Day: December 24, 2019

What Was Secretary of State Pompeo Doing in Tennessee?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 10 Comments

As you know Republican governors*** are turning against the President on the issue of refugee admissions and the President’s Executive Order that permits governors and county commissioners to say no thanks to refugee resettlement later in 2020.

‘Send us more poverty we have run out of poor people for the churches (and taxpayers!) to care for,’ said Tennessee Governor Bill Lee when he said his Christian faith led him to decide to reach out with open arms to the third world in order to move more poverty closer to home.

Or, was he persuaded for ‘foreign’ policy reasons to cave because of Little Kurdistan in his midst.

“Bill and Pompeo working on the refugee resettlement issues.”

 

Thanks to the ever-watchful dailyrollcall.com, a website in Nashville, we learned that Secretary of State Pompeo visited the governor (dubbed ‘Biblical Bill’) in October to “canoodle” about the refugee program.  That was only a few weeks after the release of the President’s EO.

Because Tennesseans are better organized to resist refugees and have maintained strong and vocal support for a state’s rights lawsuit the state filed against the federal government, citizens are alert and learned of Pompeo’s visit to the governor.

Is Secretary of State Pompeo undermining the Prez?

Frankly I smell a rat! Was Pompeo looking for a key governor (some might argue the most important governor because of the lawsuit) to lead other Republican governors to consent to refugee placement in their states?

Or, is it possible that Pompeo was out having additional chit-chats with governors that we don’t know about.

By the way, any Republican governor who jumps on the consent bandwagon this early is dumb, because according to the Funding rules that are the guidance for the President’s concept to allow governors to opt-in or opt-out, they have well into 2020 to decide because of the leeway granted by the loose language of the guidance.

The big lie!  

Could the Secretary of State be telling Lee and his ‘evangelicals’ that they will be admitting mostly the persecuted Christians of the Middle East to your towns and cities?

Does the President know what Pompeo is doing?

Because I’m sick of hearing that we need refugee resettlement to save Christians, I had a look at the numbers this morning.

If you thought the Trump State Department was saving Christians in the Middle East, you are wrong!

I checked the Refugee Processing Center data and learned this about the three major Middle Eastern Islamic countries from which we admit refugees.  I went back to Trump’s inauguration day to today, Christmas eve 2019, and learned this:

 

Afghanistan

We admitted 2,831 refugees.  2,714 of those are Muslims (96%)

In addition to the regular refugees we admitted 37,570 Special Immigrant Visas (get the same benefits as refugees) for those who supposedly helped us there since Trump came into office.  They would naturally all be Muslims, but there is no data on those (that I know of).

Iraq

We admitted 2,944 refugees. 1,891 of those are Muslims  (64%)

In addition we admitted 3,341 SIVs from Iraq.

Syria

We admitted 2,674 refugees. 2,549 are Muslims (95%)

If Gov. Lee thinks we are saving Syrian Christians, we are not!  And, I sure hope that Pompeo wasn’t telling him that we are!

And, by the way, there is a bipartisan effort in the Senate that includes Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) to expand the SIV program to Syrians and Kurds (Muslims), see here.

Over the years, Blackburn has talked big about slowing the flow of refugees, so why has she now done a 180?

A story for another day!  At least the State Department is putting on a show of opposing it!

*** So far besides Lee, that we know of, REPUBLICAN governors of Utah, New Hampshire, Arizona, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia and Nebraska have abandoned Trump.  The official list of governors who have consented is here.  Clearly many governors have not gotten their consent letters into the State Department.

Refugee Resettlement Used as a [Expletive] Bargaining Chip! Do I Smell a Quid Pro Quo?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 6 Comments

“It’s a bargaining tool: We’ll take a certain number of refugees. These are the things you will do for us.”

(Melanie Nezer, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)

This is just a quick post as I am researching WTH Secretary of State Pompeo was doing when he had a little chit-chat about refugees with the now under- fire Tennessee Governor Bill Lee in October.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

Before I get to the little nugget I discovered in a 2018 Politico article about Pompeo, I want to remind long time readers, and inform new readers, that way back seven years ago (and long before that) the US State Department annually invited comment on the coming years refugee plans.

However, when those so-called scoping meetings began to be dominated by those of us who want the refugee program dumped or reformed, they stopped having the annual (albeit phony) ‘hearings.’

The Trump State Department has had no such opportunity for public input.

I regularly sent in testimony demanding a moratorium on the program and listed ten reasons, most are still applicable today.  See them here.

Here is my Number 7:

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 check this out at Politico in August of 2018.

Refugees as pawns and your community be damned!

“Pompeo is the critical stakeholder,” one refugee advocate said.

Melanie Nezer of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. (One of nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.)

Now that he’s served both as CIA director and secretary of state, activists hope that Pompeo has earned an appreciation for the diplomatic leverage having a robust refugee program can give the U.S. in negotiations with other countries.

“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.

It is time to shut up about the humanitarian BS!  A refugee should be someone who is in legitimate need of protection, not a chip in a foreign policy poker game.

Think about that!  Your community will be changed forever (while you pay for it with your tax dollars) because refugees being admitted to the US are pawns in US foreign policy wheeling and dealing!