If Continuing Budget Resolution (as is) extends to late March, ORR will run out of money

12/02/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“HHS anticipates that it would run out of funding under the CR for these activities in February 2017“

(Leaked document)

That is what the Administration is telling House and Senate Appropriations Committees according to language leaked from an Administration request to Congress.
It is no surprise as we have been reporting this morning here, that the Unaccompanied Alien Children are literally depleting the budget by the day.

donald-trump-grouchy — Calling Donald Trump! Keep your eye on the Republican leadership, they could tie your hands now by appropriating the extra MILLIONS Obama wants for refugees/illegal alien kids in the CR for 2017.

We reported this too many times to repeat: since Congress never finished the budget for FY2017 (that began on October 1, 2016) and extended last year’s budget to December 9th, they need to either complete a whole year budget next week, or they can pass another Continuing Resolution (at the 2016 level) to March which gives the incoming Trump Administration some say over what the government will spend in the second six months of the fiscal year.
They can’t run this program without a lot of money….
And, if they don’t get more of it, if they have a budget shortfall, there is no way the Obama Administration can keep pouring refugees in to the US at the rate it has for the last 2 months. Therefore, they also won’t be able to open all of those new offices they are trying to get open in 47 new locations. (Unless Congress appropriates the money in the Continuing Resolution expected on the floor by December 8th!)

We know for sure that the Obama Dept. of Health and Human Services is begging for bucks from Congress right now in the Continuing Resolution.

Here is some language that has apparently ‘gotten loose’ in Washington. The big question is whether the House and the Senate Appropriations Committees will be inclined to do Obama’s bidding! Why should they?

Language is needed to provide a rate for operations of $3,874 million for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Refugee and Entrant Assistance account and to authorize additional transfers of funding from other HHS accounts to the Refugee and Entrant Assistance account, in the event caseloads are higher than anticipated. To support the Administration’s refugee admissions target as well as high projected flows of other humanitarian entrants, an annualized rate of $1,051 million is needed to cover cash and medical expenses and social services for these populations. In addition, HHS is experiencing the highest number of unaccompanied children in care and the largest footprint of funded capacity in the program’s history, and flows of unaccompanied children have continued to grow over the last months; an annualized rate of $2,823 million is needed for HHS to meet its legal obligations to shelter and care for unaccompanied children referred to HHS. Given current shelter needs and flows of unaccompanied children, without this anomaly, HHS anticipates that it would run out of funding under the CR for these activities in February 2017. At a minimum, HHS anticipates needing an additional $500 million above the current CR rate during the period of the CR through March 31, 2017, $430 million for the unaccompanied children program and $70 million for refugee and humanitarian entrant programs, as well as additional transfer authority to protect against higher than expected costs.

Consider this:
First, this administration is making sure (at this very minute) that “caseloads are higher than anticipated.”
Second, the Obama Administration has encouraged the great flow of “unaccompanied children” and now they whine they don’t have the money to care for them.
And, third, Congress holds the purse strings. Will they starve the beast now, or feed it through March. What will Rep. Tom Price (as Trump’s pick for HHS) signal to his House colleagues in the coming days.
Does Trump understand that he might not be able to turn the spigot off completely on January 21, if Congress has appropriated the money? I bet Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell know! Will they roll him on this?

You need to let your members of Congress and your Senators know they must disapprove this request!

So far, we don’t know of any move to completely defund the program on the CR, but will keep you posted if we hear.
Endnote: All of our posts on this topic are tagged ‘Where is Congress.’

Will Rep. Tom Price rein-in refugee program, so far no sign he is inclined that way

12/02/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Readers here at RRW know that the Dept. of Health and Human Services isn’t just about Obamacare. For us, it is the agency that does most of the spending on refugees and those so-called unaccompanied alien children we just told you about in the previous post.

tom-price-7 — Rep. Tom Price, Trump’s pick for HHS Secretary

Here is The Seattle Times educating its readers about HHS’s role involving immigration via its sub-agency the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The examples given here of Trump nominee Georgia Rep. Tom Price’s (a medical doc btw) earlier positions on the subject of refugees doesn’t look very reassuring to me. So, if any of you know things about Price that would give us confidence he might draw in the reins on the RAP, let me know!
And, correct me if I am wrong!
In my earlier post this morning, I noted he did not back Rep. Babin on his bill.
The Seattle Times:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The congressman named by Donald Trump to oversee the country’s health care system would also have an impact on another top issue: immigration.

It’s an area where Georgia Republican Tom Price has been at odds with the Obama administration.

If Price is confirmed by the Senate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he would head an office responsible for both resettling refugees in the United States and caring for immigrant children caught trying to cross the border on their own.

