As the White House wrestles with the US State Department over the refugee ceiling for the coming fiscal year (which btw begins in 21 short days!), I’m reminded of what Bill Frelick, Director of the Refugee Rights Program at Human Rights Watch told Newsweekin November of 2016.
In a story titled, ‘TRUMP ELECTION LEAVES REFUGEE ADVOCATES FEARFUL AND UNCERTAIN’about how the Open Borders activists were feeling in the wake of Trump’s win, Frelick said this:
During his presidential campaign, Trump said he planned to suspend the Syrian refugee program, which is “fairly easy for him to do because this is discretionary,” says Bill Frelick, director of Human Rights Watch’s refugee program, who described himself as “shell-shocked” when he spoke with Newsweek on Wednesday. “In the U.S., there’s not a quota that has to be filled. The U.S. has a budgeted amount of money to do refugee resettlement, but there’s no requirement that the U.S. resettle a single refugee, and there’s no legal obligation to do it.”
President Donald Trump has many avenues to slow the immigration steam roller that is changing America by changing the people.
Making it harder for wannabe future ‘new Americans’ to stay, is to require that they won’t suck off the federal teat in the process of advancing toward a green card and future citizenship.
Stephen Miller is at it again says Politico
But before you get excited, know that refugees and asylees (and a whole bunch of other categories of legal immigration) are exempt from a proposed rule change.
When the bill that became the Refugee Act of 1980was debated in Congress, ol’ Teddy Kennedy promised that we weren’t simply bringing more impoverished people to America to place on welfare. He lied!
I want to know why the supposed humanitarian NGOs (the contractors) presently being paid by us, the taxpayers, to take care of refugees can’t use their own money to feed and house the refugees they say they love. After all, they claim that the refugees quickly find work and become self-sufficient!
Here is Politico which obviously is sending a message for Dems and Leftwingers to strongly oppose (protest!) the proposed rules they claim are straight from the evil brain of White House aide Stephen Miller. Never mind that controlling immigration was the primary reason Donald Trump was elected to sit in the Oval Office and Miller is one of the few who remember the promise!
The Leftwing media focus on Miller is a classic Saul Alinsky tactic. I suspect he finds the attacks amusing.
Immigrants may be denied green cards if they’ve received benefits
The Trump administration proposed expanding its pre-election crackdown on immigration by denying green cards to legal immigrants if they have received government assistance.
Under the new rule, which the Department of Homeland Security posted online Saturday, immigrants can be denied so-called “lawful permanent residency” if they’ve received certain government benefits — or if the government anticipates that they may do so in the future.
The measure represents the latest move by White House aide Stephen Miller to reduce drastically all immigration to the U.S., both legal and illegal, and reflects his strong conviction that doing so will improve congressional Republicans’ chances in the midterm elections. The benefit programs targeted include the the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (welfare), Medicaid, and Medicare Part D (prescription drug subsidies).
The regulation could force millions of low-income families to choose between government assistance and permanent settlement in the United States.
Advocates fear it could ultimately restrict children’s access to food and health care.
The move will affect mainly legal immigrants and their families, since undocumented immigrants are not eligible for most federal benefits.
[….]
The proposed regulation would provide a more robust enforcement mechanism for longstanding statutory boilerplate that bars immigrants “likely to become a public charge.”
[….]
Trump’s fatal error in the end could be his failure to put people like Von Spakovsky in his administration so loyal aides like Miller would not be virtually alone in fighting the deep state.
Roughly one million people become lawful permanent residents each year — a generous allotment, according to Hans von Spakovsky, a senior fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“We can be choosy about who we allow into the country,” he said. “One of the primary factors ought to be ensuring that the legal immigrants who come in are people who can financially support themselves.”
Approximately one-third of the federal budget goes to health insurance subsidies and social safety net programs, according to the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — an expenditure the Trump administration and Republicans seek to reduce.
[….]
A range of activists spent months preparing for the rollout of the proposed regulation and plan to wage an opposition campaign.The proposal will now be subject to a public comment period, an opportunity for opponents to mount an assault on the plan.
A coalition led by the National Immigration Law Center and the D.C.-based anti-poverty Center for Law and Social Policy will push for a wide range of businesses, organizations and government officials to submit comments.
Refugees, Asylees, Cuban/Haitians, Special Immigrant Visa holders, those here through the ridiculous ‘temporary protected status’ program, more! are all exempt!
The prospective regulation wouldn’t apply to all immigrants. Refugees and asylees are exempt, as are certain victims of domestic violence and children who qualify for “special immigrant juvenile status,” which is available to minors who were abused, neglected or abandoned by a parent.
