…..but, did you know it was Senator Tim Kaine’s number before Hillary began talking about it!
Update: More here yesterday at Breitbart.
(Hillary publicly used the 65,000 number in September of 2015, but Kaine was pressing Obama in early summer of 2015.)
(I gotta dash today, more later on the debate). But, I want to encourage you to watch this youtube video I made with the help of the Center for Security Policy in June 2015 in which I identify Kaine as one of 14 members of what we call the Senate Jihad Caucus!
98-99% of all Syrian refugees admitted to the US thus far are Muslims, mostly Sunni Muslims.
Update: Before I dashed out earlier I should have linked the LA Times story that I was basing my comments on.
Category: 2016 Presidential campaign
Washington Post whines about Trump power on refugees if elected president
That is not a surprise, but what was a surprise is that the vast majority of the commenters at the Washington Post editorial on Sunday were cheering Trump on! Readers of the Washington Post!
Mike Pence as governor of Indiana may not have the power to block certain refugees from his state, but the WaPo acknowledges that a President Trump does! The Post obviously thinks this information is disqualifying for Trump. I maintain that the Trump campaign needs to start telling this to his vast audiences!
Here is a bit of the WaPo editorial (I didn’t snip any of their whinny biased lines):
A President Trump could slash the number of refugees allowed to enter the country, including from Syria, downgrading President Obama’s goal of admitting 110,000 in the fiscal year that started Saturday. Federal law gives presidents the power to bar any “class of aliens” they deem “detrimental to the interests of the United States,” so Mr. Trump could as promised ban immigrants from Muslim-majority countries.
Now go there quickly and see the comments! The majority are for this novel concept: “I like the idea of sending them all back!” (Person20).
See my post of last week on Obama’s FY2017 110,000 ceiling and how Trump can drop it!
Appeals court rules on Syrian refugees: states cannot block their resettlement…
…..if the state is taking federal money for refugee resettlement.
(That is the hook, always the hook, states take federal money and then lose their states’ rights!)
The lesson in this decision is that if you, the citizens of any state, want to control admission to your state of refugees being placed there by the US government, you have to either work to scrap or reform the Refugee Act of 1980 (long term) or, you have to work right now to limit federal spending for the program (so fewer refugees can be admitted in the first place).
Monumental task ahead….
Both solutions involve convincing a Congress where the Republican leadership is working against you with the help of most of your own representatives, the so-called religious charities, big greedy-for-cheap-labor global corporations, and the US Chamber of Commerce.
A political solution!
There are still some legal avenues (where is the Tennessee case?) that need to be attempted, but hanging your hat on some legal decision years down the road strikes me as an avoidance measure. Time to tackle your Congressmen and US Senators!
Here is the news from a conservative (we are told) Appeals Court (story posted by Nina Totenberg of NPR):
A federal appeals court panel Monday blocked Indiana Gov. and Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence’s attempt to keep Syrian refugees out of Indiana.
The court upheld a lower court judge in barring Pence from interfering with the distribution of federal funds to resettle Syrian refugees in his state. The appeals court panel said that federal law bars discrimination based on nationality.
The three-judge panel that issued the ruling is an all-star group of conservative judges, including one of the judges on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.
In a unanimous opinion, the appeals court said Gov. Pence acted illegally in accepting federal money for refugee resettlement and then refusing to use that money to aid Syrian refugees.
The panel rejected Pence’s argument that terrorists are posing as Syrian refugees to gain entry into the U.S., calling it a “nightmare speculation” based on no evidence. Indeed, the court said, the state presented no evidence that any Syrian refugee had been involved in a terrorist act in the U.S.
The court added that resettlement of persecuted refugees is a federal responsibility under the 1980 Refugee Act, which authorizes the president*** to determine, on the basis of “humanitarian concerns or … the national interest,” how many refugees to admit each year. In 2016, President Obama set the number at 85,000, including 10,000 Syrians.