The five-term lawmaker has joined his Republican colleagues in objecting to President Barack Obama’s immigration enforcement policies, including those at the border. He co-sponsored a bill that sought to let states block Syrian refugees from settling in their communities. (I’m assuming they mean McCaul’s toothless bill, mentioned here at Breitbart)

Continue here.
And, again, if anyone has anything that would give us confidence that Price would be willing to dramatically decrease the budget at HHS for the Refugee Admissions Program and turn off its giant grantmaking machine, send it my way!
On the grants: There are millions of dollars of grants that ORR hands out to contractors that have no basis in the law—crazy stuff like those grants for planting refugee gardens for example!

Lancaster County, PA refugee economic study is misleading

11/26/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If everything is so copacetic in Lancaster County, then why did it go 57% for Donald Trump?

This is what the Left is so good at—writing studies that are not completely accurate to paint a positive picture of the economic impact of refugees on a community and then use it as a news-hook.
But, in this case the study (the propaganda!) which concluded that immigrants/refugees economically benefit Lancaster County, PA was produced by the real driver of the Open Borders movement, not the Leftwing, do-gooder, ‘humanitarians,’ but business interests who want the ready supply of cheap labor—-the Chamber of Commerce and Bloomberg’s New American Economy cheered on by federal refugee contractor Church World Service which receives most of its funding from you, the taxpayer. [For more on the New American Economy, go here.–ed]

NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 15: Former Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg speaks at a press conference announcing a new initiative between the Clinton Foundation, United Nations Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies, titled Data 2x on December 15, 2014 in New York City. Data 2x aims to use data-driven analysis to close gender gaps throughout the world. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images) — Do not trust any propaganda from leading Open Borders advocates like Bloomberg: “Former Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg speaks at a press conference announcing a new initiative between the Clinton Foundation, United Nations Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies…” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-bloomberg/bloomberg-what-works-cities-data_b_7097304.html (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

The article at Philly.com (fake news?) seems to be promoting refugee resettlement, but when you look closely, the educated and hardworking immigrants cited are mostly not refugees—they are Vietnamese (we only take a handful of refugees from Vietnam now), Mexicans, Germans!, Dominicans, and a smaller number of Cubans which we do take as refugees, but shouldn’t be!
But, the most important and misleading aspect of the story is that there is no information in the study about what the refugees/immigrants cost Lancaster County and the federal taxpayer for welfare, subsidized housing, food stamps, medicare, the criminal justice system and a biggie—education for the kids.
The low wages Tyson Foods and other big global corporations pay their labor is supplemented by you, so of course the business community loves this model!
Philly.com:

Lancaster County is Donald Trump land. The president-elect won 57 percent of the 240,000 votes cast there, compared with Hillary Clinton’s 38 percent.

The county of about a half-million people also is home to fast-growing numbers of immigrants and refugees – 23,094 as of last count – whose rate of growth from 2009 to 2014 was nearly double the rate for the county as a whole. Nationwide, immigrants and refugees were among groups often lambasted by candidate Trump.

irwin-bass1 — VP Lancaster Chamber of Commerce, Cheryl Irwin-Bass. http://www.lancasterchamber.com/article.aspx?page=executive-biographies&parent=media-center#.WDmpW1ygY2w

But in Lancaster County, according to a study released Tuesday, foreign-born residents have had “an outsize” positive impact on the local economy, and in 2014 contributed $62.8 million to Social Security, $16.4 million to Medicare, $52.5 million in state and local taxes, and $103.3 million in federal taxes. Their spending power was estimated at $440.5 million.

The study was a joint project of the Lancaster County Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Lancaster County Refugee Coalition. It was conducted and underwritten by the bipartisan New American Economy, a Washington nonprofit whose cochairs include former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter.

[….]

“With the very serious workforce challenges the business community faces, the findings in this report will help us to more fully leverage every person in this county,” Cheryl Irwin-Bass, vice president of the chamber, said when she presented the study at her group’s annual State of the County event.

[….]

The study cites manufacturing and health care as industries in which immigrants have played important roles. Some refugees have obtained jobs at Tyson Foods. [I wonder if refugees who sign up abroad to come here are forewarned about the meatpacking jobs they are expected to fill—ed]

[….]

Church World Service has an office in Lancaster City, and the refugees she helps include Syrians who have had to flee their war-ravaged homeland. The top five immigrant groups are from Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Germany, and Cuba. [Mostly NOT refugees—ed]

Philly.com continues here.

lancaster-rally — Rally earlier this year against more refugees for Lancaster. Trump voters! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/01/03/pennsylvania-patriots-rally-against-more-muslim-refugees-for-lancaster/

Forget humanitarianism, it is all about money!

