Donald Trump, please try to stop this now! We are about to take 1,800 failed asylum seekers that Australia has rejected

11/12/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

When I wrote about this the other day, I didn’t really think our Department of State could be serious, but obviously the Obama Administration is going to shove it down our throats! How many more outrages will we see regarding refugees before January 20th when Donald Trump will be setting US immigration policy?
Watch the 2013 news about the asylum seekers, angry with Australia and the slow processing of their claims, burn down the asylum center. Link here if this doesn’t open: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoL6dASFh8M

German press (Deutsche Welle) is reporting that we are going to transform Australia’s failed asylum seekers, mostly Muslims, into legitimate refugees bound for Anytown, USA.
I would like to know, from the ‘brains’ at the US State Department, how these 1,800 boat people were vetted. And, most of all, why Australia turned them down!
Deutsche Welle:

The US has agreed to accept 1,800 refugees held at Australian-funded camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea, according to media reports. Human rights groups have criticized the conditions in the camps. [What? And, that means because conditions are supposedly bad in an Australian camp, its inhabitants become our problem!—ed]

The Australian newspaper reported on Friday that the US and Australia were close to announcing an agreement for up to 1,800 mainly Muslim refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia on the island nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull declined to comment on negotiations with the US. “There’s always speculation about these things” Turnbull said on Melbourne Radio. “And we never comment on them.”

[….]

An agreement struck with the administration of President Barack Obama could be opposed by his successor, Donald Trump who has called for tight restrictions on Muslim immigration into the US.

Human rights groups have condemned the conditions in the camps which they have condemned as an abrogation of Australia’s responsibilities as a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention. There have been street protests over the treatment of the refugees (photo).

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said this week he was looking for countries that would accept all asylum seekers bound for Australia, including those who have had their refugee claims rejected, but who refuse to go home.

Donald Trump really can’t do anything yet, but your Washington reps can!

Call your US Senators and member of Congress!

I’ve been preaching for weeks/months that there is only one place right now (before January 20th) where you can have an impact if you choose to do the work! That is Congress. Call your representatives in Washington on Monday (they should be back to work on Tuesday, but their staffs should be working) and complain about this outrage. Use it as an example of how out of control the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program is.
Tell your representatives to call the US State Department (the Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration) to put a halt to this sheer insanity!
And, while you are at it, tell your members of Congress to DEFUND the RAP in the FY2017 budget that will be before them beginning on Tuesday.

What should Trump do about refugees on January 21, 2017

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

It is not unprecedented to reduce refugee numbers dramatically, we did it following 9/11! By Inauguration Day 2017 we will already be at 35,000 for the fiscal year!

Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated on the 20th of January as our 45th President. Many of you worked very hard to make it happen. He said he will stop the flow of Syrian (majority Muslim) refugees to your towns and cities and at minimum we expect him to do that!

But, reducing the numbers is not enough, he must demand the repeal of the Refugee Act of 1980. The system as constructed is rotten to the core and I no longer believe it can be reformed.

us-chamber-donohue-ap-640x480 — This isn’t just an ideological battle between ‘do-gooders’ on the Left and ‘haters’ in the conservative grassroots, but a third player is the Chamber of Commerce which will fight tooth and nail to buck Trump. They want the cheap immigrant labor! Tom Donohue, friend of Paul Ryan, here: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/12/chris-wallace-establishment-business-groups-ready-to-primary-conservatives-if-they-dont-play-ball-with-paul-ryan/

A simple reduction in numbers, that has been suggested by some in the immigration control movement, is not adequate. If it is deemed in the national interest to resettle third worlders in America going forward, an entirely new program must be constructed by Congress.
In my view, there are three issues that must be addressed in a White House and Congressional review and they are: 1) National security concerns, 2) the VOLAG system where non-profits are paid by the head (out of the US Treasury) to resettle refugees chosen by the UN, 3) lack of transparency (the outrageous secrecy by VOLAGs and the feds involved in choosing target towns). There may be others I can’t think of at the moment.

So as we knew, and as a Newsweek article yesterday confirmed, on January 21st, Donald Trump can turn off the spigot of refugees flowing in to the US and tell Congress if they want a refugee program to get to work and come up with a new one!

He can hold the hammer over their heads by turning off the flow!

