority to religious minorities and Iraqis who have assisted the U.S. government, and to refugees the U.S has agreed to resettle on behalf of Australia.

Officials submitted the proposal to Congress on Thursday, kicking off a consultation period that will conclude with President Trump making a final determination next month.

But based on past consultations, the 18,000 number is likely to hold firm.

It would be the lowest cap since the modern refugee system was created in 1980, and marks a 12,000 drop from the fiscal year 2019 cap, and a major reduction from the 110,000 refugee target the Obama administration tried to set for 2017.

[….]

As striking as the smaller refugee cap is, officials said the changes to the system are just as important.

Chief among those is an executive order Mr. Trump will soon issue giving states and localities the chance to consent before refugees are sent to their jurisdictions.

More here.

Don’t get overly excited, this isn’t the kind of real reform I’ve been looking for! It is a start, but it should have been made two years ago.  It is now too late in his term for it to produce any lasting change.

More tomorrow…..

Just So You Know! There is No Muslim Ban

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 1 Comment

Muslim refugees from 35 countries arrived in the US this fiscal year!

Granted fewer Muslims are entering the US right now as refugees compared to when Obama was in office, but yesterday I checked the data for this fiscal year (the one that is ending this coming Monday night) and was surprised at the great ethnic diversity of refugees from 35 countries representing several sects of Islam we have ‘welcomed’ this year.

Find the whole report here: http://www.rcusa.org/report

What got me interested in checking the data maintained by the Refugee Processing Center was a report released in June by the lobbying arm of the refugee industry—the Refugee Council USA.

It’s one of those reports meant to draw media attention to—you guessed it—that meany Donald Trump.

By the way, the Refugee Council USA (RCUSA) is a consortium of twenty plus Open Borders groups that includes the nine federal contractors and the Muslim charity Islamic Relief USA, see here.  

RCUSA has a lobbying office in Washington, DC and their finances are handled by Church World Service.

On page 8 of the report, they published a chart that caught my eye.  They want to show how few Muslims the Trump Administration is admitting to the US compared to the huge numbers Obama admitted.

Here it is.  FY16 is definitely Obama, but FY17 was already underway when Trump moved into the White House.  FY18 is, of course, Trump’s, and the numbers for FY19 are only up to June (8 months of FY19).

(These are just the refugee numbers and do not include all of the other programs that admit immigrants to America.)

Even I was surprised at the huge number of especially Syrian Muslims admitted in Obama’s last full year!

But, their chart doesn’t tell the whole story!

First their column for FY19 through today is updated here:

Egypt 4

Iran 31 (no explanation for the discrepancy, I found 31)

Iraq 353

Libya 0

Mali 3

Somalia 230

Sudan 220

Syria 503

and Yemen 3

Okay, still not a lot you say.  But, surely enough to prove there is no Muslim ban!

However, there is more.  We admitted Muslim refugees from 35 different countries (not just the eight or so singled out by RCUSA).

In addition to those above:

Afghanistan came in at number one with 1,113, then Burma Rohingya (931), DR Congo (519), Eritrea (343), Central African Republic (165), Pakistan (78) and dozens more with smaller numbers for each.

The grand total of Muslim refugees admitted in FY19 up to yesterday is 4,759!

There is NO MUSLIM BAN!

 

Episcopal Bishops Lobby Lawmakers for Their Budgetary Survival

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 2 Comments

Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) is one of the nine federal refugee contractors that the State Department hires to place refugees in your towns and cities.

A year ago their future as a federally-funded ‘non-profit’ was in jeopardy because the Trump Administration said some of the nine might not survive the cuts.  Well, all nine did survive to lobby for another day.

If Trump comes in with even lower refugee numbers for this coming fiscal year that begins next Tuesday, EMM’s millions of federal dollars could be in jeopardy again.

EMM is 99.5% funded with taxpayer dollars! See here. And, here.

Thus a group of Bishops trooped to Washington yesterday to make a plea to Congress for more refugees (and therefore more federal dollars for their ‘Christian charity!’)

Note that media accounts rarely, if ever, mention their is a monetary connection to their religious and humanitarian zeal.

From Episcopal News Service:

Bishops meet with federal lawmakers to advocate for Episcopal Migration Ministries, refugees

[Episcopal News Service] Five Episcopal bishops traveled to Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 24 for meetings with senators and representatives from their dioceses to advocate for preserving the U.S. government’s refugee resettlement program at a time when the Trump administration is considering cutting the program further.

Episcopal Bishop’s lobbying contingent

The bishops represent a diverse group of dioceses. Rio Grande Bishop Michael Hunn’s diocese touches 40 percent of the U.S. border with Mexico, and the group also included Maine Bishop Thomas Brown, West Virginia Bishop Mike Klusmeyer, Northern Indiana Bishop Douglas Sparks and Bishop Mark Van Koevering from the Diocese of Lexington in Kentucky.

They were accompanied by staff members from The Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations, which organized the visits. They met with both Republicans and Democrats. And their appeals carried the weight of the church’s decades of experience resettling refugees in the United States through Episcopal Migration Ministries, or EMM.

“This is certainly not a partisan issue, from my standpoint,” Hunn told Episcopal News Service after concluding his meetings. “It’s a moral issue of how we care for the stranger among us.”

Okay, so care for the “stranger among us” with private dollars from your flocks!

EMM is shrinking and is getting desperate:

EMM once oversaw 31 resettlement affiliates in 26 dioceses, but now that number is down to 13 affiliates in 11 dioceses. The ongoing uncertainty over future resettlement levels poses additional challenges for EMM and the other eight agencies.