If I have done nothing else with this post and years of work on the subject of Refugee Resettlement I hope I have gotten one important message through to you dear reader—-Refugee Resettlement in America is NOT first and foremost about humanitarianism, it is about big business and cheap labor!
I’ve written a lot about Lancaster (Amish country) over the years. My interest began in 2007 when it was Lancaster’s spillover (there was some problem with crime there we were told by our police chief) that came to my county in western Maryland.
Go here for my archive on Lancaster. See especially posts where some very unhappy citizens protested against more refugee resettlement and where the school system endured a very expensive lawsuit filed by lawyers for refugees (I bet Bloomberg didn’t include that cost in his study!).

Migrants looking for economic opportunity and running from gangs/violence are NOT refugees

11/25/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Immigration activists are urging Obama to release them all before January 20th!

They are surging north by the tens of thousands since Trump won the Presidential election on November 8th. See news at Drudge yesterday, here. And it isn’t just Mexicans and Central Americans, as Pamela Geller told us here two days ago, that want to get in to America before Donald Trump is inaugurated.

President Barack Obama, flanked by Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, left, and senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, June 24, 2013, during a meeting with CEOs, business owners and entrepreneurs to discuss immigration reform. Obama hosted the meeting to discuss the importance of commonsense immigration reform including the Congressional Budget Office analysis that concludes immigration reform would promote economic growth and reduce the deficit. Sitiing next to Obama are . (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) — Next time you hear the Left whining about Jeff Sessions, Kris Kobach and Steve Bannon remember that President Barack Obama had Cecilia Muñoz (La Raza), and senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett by his side for nearly 8 years working day and night to change US immigration policy and seed your towns with diversity. Now the pendulum swings back!

Most are NOT REFUGEES! although most will be requesting asylum (and most are being cared for on the taxpayer’s dime).
While we focus so much energy on the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, the asylum portion of the Refugee Act of 1980 is going berserk! The Open Borders activists have latched on to it in order to make up for the numbers they might lose in the normal refugee program. I mentioned it recently when I wrote about Doris Meissner.
In the normal process we write about all the time, refugees are selected abroad and flown here on your dime (they are supposed to repay the airfare, but no one, outside the government, knows how much they do repay).
With asylum seekers, they get here on their own either by crossing the border illegally or illegally overstaying a visa and then requesting asylum, which is supposed to offer protection from PERSECUTION.
In either case legitimate “refugees” must prove that they fear persecution if returned home, according the 1951 Convention on refugees….

Article 1 of the Convention, as amended by the 1967 Protocol, defines a refugee as this:

“A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it..”

What has been happening is that the definition is being expanded (really by the Open Borders lobby and their media mouthpieces) beyond the idea of persecution to include anyone who is running from anything that makes them unhappy!

Bloomberg: Let all asylum-seekers go free before January 20th:

Now, back to the article that caught my eye a few days ago at Bloomberg (where else!): Obama being urged to let all asylum-seekers go free. But, remember! most of the tens of thousands of Unaccompanied Alien Children who entered the US illegally are already free to roam America!

Immigration advocates are asking the Obama administration to release thousands of detained Central American women and children who want asylum in the U.S., citing concerns that Donald Trump will deport them after his inauguration in January.

Representatives of groups including the Women’s Refugee Commission and the American Immigration Lawyers Association met with White House officials last week to discuss a host of immigration issues, including the fate of about 4,000 Central American detainees, some as young as two years old, who have fled violence in their home countries. They’re housed in jail-like facilities in Texas and Pennsylvania, some for more than a year, as they wait for the government to process their asylum pleas.

Immigration advocates want the president to either end the practice of detaining families altogether, as they’ve been requesting for years, or direct Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to release families with a notice to appear before a judge on their own recognizance.

They are NOT refugees! But, see here below, that the media calls them that already. In order to be a refugee they must make an asylum claim and be granted asylum! In most states they are not eligible for welfare until the asylum claim has been approved.

The plight of the Central American refugees, who fled violence and gangs in their home countries, is one of several 11th-hour immigration conundrums Obama faces as he prepares for Trump to enter the White House. The Republican campaigned on promises to crack down on undocumented immigrants and to build a wall on the Mexican border, and immigration advocates fear a government that has struggled under Obama to humanely handle a crush of asylum-seekers at the southern border will turn markedly more hostile under his successor.

More here if you care to read it!
The vast majority of so-called ‘refugees’ invading Europe now are claiming asylum and are not legitimate refugees, and shouldn’t be referred to as ‘refugees’ until their claims have been approved.

Trump has power to stop refugee flow, will he also slow flow of our $$$ to UN?