But! He will have to battle the major corporations and the US Chamber of Commerce looking for a plentiful supply of CHEAP LABOR.

As much as some want to frame it this way—as a battle between two major forces of Democrat Left wing open borders ‘humanitarian’ activists on one side and Republican Right wing believers in tightly controlled immigration on the other, there is a third player with enormous power—BIG business and US Chamber of Commerce lobbyists always on the hunt for CHEAP (some say captive, compliant) LABOR!
Trump will have to battle Republican Congressional leaders who follow the lead of their industry friends!
That (above) is my main point, for those who want to wade into the numbers weeds, here is what I’ve been looking at this morning.

What do the numbers look like now?

Using data provided by the Refugee Processing Center, we have admitted 12,272 refugees of all stripes between the beginning of the 2017 fiscal year (October 1, 2016) and election day (November, 8, 2016). This rate (319 a day) is higher than anything we have seen in the last ten years (see chart in this post).
If that rate continues until Inauguration Day on January 20th, 2017, then we will have admitted over 35,000 refugees in just over 3 1/2 months, more than we brought in 2002 and 2003. Obama wants 110,000 for the entire fiscal year (319 a day would bring the total over 110,000).
However, it is not unprecedented to dramatically reduce numbers. See here that in the two years following 9/11 we admitted less than 30,000 refugees for each year 2002 and 2003!
So where would the greatest impact be if the spigot were closed on January 21st? On the contractors of course. They will have to close some offices, not open new ones, reduce staff and overhead, and gee maybe even reduce the excessively large salaries their CEOs are getting. Of course they will scream bloody murder and say how mean Trump is by leaving refugees in the pipeline.
By the way, if you like to do research, check USASpending.gov in the coming weeks and see if the federal agencies—US State Department and Health and Human Services—are pouring excessively large amounts of grant money into the coffers of the nine major contractors before Obama leaves office.
More numbers….
When I checked the data this morning, I see that the following numbers have been admitted from Muslim sending countries (from October 1 to November 8):
Iraq (1,635)
Somalia (1,684)
Syria (1,602)
Smaller numbers come from places like Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. Keep an eye on Burma because originally we resettled mostly Christian Burmese, but Burmese Muslim (Rohingya) numbers are ticking up (269 since Oct. 1).
One final note: The UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program is only one program of many LEGAL immigration programs admitting large numbers of Muslims and others from the third world. I previously wrote about the Diversity Visa Lottery which admits another 50,000 migrants to America via a lottery system each year because we need more diversity (!). I hardly see it mentioned, so I need to start writing about it again because we have the best chance ever now to review and possibly throw out programs which are detrimental to American workers and our communities.
The Republicans previously have tried to stop the Diversity Visa lottery (some call it the Green Card lottery) and I don’t know why they have shut up about it.

Refugee resettlement industry panicked; fears funds will be slashed

11/10/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, if funds are slashed, the numbers to be resettled in your towns and cities will be slashed because as I have told you ad nauseum the resettlement contractors have little money of their own. They need your tax dollars or they wither and die.

“If [Trump] decides to cut the state funds or federal funds for refugees, refugee resettlement will collapse…” (former Church World Service employee)

Here is what Newsweek has to say about the panic (hat tip: Michael). The article begins with Muslim immigrant fears, then this:

Another point of concern to many Muslim families and others is what will happen to the country’s refugee resettlement program during a Trump presidency, considering his repeated Islamophobic statements during the campaign. [At this point, reporter uses the word ‘Islamophobic’, I went back to see if this was supposed to be straight reporting or an opinion piece! It is supposed to be a straight news story!—ed]

[….]

We’re all afraid. Afraid is probably putting it mildly. Most refugee advocates are really terrified of what’s coming,” says Neil Grungras, executive director of the Organization for Refuge, Asylum & Migration (ORAM), a San Francisco-based organization that specializes in helping LGBT refugees. “From a global standpoint, this development could be a real catastrophe.”

He adds: “The world’s resettlement system—if the worst case scenario occurs—will take an extreme blow.”

Readers, pay attention to this next paragraph. Trump has the power to suspend the program, and to cut the funding (pretty much one and the same!).

bill-frelick-2 — Bill Frelick of Human Rights Watch. Call me shell-shocked!