Foreigners who apply for “temporary protected status” to remain in the U.S. after a natural disaster or armed conflict in their home countries will also be exempt, so long as they received a blanket waiver to absolve them of any public charge considerations.
See Jim Simpson’s charton how many refugees and others have been approved as ‘new Americans’ in the last ten years and know that all of these will be exempt!***
It isn’t clear if the UAC ‘children’ will continue to receive welfare but I suspect they will.
Continue here if you wish. Politico, through its long report, is helping the Left figure out who opposes the draft measure and offering a blueprint on how best to fight it including stalling it by overwhelming the system with thousands and thousands of comments.
***If you need more proof than what Politico says, here is a screenshot of a portion of the draft regulationsexempting refugees and asylees. This is from page 85 but more exemptions are on page 86,87,88, and 89!
The list of exemptions goes on for four more pages!
It is driving the Open Borders Left nuts (and the globalist RINOs) that Stephen Miller is still in the White House and still pushing what they call a hardline immigration agenda.
If you are new to all of this, you should know that before he devoted himself to the Trump campaign and presidency, Miller was a staffer for then Senator Jeff Sessions, chairman of the refugee/immigration subcommittee in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Sessions consistently fought for you—the “deplorables” as Hillary called you—the America worker and average American taxpayers footing the bill for ever-increasing numbers of immigrants (illegal and legal).
We are told by NBC News that Ambassador Haley and Sec. of State Pompeo both wanted more refugees than the 30,000 cap announced and that they “got rolled” by a kid.
I wish I had time to say more, but here (below) is the headline atNBC News. We are told that US Ambassador Nikki Haley wanted more refugees than the 30,000 cap announced a few days ago.
(By the way, I wrote herethat the cap should have been zerountil the program was thoroughly reviewed and either dumped or reformed.)
Stephen Miller wins again: Haley, other foes excluded from immigration meeting
A planned cut in the number of refugees the U.S. admits is the latest win for hardliner Stephen Miller, who keeps beating the Trump admin’s pragmatists.
WASHINGTON — Days before the Trump administration announced plans to slash the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. to its lowest level in 40 years, Trump senior adviser and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller made his case for fewer refugees to a room of senior officials at the White House.
Stephen Miller with his earlier boss Senator Jeff Sessions
His sales job was made easier by the absence of top officials who disagree with his stance. They weren’t there because they weren’t invited, according to two people briefed on the discussions. Missing from the room last Friday were U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Mark Green, both of whom have promoted a more generous policy toward refugees fleeing poverty, famine and persecution, the two sources said.
The planned cut in the refugee cap, now just 30,000 for the coming fiscal year, is the latest win for Miller, who has outmaneuvered opponents in and outside the administration to push through a crackdown on all forms of immigration.
[….]
In the administration’s internal discussions, Defense Secretary James Mattis — who was also absent from the Friday meeting — and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had consistently opposed reducing the ceiling for how many refugees could be allowed into the country next fiscal year, former officials, humanitarian experts and Congressional staffers from both parties told NBC News.
But after the meeting of top officials at the White House, Pompeo unveiled plans Monday to scale back the cap for refugees in 2019 to its lowest level since 1980. The secretary gave no explanation as to why he had changed his position, or how that number was arrived at during the closed door “principals” meeting.
[….]
“Pompeo got rolled,” said one former official familiar with the deliberations who served under Republican and Democratic administrations. The secretary “got manhandled by a kid who knows nothing about foreign policy,” said the source, referring to the 33-year-old Miller.
What is this foreign policy crap—this is about domestic policy and what out-of-control immigration is doing to American citizens in American towns!
You must read it all!
Go hereand see that Miller, who is carrying out the agenda the President campaigned on, is up against seasoned ‘moderates’ who frankly are working against key immigration restriction policies that we elected Trump to carry out.
I have said it many times to many people lately—you will know when the Trump presidency ends (when we go back to uncontrolled immigration) and that is when Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller are gone from Trump’s team. And, you can bet there are many on both sides of the political aisle working toward that end.
….and boy are the Leftwing Open Borders agitators steamed!
Former US Senator and now Attorney General Sessions, who you will recall got on the Trump train in the earliest days of the campaign, is quietly carrying out an immigration restriction agenda at the Justice Department and in the courts.
The primary reason we elected this president in the first place was to get immigration under control and Sessions is doing that!
If the President foolishly pushes Jeff Sessions out of the Justice Department, the Senate will never confirm a replacement who would carry out the immigration control agenda that Sessions has undertaken.
Yesterday, I told you about the asylum scam, here, and today we bring your attention to Mother Joneswith this headline:
Sessions Is Poised to Make It Vastly Harder for Asylum-Seekers to Get Out of Detention
A new decision from Attorney General Jeff Sessions is likely to make it dramatically harder for tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to get out of detention.
