For more than a dozen years (that is the time I’ve been following the US Refugee Admissions Program), I’ve watched the Open Borders propagandists and their media lackeys sell the idea that those mostly teenaged illegal alien border crossers that began flooding our southern border in massive waves during the Obama administration are legitimate refugees.
Legal (whether they are legitimate is another question) refugees are selected abroad (supposedly able to prove they are being persecuted) in a process that begins with the United Nations, the US State Department admits them with screening in advance by the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services provides funds for many of their initial needs.
Those nine federal contractors*** I’m always talking about are contracted and funded by the US State Department to settle them in your towns and cities and those nine receive additional grants and contracts from ORR to supposedly care for them for an initial three month period.
The ‘children’ we see being flown around the US, the ones who caused that recent uproar in Tennessee,here, came to our border, crossed it illegally and were then turned over to ORR and therein I believe is where the confusion began.
I believe, with no hard proof, that the Open Borders lobby wanted the ‘care’ of the children placed in the Office of Refugee Resettlement to further advance the idea to the media and to you, that the ‘children’ are legitimate refugees who would ultimately be entitled to all of the benefits legal refugees receive and thus ultimately acquire citizenship.
Coming back to bite them….
For all of these more than a dozen years I’ve watched this, the big nine, because they clearly want to see the most third worlders admitted to the US as possible, have supported the influx of UACs.
In my early years this was a surprise to me as I assumed the contractors would put the legal refugees they were committed (and contracted!) to care for ahead of any concerns for illegal aliens, but they don’t.
This year their lack of discernment has come back to bite them as Biden himself recognized (briefly) that funds for legal refugees were being consumed by the expensive care being provided to the illegal alien kids.
Here at the Detroit News, in an article about the “decimated refugee infrastructure” we learned that indeed money for legal refugees was being shifted to the illegal ‘children’:
When Biden initially announced he would keep the Trump-era refugee admissions cap of 15,000 — before backtracking amid widespread outcry — he hinted that resources needed at the border were being drawn from the refugee resettlement program.
“The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people,” he said in April. “We couldn’t do two things at once.”
Funding for the Unaccompanied Children Program, which manages custody of child migrants at the border, and the HHS portion of the refugee admissions program, which reimburses states for refugee-related expenses, are indeed part of a single appropriation within HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement and can be internally redirected.
Of course, this money shortage won’t last long as the Biden team will simply allocate billions more (and probably already has) to accelerate the process of changing America by changing the people.
Unforeseen consequences of years of conflation….
But, perhaps an unforeseen result of years of selling the media and the public on the false notion that the UACs (Biden says we aren’t supposed to call them Unaccompanied Alien Children) are legal refugees is that furious tax paying Americans are going to (already are!) lump the illegal alien teens in with legal refugees making it much harder for the contractors to sell communities with the idea of welcoming more legal refugees.
In other words, most Americans think too many are coming no matter what category they fall within.
For those of you who have gotten this far in this morning’s post and are thinking that you don’t give a damn about the bureaucratic details and are saying to yourselves—we are admitting too many migrants of all stripes while paying for them out of our wallets—stop reading now.
Otherwise, know this, and keep reading.
Even our so-called political leaders don’t know what they are talking about and are adding to the confusion, or dodging and weaving.
In my post on Fridayabout the Tennessee uproar, the conflation issue raised its ugly head as politicians scurried to look like they were doing something to push back against the Biden migrant dump.
Good for two writers to begin to unravel the mess.
Green apparently fell for the “conflation.” Editor: I sure would like to see a little better preparation by a Tea Party endorsed candidate. Some of the best experts in the country on refugee resettlement are right there in his own back yard. Here is an idea! Call them before looking foolish.
A lack of legal understanding by a lawmaker is of concern.
Jumping on the bandwagon is US Rep. Mark Green who apparently thinks he is doing something with a bill that will go nowhere in Nancy Pelosi’s House.