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.”

[….]

Whether the entire refugee resettlement program will be shut down is difficult to predict, but I think it’s safe to say that from a policy standpoint, a Trump administration will be looking to limit the number of refugees resettled, and if refugee resettlement continues, it will be from countries that are ‘safe,’” says Joel Charny, director of Norwegian Refugee Council USA.

I had no idea that we were paying the UN for their work of picking our refugees, this is useful information:

In addition to resettling large numbers of refugees, the U.S. is also a key financial contributor to a number of refugee resettlement organizations, including the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). The U.S. gave UNHCR nearly $700 million in the last fiscal year, and more than $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2015. What will happen to those contributions remains unclear; UNHCR did not respond to Newsweek’s request for comment.

[….]

“If [Trump] decide to cut the state funds or federal funds for refugees, refugee resettlement will collapse and we won’t be able to bring in any refugees to this country,” Vidhya Manivannan, a former employee of Church World Service—one of the nine U.S. refugee resettlement agencies—said in an email to Newsweek.

Click here for more.
I was interested to see that only one (former) employee of a resettlement contractor was quoted. Where is the gang? Where is the Refugee Council USA (the lobbying arm of the industry)?
More tomorrow!

NumbersUSA prognostication on Trump Administration immigration/refugee policies

11/10/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This morning I figured I would just go back to business reporting the news from across America and across the world on what was happening with refugees and specifically refugee resettlement here and abroad. But, all the news everywhere (typical of most of the media) was about immigrants/refugees (and groups like CAIR) freaking out. In the case of one particular story from Baltimore, The Sun article caused my computer to freeze up for about a half an hour. (Don’t you just hate those sites, even Breitbart does it, where they run videos that simply pop up and stall your computer!).

ted-and-joe — Does anyone think that a law created by Senators Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden (signed by Jimmy Carter) is worth saving? Is it in the best interests of your towns and cities? No! Tweaking the numbers is not sufficient. I say blow it up and start over!

So instead of sorting through all the scare stories, I read what Roy Beck (NumbersUSA) said about Trump on immigration, but will have to beg to differ if this is really what Trump plans on refugees.
Geez, is the honeymoon over already?
And, so begins a new phase for Refugee Resettlement Watch! Will we have to be the conscience—the nag—for an administration that purports to be on our side?
And what is my side? It is my job to advocate for what I believe needs to be done, not to find the compromise!
First, let me tell you what Roy Beck says in an otherwise good piece on immigration control and the American worker.
See here on Refugees:

Trump would continue refugee resettlement at more traditional lower numbers*** than the Obama Administration has sought and would emphasize a higher priority on helping more refugees in their home regions.

During Trump’s Phoneix, AZ speech in August 2016 he advocated for creating safe zones for refugees instead of permanently resettling them in the U.S.: “For the price of resettling one refugee in the United States, 12 could be resettled in a safe zone in their home region. Which I agree with 100 percent. We have to build safe zones.”

Trump has also said he will end the practice of forcing refugee resettlement on local communities against their wishes. [Easier said then done! What? take a vote in town? See who comes out with more activists in dueling rallies in the town?—ed]

Just lower the numbers? No way!

The entire structure of the Refugee Act of 1980 is flawed and my wish is for it to be scrapped altogether. The system of sending millions (billions!) of taxpayer dollars to non-profit ‘religious’ groups to, in cahoots with the US State Department, secretly place them (chosen by the UN!) in hundreds of towns and cities in 49 states is wrong!

explosian — Time to blow it up and start all over?

Now, if Congress with the President deem it in our national interest to admit some permanent refugees, then they must repeal the original act (build a new program) or completely overhaul it. I have ideas on what could be done, if that is what the soon-to-be-powers in Washington decide to do.
But, simply reducing the numbers and restricting a few countries won’t cut it! This entire flawed system must be blown up first and I will continue to advocate for that outcome.

***If you want to talk “traditional” numbers, the refugee industry will be quick to say that the RAP (Refugee Admissions Program) admitted much higher numbers in the past, in some years twice what we bring now under Obama. So you can’t stick to the strict ‘reduce numbers’ meme with this program. And, indeed, if Trump is turned out of the White House in 4 years, then the next administration will simply up the numbers again.

Celebrate today, but tomorrow the real work begins!