It is about the money!
When Congress returns in November they will have to finish and approve the federal budget for the remainder of the 2017 fiscal year (it began Oct. 1, this past Saturday). Congress will either fully fund Obama’s 110,000 refugee plan for 2017 or it won’t appropriate enough of your money for the full 110,000. It is that simple.
For new readers, I don’t want to go too deep in the weeds, but Texas withdrawing from the program last week, is only a stop gap measure because the federal government will assign a non-profit refugee contractor to run the program. Sure, they will be in chaos for a couple of months there, but it will eventually mean that Texas will be just like all the other Wilson-Fish states. (You are going to have to search RRW for ‘Wilson-Fish’ because I want to move on to other things this morning).
***No easy outs, only two things to save us—Trump is elected and you work your butts off to change Congress on this issue.
LOL! Here comes ‘Mom for Trump’ as promised!
Ann, could you tell all your readers on a daily basis to call our useless Congress @ 202 224 3121 and have them say DEFUND REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT PROGRAM. I call daily and if enough of us do so, we can make a difference.
Why you should send testimony to Senator Sessions' Immigration Subcommittee
O.K. I’ve been hearing a lot of excuses about why some of you don’t want to be bothered doing this!
Sorry folks, but saving America is going to be hard work and this is the least you can do—spend an hour writing a proper, polite letter to Senator Sessions who held a hearing last week on Obama’s final determination as President to bring in 110,000 refugees this fiscal year (the new flow began yesterday!). Go here for a report on the hearing. The security issues were front and center.
And, here is my post from Friday on sending testimony (a letter) to the Subcommittee.
I don’t want to hear about the postal service and how slow it is! I don’t want to hear that they don’t listen to us anyway! I don’t want to hear, why can’t we send postcards (make it easy for us)! Or, that the deadline is too soon and you don’t have an hour today or tomorrow! No excuses are acceptable.
The reasons to write are as follows:
~Senator Sessions took time to hold a hearing (only the second since 9/11) and should know that you care and appreciate that by taking time to write a real letter!
~Senator Sessions needs to know how many of you are working hard and are seriously concerned enough to write a letter (not just blast off an angry e-mail or send a pre-printed post card).
~Senator Sessions is an advisor to the Donald Trump campaign and maybe through your efforts this week, a message may be sent to the campaign about how much this issue matters to so many of you.
~Senator Sessions needs to hear that based on your experience you have suggestions for reforming the program.
~Your Senators and Member of Congress (however useless they are) must be copied on the testimony so they know that you are serious about your opposition to how the program is being administered. Attach a note to your testimony and ask that your representative respond that they received it.
~The Subcommittee can keep the hearing record open longer, but whether you make it into the record is not the important point (hardly anyone ever looks at the published document two months from now anyway). Just get something off in the mail tomorrow or use the fax number I provided here (or do both fax and mail).
~Your testimony now should be used by you locally to energize your fellow activists and it will be a good reason to get some local media. Send a letter to the editor of your local paper and say that you testified in writing to a Senate committee and summarize what you said.
~You are not expected to be an expert on the law, or sound like you are a lawyer!
~Your testimony does not need to be a monster summary of your situation and your concerns. You can pick one or two key points about why you believe the UN/US State Department program needs to be halted/reformed.*** They are spending your money for it! There is no wrong or right thing to say, just be polite. Hint! If you don’t have a problem yet where you live, then find some specific thing you’ve seen here at RRW that is particularly concerning.
Believe it or not, regular readers here probably know more about problems with the program than most Senate staffers do! You are educating them!
I am not a Pollyanna who thinks that Congress is going to save us tomorrow or this week. I am not raising your expectations that your letter will make THE difference, or any difference. I am saying that by not saying anything (by making excuses about the postal system) that you are giving up already.