How many asylum-seekers are in detention and how many are free to roam America while waiting for a decision? I don’t know the answer, but when I find it, I will let you know. But, know that thousands of wannabe refugees are simply free across America. Vast numbers of them will never show up for their asylum hearing.
On Tuesday, in a now-familiar tactic, Sessions used his broad authority over America’s immigration courts to refer a case to himself. The move will allow him to reinterpret a 2005 decision from the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals that gives some migrants the ability to get out of detention on bond. Sessions now appears likely to strip many detained immigrants of that right.
The self-referral comes two weeks after the Trump administration proposed a rule that would allow it to detain migrant families indefinitely. Combined, these two moves would make families seeking asylum much more likely to spend months or even years in detention.
And, what should be done now is a massive public relations campaign by the US throughout Mexico and Central America about how asylum seekers will be detained maybe for years. Such an effort could have a chilling effect on the hordes hankering to move north.
Mother Jones continues…
Under current law, asylum-seekers who cross the border without authorization are entitled to bond hearings before an immigration judge if they establish a credible fear of being persecuted in their home country. In a strange twist, asylum-seekers who request protection at official border crossings—the government’s preferred route—must ask Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to grant them parole, rather than asking a judge to grant bond. That distinction matters because ICE has shown an almost complete unwillingness to grant parole under Trump.
Eleanor Acer of Human Rights First: “This is just not who we are as a country.” How dare Acer and her ilk be the arbiters of who we are as a country! If it was up to her we would have no borders and therefore no country!
Eleanor Acer, the director of the refugee protection program at Human Rights First, says eliminating bond hearings would have an “absolutely devastating impact” on migrants because of the difficulty of being granted parole by ICE. “This is just not who we are as a country,” she says. “This should not be a country where people are thrown into jails and not even allowed to see a judge who decides whether or not they could be released from detention or not.”
Sessions’ decision to review the case is the latest step in the Trump administration’s systematic crackdown on asylum-seekers. In June, Sessions all but eliminated gang and domestic violence as grounds for asylumafter referring a different case to himself. Earlier this month, the Trump administration proposed a rule to terminate the Flores settlement agreement, a two-decade-old court settlement that prevents the government from detaining migrant children for more than about 20 days. The proposal would allow the Trump administration to detain families indefinitely.
By the way, this is very significant—eliminating fear of violence back home as a grounds for gaining refugee protection and ultimately US citizenship!
We have told you over the years how the Open Borders Left is systematically eroding the definition of who is a refugee. A legitimate refugee, under the 1951 UN Convention, must be able to prove that he or she (personally!) would be PERSECUTED for one of several reasons including race, religion, political views, if returned to their home country. There is nothing in the definition about escaping violence or even war.
In recent years we have been allowing border-crossers to claim they are escaping gangs and abusive husbands to gain a legal foothold in America. Sessions is forcing adherence to the original law and not allowing this expansion.
I’m not going to spend the time this morning going tit-for-tat with refugee advocates whose only line of argument, about changes being made in the US Refugee Admissions Program, is to attack the President as a hateful, bigoted, racist boob. Frelick: The Trump administration has slowed down refugee admissions by throwing sand into the gears of resettlement processing.
I guess people, like Bill Frelick at Human Rights Watch, assumed the program was running like a well-oiled machine as refugees by the hundreds of thousands (some not even real refugees) were being secretly placed in US communities while the federal resettlement contractors sucked down billions of dollars (including fat CEO salaries) from unwilling taxpayers who they then labeled as, what else, racist Islamophobic boobs, if they dared to question the process.
Is Bill Frelick, in his screed at theLos Angeles Times, saying the program had no flaws and critics like me over the years have been complaining about nothing?
I guess so when he quotes Barbara Strack (retired USCIS refugee bureaucrat) referring to the “assembly line” in a piece entitled:
Trump’s brutal refugee program reflects prejudice instead of compassion
“The process works like the assembly line in a factory,” Barbara Strack, who retired in January as chief of the Refugee Affairs Division at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told the New York Times. “This fiscal year, the administration essentially ‘broke’ the assembly line in multiple places at the same time.”
An assembly line shoved down citizens’ throats for nearly four decades!
Yes, they have had an assembly line since shortly after 1980 and that is why the program has created anger and controversy as American citizens, who pay the bills and have to live with the destabilizing results in community after community across America, feel left out and are now asking questions and demanding change.
Elections have consequences.
Frelick and his morally superior pals in the industry should admit there are problems and work to reform the program rather than take cheap shots at the President and his nominee to head the Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration.
They won’t though, even if they know deep down that there are problems, because they are one-trick ponies and apparently none are brave enough to break from the Leftist herd mentality.