11/25/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

All over the country, as we have been reporting, refugee advocates are having pow-wows and crying sessions about what Donald Trump might do about refugees on January 21st.
Many of those advocates have gotten comfortable, and felt safe in their jobs, through several Presidents including Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama, but all that is expected to change.
This is a story from New Hampshire Public Radio (Clinton country) where experts try to predict what is coming.
The first quotes are from Chris George from the New Haven, CT resettlement agency. We told you about him here last week. He is hoping we still take in Obama’s last wish—110,000 this fiscal year.

ruxandra-paul — Asst. Professor Ruxandra Paul (Amherst): Trump on solid ground to cut flow of refugees, but she worries that other countries will follow suit. However, one thing never mentioned is that we are far and away the world leader in PERMANENTLY resettling refugees, most countries, including most European countries, do not admit permanent refugees.

Then we hear from a law professor who argues that we have given Presidents too much power. As far as the Refugee Act of 1980 goes, the crafters of the law (all Dems) gave the President power. Congress was expected to “consult” and weigh in, but that body has until very recently ignored its role.
(Only Senator Sessions held a required hearing on Obama’s plan, the House has been silent under Rep. Trey Gowdy’s chairmanship of the immigration subcommittee.)
New Hampshire Public Radio:

“A president can exercise the highest level of authority, when it comes to border control or foreign policy,” says Sudha Setty from Western New England University Law. “So in terms of setting that refugee ceiling for future fiscal years, future President Trump does have the authority to set that ceiling very low.”

Setty said Trump’s freedom to exercise sweeping decisions, like banning Muslims from entering the U.S. continues a disturbing trend of the last two administrations.

“The lesson of the last 15 years has been that we have given the president a tremendous amount of power. And we have not put into place a lot of accountability measures when it comes to anything that is deemed to be national security or terrorism or national security related, and that’s not changing any time soon.”

Next up is another assistant professor with a little nugget that is useful. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees gets $1.5 BILLION a year from us (and not mentioned here is the fact that the UN is choosing most of our refugees).

Amherst College Political Scientist Ruxandra Paul is watching both sides of the Atlantic right now. She says if U.S. leadership changes direction on its decades long commitment to refugee resettlement, more global uncertainty is sure to come.

“Donald Trump has been suggesting that the US has contributed too much and that allies from western Europe are not covering their share of the burden.”

Last year the U.S. gave the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) more than $1.5 billion. The European Union next in line, followed by several European countries, gave in the hundreds of millions. [We gave a half a billion here just in July—ed]

From a legal perspective President Donald Trump will be on solid ground if he chooses to lower the refugee ceiling. If he does, Paul says, it’s possible other countries will do likewise.

Nikki Haley?

In light of that bit of information, that the UNHCR gets $1.5 billion a year from us, is Nikki Haley going to be tough enough and would she be able to deal with the refugee issue which The News & Observer, a North Carolina paper, says is one of four major UN issues she will have to confront?

haley-graham1 — Will Senator Lindsey (Open Borders!) Graham be coaching from behind the curtain?

Ambassador to the UN is not a little out-of-the-way job and will depend greatly on who Trump picks for the Secretary of State which she will be reporting to! Placing Haley there is not putting her in a place to simply keep enemies close. A deputy assistant job in the Labor Department would have been a better fit.
If Trump does go hardline on refugees and wants the UN funding cut would Haley resign and cause him a PR embarrassment down the road? I think she would (and the likes of Senator Lindsey Graham will be cheering her on from the sidelines as they prepare for 2020)!

Here The News & Observer ponders the question about refugees:

Trump wants to end Muslim migration to the U.S. until terrorist threats are addressed, banning refugees fleeing violence in countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. This policy directly violates international law, which stipulates that other countries have an obligation to take in people seeking refuge from persecution in their home country and cannot bar refugees based on origin. [Trump (we hope) will follow US law which gives him the power to limit refugee flow, not international law!—ed]

Although Haley opposes Trump’s outright Muslim ban, she was among 30 governors who demanded Syrian refugees not be resettled in their states, citing security concerns. A spokeswoman for the governor said last year that until refugees can be properly vetted “it’s not appropriate for them to be sent to South Carolina or any other state.” [Just words and they all knew it!—ed]

guterres-un-symbol — New UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, is, from our point of view, the worst possible UN leader they could have chosen.

Refugees are not allowed into the country until they pass a series of background and health checks, a process that can take up to two years. Governors can’t legally stop refugees from being resettled in their states. [For the umpteenth time, the Syrian screening has been reduced to 3 months and we do admit refugees with TB and other diseases.—ed]

Incoming U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres is likely to resist any American efforts to dismantle refugee programs. He formerly served as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and is a strong advocate for wealthy countries doing their fair share to help the most vulnerable. He will take office Jan. 1.

This last makes me wonder (again) whether the Trump transition team has any idea of what they are up against at the UN and how those of us who voted for Trump feel about the ‘world body.’
Endnote: If you were digesting your Thanksgiving meal and didn’t read my post last night, here it is. Islamists say their long game is to take America down through immigration and out-breeding us!