***Update*** Call your Members of Congress today and get them to co-sponsor Babin bill and oppose meaningless “show vote.” Go here for instructions from FAIR.
We told you last night here that, although we are pleased with the strong show of solidarity by the vast majority of America’s governors regarding the importation of not-thoroughly-screened refugees, the real fight will be in Congress, and it is all about money!
Obama cannot advance his resettlement agenda without appropriations approved by Congress.
(Intellectual debates about the Constitutionality of the whole refugee program will have to wait right now!)
In fact, the federal resettlement contractors*** (some supposedly religious non-profit groups) are scrambling at this minute to put in motion a massive display of grassroots power to pound members of Congress and US Senators to turn back any effort to cut funding that they depend on for their survival (the refugees are their gravy train).
Also, remember that if the funds are cut, and Syrians aren’t resettled in significant numbers, it will be a huge image setback for Obama because the United Nations is counting on America to lead the way in moving Muslim Syrians into western countries for permanent resettlement. If the US balks, it will have a chilling effect on countries like Australia that are presently being strong-armed into taking more.
Here is Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily with a detailed report on what to expect. I have snipped some significant sections, but please read the whole thing especially some very good comments by Senator Jeff Sessions, like this key line near the end:
Sessions said the American people should not be asked to fund a population shift of Muslims from the Middle East and Africa into the U.S.
Hohmann opens with this (emphasis is mine):
House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday he will convene a special task force to examine how to respond to President Obama’s plan to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States, but some conservatives on Capitol Hill are warning Ryan’s plan is nothing but a smokescreen designed to give lip-service while refusing to defund the program.
Ryan likely has no intention of cutting off the flow of Muslim refugees into the U.S., nor does he plan to ensure Syria’s persecuted Christian minority gets rescued from the clutches of ISIS, sources told WND.
The issue of ISIS terrorists infiltrating the West by sneaking in among the ranks of Syrian refugees has come to the fore in the wake of last Friday’s ISIS attack on Paris in which 132 innocent civilians were murdered by eight ISIS terrorists, at least two of which entered Europe as “refugees.”
[….]
Ryan’s strategy is also ignoring the fact that Syria is only a small part of the overall United Nations refugee program that sends approximately 40,000 Muslims to America every year from some of the most notorious jihadist hotbeds such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Bangladesh, Sudan, Somalia and Burma.
But WND has learned from insiders on Capitol Hill that Ryan’s end objective is not to close down a program that has delivered more than 1.5 million Muslim refugees to American cities and towns since 1990 under a law authored in 1980 by then-Sen. Joe Biden and the late Teddy Kennedy.
A conservative Capitol Hill aide told WND, “Paul Ryan is setting us up for a meaningless show vote on Syrian refugees so the White House can continue the influx of Muslim refugees this year and all the years to follow as it always has.
Ryan loves mass immigration!
“Putting Ryan in charge of a fight to block refugees would be like putting (Nancy) Pelosi in charge of fight to repeal Obamacare,” the staffer said. “No one loves mass immigration more than Ryan, so how exactly is he going to make a public argument against it? He can’t and won’t, leaving Democrats unharmed, unscathed and unafraid.”
Members of the House Intelligence, Armed Services and Homeland Security panels will meet this week to come up with legislation the House will vote on by Thursday.
The “show vote” will likely occur on the American SAFE Act of 2105, the source said, a toothless bill that will allow Obama to put forth certain assurances that Syrians are being “certified” as having no connections to terrorism.
Senators say, cut the whole program!
Sens. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Richard Shelby, R-Ala., issued a joint statement Tuesday afternoon saying that any strategy to eliminate the infiltration of terrorists posing as refugees must terminate funding for the entire $1.2 billion refugee program.
“As chairmen of subcommittees on both the appropriations and judiciary committees, we believe it is essential that any government funding bill cancel the President’s blank check for refugee resettlement,” the senators said.
Babin increases co-sponsors AP (After Paris). The House Judiciary Committee should now begin to move the Babin bill by first holding a hearing in Trey Gowdy’s subcommittee on that bill, but right at this point in time, the quickest way to slow the flow of Syrians Muslims (and those from many other countries) into the US is to cut the funding.
Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, also has a bill in the House that picked up 14 new co-sponsors Monday and Tuesday in the wake of Friday’s attacks in Paris. His bill would halt all the resettlements until a full accounting of the program is given, both from a cost standpoint and in terms of national security.
The No Borders Left and the refugee industry*** is scrambling! (More shortly on that)
Sensing that a movement is afoot to stop the flow of Islamic refugees into the U.S. from just one of a dozen or so pipeline countries, Syria, the refugee resettlement agencies called an emergency conference call Tuesday.
[….]
Sessions said the American people should not be asked to fund a population shift of Muslims from the Middle East and Africa into the U.S.
There is much more here.
So, as I have been saying for days, the first battle of what is likely going to continue to be a long war is going to be in Congress in the coming weeks.
Call your members of Congress and your US Senators, today and every day going forward. The vote is expected on or before Dec. 11th.
*** Remember readers that these agencies are paid largely with your tax dollars and they lobby and agitate for amnesty for illegal aliens with the same vigor as they advocate for refugees. It is about changing America by changing the people.
The nine major federal resettlement contractors which like to call themselves VOLAGs (short for Voluntary agencies)—a joke considering how much federal money they receive:
- Church World Service (CWS)
- Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
- Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
- International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
- US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
- Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
- World Relief Corporation (WR)