For politicians, it is the outrage that matters!
Pat Hamsa writing at Tennessee’s Daily Roll Call calls out Green for adding to the confusion by referring to the UACs as refugees!
Is Mark Green Conflating Illegal Aliens With Refugees?
It’s anybody’s best guess why Green’s explanation of his bill, H.R.3500, doesn’t match what he’s telling folks it’s supposed to do.
Green’s press release about his new bill, “Leads Fight to Block Refugee Resettlement Without State Consent”states in part:
“Last week, in the dead of night, unaccompanied migrant children were flown into Tennessee without our approval or consent. I am alarmed that the Biden Administration would use taxpayer resources to transport refugees into Tennessee without transparency or coordination with state authorities. This overreach and secrecy has to stop.”
In a recent interview with WRCBtv Chattanooga, Green said that he drafted the bill in response to what happened in Chattanooga and that “this bill would mandate permission of the state before they move illegal migrants to Tennessee.”
Then why does he call them refugees in the headline to his press release?
I am amazed at the amount of real research a writer at a local Tennessee paper put into this story attempting to unravel the conflation confusion. It is so rare to see links to solid information to back the reporting.
From Wyatt Massey at the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Massey points out that Governor Lee is on record supporting more legal refugees to Tennessee while acting outraged by the arrival of the ‘children,’ even as during his tenure, the Chattanooga facility for the ‘children’ was licensed.
Refugee, migrant shelters for children referenced in Tennessee debate are separate under federal rules
Controversy in the past week about the movement of migrant children through Tennessee and into a Chattanooga shelter licensed by the state in May 2020 has led to confusion about the immigration status of the children housed in Southeast Tennessee and those video recorded exiting a plane in Chattanooga.
Gov. Bill Lee opposed Trump’s efforts to give states a greater say when the feds placed refugees in a state. He wants more legal refugees, but is distancing himself from the very unpopular drop-off of UACs, so it is to his advantage to make a distinction between the two programs.
Gov. Bill Lee has previously been criticized for his strong words against President Joe Biden administration policies related to the unaccompanied minors after announcing in 2019 the state would continue resettling refugees.
[….]
The governor faced criticism from some conservatives at the time for continuing to accept refugees.Lee cited his Christian faith, calling it a “moral obligation” and a “biblical mandate” for the state to remain in the program.
This is a separate program from federal efforts to care for unaccompanied children who, after they cross the border, are initially in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. ICE and CBP have three days to move the children away from a temporary border shelter to a shelter run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Children stay in ORR shelters, like the one in Chattanooga, for about a month while caseworkers locate and vet a sponsor, usually a relative, to take custody of the child until immigration proceedings can begin.
[….]
On May 19, WRCB aired video of children getting off a plane at the Wilson Air Center to be transported to shelters or placed with sponsors throughout the region. The video sparked outrage from members of Tennessee’s congressional delegation and Lee, who said he had declined a Biden administration request to house unaccompanied minors in the state.
However, documents from the state show Lee’s own Department of Children’s Services licensed the shelter near downtown Chattanooga to house “unaccompanied minors” in May 2020.
On Monday, the Times Free Press asked Lee why his administration approved the license for the facility, conducted monthly inspections and issued monthly reports if the governor was then raising concerns about a lack of transparency over migrant children and saying he declined a federal request to house unaccompanied children.
Although the Times Free Press asked specifically about the migrant children, the governor said the Times Free Press was conflating unaccompanied minors with refugees.
Keep reading. Massey even digs into the finances of the contractor, the Baptiste Group from Georgia, that is housing the UACs in Tennessee. Good work!
Now, after all that, if you made it this far, I suspect you are saying:
Conflation or not there is just too darn much poverty, cultural conflict and potential crime and terrorism being brought into the country and I don’t want to pay for it!
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are alsopaid to find locationsfor the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
At this very moment they are all out scouting for new, fresh territory in which to place their refugee clients. See Winchester, VA.