11/09/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“It does you no good to have local grassroots action in a vacuum that never gets to the ears of your Washington reps!”

Get some sleep and then celebrate.
It’s a wonderful day here on the farm because it’s raining (we’ve had a drought!) and of course because the country class has risen up and soundly defeated the elite establishment ruling class all across America.

ryan_trump_split_2 — Ryan test! Will Speaker Paul Ryan block any effort to defund the Refugee Program in upcoming lame duck session? If he does, it may be one of the first tests of whether Ryan will work with Trump, or whether his political career is over.

Since Donald Trump, President-elect of the United States, has succeeded in maintaining the Republican majority (coattails!) in both houses of Congress, it will soon be very clear whether the Republicans will work to scrap/reform the the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program (RAP) or let it move full steam ahead.

If you think that you can relax, that Trump will take care of this problem for you—forget it! The work has just begun!

Heretofore, the open borders Republicans could point to an Obama with a veto pen as their excuse not to undertake any scaling back or reform of the RAP. They can no longer shirk their duty!
Congress returns with Republican majorities pretty much intact for the lame duck session next week, and we will have the first test of Paul Ryan’s speakership as it relates to the budget and this program.

It is about the POWER OF THE PURSE!

Will Ryan bow to what he knows Trump wants—a scaling back of the RAP especially as it relates to refugees from countries which hate us—or will he agree to fully fund the RAP at the high level Obama wants for FY2017?
Until January 20th, Obama would likely veto a budget that defunds the RAP, but that is no excuse not to force his hand.

This is going to be the ultimate and clear test for us!

And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be showing his colors too on the budget. By the way, they could continue the present FY2016 level (not enough money for 110,000 refugees) into say March giving a Trump Administration time to weigh in on the final 6 months of the year.
You must get to work tomorrow, especially in Republican House Districts to tell your member of Congress to DEFUND the program! (We expect to see a repeat effort by Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX), and hopefully Dave Brat (R-VA) to attach an amendment to the Appropriations bill that must be passed, or kicked down the road, by December 9th).

If Paul Ryan blocks such an effort, we will then clearly know whether he will work with a Trump Administration or not!

You can see all of my posts on the budget process by visiting the tag ‘Where is Congress.’
So many of you are working in your towns and cities to investigate the RAP, to pressure local elected officials, to look for ways to sue the federal government, to pressure your state legislators and governors to say no to more refugees, which is all good and necessary work.
However, in the next few weeks all of that effort should be directed at one outcome—DEFUNDING the program. So, every grassroots effort must be directed at your House member and Senators.
Do not assume that if you hold a rally or other public meeting, or call upon the governor to sue the feds to oppose resettlement where you live, that your Congressman and Senators will hear about it—they are some of the least informed people you know—they live in a beltway bubble!

It does you no good to have local grassroots action in a vacuum that never gets to the ears of your Washington reps!

What must Trump do on January 21st?

First, if they haven’t resigned already, he must demand the resignations of the political appointees running the RAP.
They include Anne Richard, Asst. Secretary of State for Population Refugees and Migration and Robert Cary, Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and any of their underlings who are there in politically appointed jobs. There is nothing to be done right now about career federal employees, let’s just hope that a recent poll that said a quarter of federal employees in DC would quit if Trump was elected follow through.
Of course, much of what happens with this program going forward depends on who Trump will place in his cabinet as Secretary of State, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Homeland Security. Will they be people willing to slow or stop some immigration programs?
As we discussed above, Trump must work with Congress to cut the budget—appropriations are policy!
As for Obama’s ‘determination’ submitted to Congress this past September where Obama said he wanted 110,000 refugees placed in America by September 30th 2017, Trump has the power to stop that flow on January 21st.
Obama’s proposal is a ceiling only, it is not a legally mandated goal! Of course those Obama appointees and the federal contractors are already working day and night to get as many refugees, especially from Syria, in to your towns and cities by January 20th. They are also getting as many placed in a pipeline as well so they can scream and shout about how mean Trump is to close the spigot with people in the pipeline.

And, that is why curtailing the budget NOW, in the lame duck, is so important. It sends the signal that the spigot is closing!
One final thing! This Trump landslide victory sends a message to our friends in Europe that they can resist the Islamification by migration of Europe!