Noyes, a career diplomat, seems a surprising pick.
I was fully expecting a hardened Leftwing ideologue like Obama’s former Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), Anne Richard, or possibly the insider Lawrence Bartlett, a bureaucrat, who wouldn’t have a long learning curve.
And, then another likely choice could have been Mark Hetfield of HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), but he would have to take a hefty pay cut if selected and confirmed.
Indeed the lobbying arm of the refugee industry was pushing hard for someone with “robust experience” in the complex workings of the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) so they can immediately get to work to bring in as many refugees as possible before Trump, or someone with Trump’s concerns about mass immigration, returns to the White House.
Know that President Trump never filled this position and he likely would have not been able to get someone (who might do any good for us) confirmed.
Of course, it is possible that Ambassador Noyes is experienced with the USRAP, but I’ve never heard of her. And, maybe that is the point—Biden wants to get someone past the Senate confirmation that looks and sounds reasonable.
LOL! But that can’t make the refugee pushers happy unless they plan to manipulate her as they did George Bush’s recess appointment Ellen Sauerbrey who they came to love.
Here is Foreign Policy on Biden’s expected choice to head PRM:
Biden to Tap Career Diplomat as Top Official on Refugee Policy
U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to name three new nominees to senior diplomatic and foreign aid positions, including the top State Department official on refugee issues, a White House official told Foreign Policy.
Julieta Valls Noyes, a veteran career diplomat, is expected to be nominated as the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration—a senior post that could play a key role in the Biden administration’s efforts to reverse Trump-era sharp restrictions on the number of refugees entering the United States. Noyes, the acting director of the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute and former ambassador to Croatia, is a first-generation American whose parents entered the United States as refugees from Cuba.
[….]
If confirmed by the Senate, all three nominees would join agencies widely perceived as hollowed out and damaged by politicization and mismanagement under former President Donald Trump.
The State Department’s top post overseeing refugee issues was left unfilled during the Trump administration’s four years in power, though lower-level officials assumed the job in an acting capacity.
Several senior career diplomats in the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration who defended refugees were reassigned or temporarily sidelined during a shake-up in 2018 as the Trump administration worked to slash refugee admissions to record lows.
Refugee lobbyists at the Refugee Council USA wanted someone with “deep understanding” of “complex issues.” See their letter to Biden here.
Nothing less than “robust experience” is acceptable. (I want to barf every time they use the word “robust!”)
Refugee advocates had been urging Biden for several weeks to swiftly nominate someone to the population, refugees, and migration assistant secretary role. In April, John Slocum, interim executive director of Refugee Council USA, a nonprofit advocacy organization, sent Biden a letter obtained by Politico urging him to pick an assistant secretary “who has a deep understanding of the complex issues surrounding forced displacement, refugee resettlement, and other forms of humanitarian protection.”
Checking out Noyes’ wikipedia page we learn this interesting nugget.
She is the daughter of Cuban refugees and we know most Cubans sensibly loathe communism and loved Donald Trump in 2020.
She also has strong (we might say robust!) feelings about the Islamic State as well. Here in 2014:
“The financing of this barbaric organisation allows it to continue its operations. What we have to do is degrade its abilities and ultimately to destroy it.”[7]
Hmmmm! Sounds like something Donald Trump would say.
If confirmed, the biggest problem she could have is to avoid being rolled by the career bureaucrats and their contractor pals***.
As soon as the contractors begin to weigh-in, we will have a better idea of who this woman is and how she might run the program as Biden promises it will soon be on steroids to admit 125,000 refugees beginning on October first.
***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 and lobby 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 also paid to find locations for 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.
Foreigners First! is their motto!