Now get this, the Bishops got their talking points from the Episcopal Church’s Government Relations (lobbying) office (are we paying for that too?).

The five bishops in Washington to advocate for EMM and the refugee resettlement program gathered in the morning for a briefing, in which Office of Government Relations staff members outlined talking points that invoked church policy positions as determined by General Convention resolutions. The bishops also received biographical information about the lawmakers they were meeting.

So who advocates for you, taxpayers, who don’t want your hard earned dollars going to ‘church’ groups advocating far Left political positions? No one!

Migrating Africans Piling Up in Mexico Demand US Asylum

~ Ann Corcoran

Unlike their Central American counterparts, these Africans are very well organized!

See what Judicial Watch is reporting (hat tip: Joanne).

As you read this remember that LEGITIMATE asylum seekers are required to file for asylum (for refugee status) in the first safe country they get to (after supposedly escaping their home country where they supposedly were persecuted).

What these migrants and so many other wannabe ‘refugees’ around the world are doing is called Asylum Shopping! 

They want to be in the country of their choice!  They want to be your new neighbors in the United States!

African migrants in Mexico demonstrate. Demand Mexico let them head to the US border.   https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-09-21/african-migrants-stuck-in-southern-mexico-their-american-dream-on-hold

 

Judicial Watch (Corruption Chronicles):

ASSEMBLY OF AFRICAN MIGRANTS IN TAPACHULA DEMANDS ASYLUM IN U.S.

Among the multitude of migrants waiting in Mexico to get asylum in the United States are thousands of Africans boldly demanding passage into the country. They are far more coordinated than their Central American caravan counterparts and have formed an official organization to spread their message and advocate on their behalf. The group accuses Mexican authorities of discrimination and racism and is ordering Mexico to grant visas that allow them to continue their trek north to seek “protection” in America.

For about three months the Africans have been holed up in Tapachula, in the southeast Mexican state of Chiapas bordering Guatemala.They traveled for two months and crossed eight countries to reach Mexico, they assert in a mission statement that outlines their suffering as well as their demands. “We have climbed mountains and valleys,” the document reads. “We have crossed rivers with strong current. We have slept in the middle of the mud. We have gone hungry and drank rainwater to survive. We have seen bodies of migrant brothers on the road, dead of exhaustion, or drowned in the rivers. The jungle is populated by wild animals, snakes and poisonous insects. In that territory there are also criminals who assault people, who rape girls and women, killing those who try to resist. Many of us have lost all our belongings, including our official documents. We have gone through extremely dangerous cities and towns. We had to hide. We have suffered extortion and threats by authorities in Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.”

They describe themselves as the Assembly of African Migrants in Tapachula, a group of 3,000 men, women (many pregnant), boys and girls from various African nations, including Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea Conakry, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Congo, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.They claim they left Africa because they suffered “political persecution” due to their religious beliefs and “sociocultural identities.” They also write in the statement that their homeland is “impoverished and subdued from the Western powers” though they aspire to obtain asylum in a nation considered to be a Western power.

More here.

Here is their manifesto. Begs the question again: Who is paying for all of this and doing their political organizing?

If this bunch is permitted to move toward our border, there will never be an end to the Africa to Mexico migration!

 

Federal Refugee Contractors Complain as Some Refugee Flights to the US are being Canceled.

~ Ann Corcoran

CNN is reporting that as the 2020 fiscal year approaches (a week from tomorrow) some refugees who had plane tickets for October are being notified that their flights are canceled.

By the way, we are on the hunt every day for the Presidential Determination for how many refugees will be admitted as your new neighbors in the next fiscal year.  At one point, leaks (by deep state actors within the federal government) suggested the number could be zero.  That, of course, sent the contractors, whose budgets depend on your money, into fits of rage at the President.

Here is CNN today (hat tip: Joanne):

Flights to bring some refugees to the US are being canceled

Flights for some refugees who were approved to come to the United States have been canceled, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The move has sparked concern among resettlement agencies that have booked travel for refugees into October, anticipating the continuation of arrivals in the upcoming fiscal year. It also has the potential of leaving some refugees who were approved to come to the US in limbo.

Rachel Pollock

“It concerns me that our local offices have done a bunch of work and started to make plans for these cases to come. It’s so atypical,” said Rachel Pollock, director of resettlement services for United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, one of the nine resettlement agencies that work with the State Department to place refugees.

“No one really knows what’s coming or what’s going to happen. It seems like a further move away from what we’ve come to expect from this program,” Pollock added.

[Don’t miss my post yesterday about the Bishop’s “summer of discontent” with Donald Trump.  Come to think of it, wouldn’t you think the Bishops would cut Trump some slack since he is a staunch defender of the unborn!—ed]

The International Organization for Migration [an organization within the UN-ed], which is in charge of booking refugees on their travel, sent cancellation notices out Monday morning.

A notice obtained by CNN [leaked to CNN by a contractor or some denizen of the deep state most likely—ed] includes the travel itinerary for individuals whose travel was booked for October and canceled. The stated reason for cancellation: “FY20 moratorium extension.”

The notice doesn’t provide an end date for the extension.

The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration directed the International Organization for Migration to send the notifications, according to a department spokesperson, who added the moratorium is being extended through October 21. The department is working with the organization to rebook the flights contingent upon the refugee admissions ceiling for fiscal year 2020.

[….]

As a result of the declining admissions under the Trump administration, all nine resettlement agencies have had to close offices or pause their placement programs — chipping away at a system designed to not only place refugees but also help them integrate into communities across the country.

As of April 2019, around 100 offices have either closed entirely or suspended their refugee resettlement program, a third of offices nationwide, according to a Refugee Council USA report released this year.