Many of you talk big about how angry you are, you rant and rave at Obama and Hillary, you get into squabbles on social media, you are reading news all over the net all day and sending news to me, you send me ideas on what Congress should do, and then you tell me you haven’t an hour or two to write a letter to Senator Sessions, one of the few friends you have ever had in the Senate!
This is one easy thing to do, and if you can’t do it, you are not ready for the major battles ahead.
Endnote: I have gotten some copies of excellent letters to Senator Sessions over the last two days and I’m thinking about posting some of them (with permission of course). And, LOL!, I have a confession! I will have to force myself to write my letter today when I would rather be posting hot news here or tweeting or whatever!
***Update: For example, for those of you having problems (which is most of you) getting a copy of the FY2017 R & P Abstract, tell Senator Sessions about that. I will bet that most Senate staffers will have no clue what you are talking about, so you will be educating them!
Will refugee flood gates open even wider if Hillary elected on November 8th? Yes!
Yes, I believe they will!
Today, October 1, 2016 is the opening day of the last of Obama’s driving efforts to change America by changing its people.
A few weeks ago he presented to Congress his determination to admit 110,000 refugees from around the world over the next 12 months with the largest numbers coming from the Middle East and Muslim-controlled countries of Africa.
But, if Hillary is elected president on November 8th, Obama will look like a piker.
No where did Obama ever say he wanted 65,000 Syrians admitted to the US, but Hillary is on record (Face the Nation, September 2015) saying that, and I am guessing that will only be the beginning for her.
After all, she just this week said that the foreign leader she admired most is German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel!!! who is widely believed to be destroying Germany and has thrown all of Europe in chaos with her ‘welcome’ of any refugee from Africa and the Middle East who can get there!
Remember the other day I wrote about the fact that the number determined by the President at the end of the fiscal year for the following year is a ceiling set by the President in consultation with Congress.
‘Consultation’ is a squishy term as we have seen for the last 35 years and is virtually non-existent (except for a brief chit chat between the Secretary of State and two key committees on the Hill). Each September, the President sends up his refugee numbers for the upcoming year and for years Congress simply slipped his plan into a drawer somewhere and never even held hearings. Senator Sessions’ hearing last fall (2015) was the first since 9/11.
The only real power the Congress has is to limit the funding for the federal agencies involved, something I have never seen done!
So, back to Hillary and the power of the Presidency as it relates to this law.
One of Hillary’s long time political allies is John Podesta, Chairman of her 2016 Presidential campaign. Do you know that his organization (an organization Hillary helped create with George Soros) proposed an AIRLIFT in 2009 of 100,000 Iraqis to America which they pushed on the new President Obama? He didn’t bite.
The plan called for Iraqis to be held offshore somewhere until they could be processed in to the US. More recently Canada’s boy Trudeau airlifted tens of thousands of Syrians to Canada. If President, could Hillary do this? Yes she can!
Refugee Act’s emergency provision
There is a very clear provision, which I don’t think has been used (the large crush of Vietnamese came before the Refugee Act of 1980 became law), but I think Hillary will use it. By defeating Donald Trump, she will feel she has a mandate to open our borders. There definitely won’t be a border fence built and I predict she will use every lawful means available to admit as many migrants as she can, including the emergency provisions of the Refugee Act of 1980.
Could she add her 65,000 Syrians to the 110,000 refugees Obama proposed for FY2017, or could she go even higher? Yes, she could knowing that the Congress, even if Republicans still hold the majority, is weak and will be further demoralized by her win.
Heck her role model, Mama Merkel, admitted over a million in the last year. Not to look ‘unwelcoming’ by comparison, Hillary could easily bump our numbers up to a quarter of a million! (That would be in addition to the masses of asylum seekers—-phony refugees—now streaming across our southern border.)
See here (Refugee Act of 1980):
Consultation with Congress, big deal! No teeth! And, I expect no fight if Hillary is in the White House!
Will Hillary go there? Yes, I believe she will.