And, Syrians, Iraqis and Somalis arrive by the thousands…..
I know I am sounding like a broken record! But…. They (Syrians) aren’t going back at all! Trump is admitting more Syrians every day! We have not forgotten that Donald Trump announced earlier this year that on March 16th a 120-day moratorium on all refugee resettlement would commence for the purpose of assessing how well we are screening refugees. (That was ALL, across the board and not just the so-called banned countries).
Then the courts intervened to stop a completely unnecessary Executive Order on the matter and the Administration tucked its tail, and continues admitting refugees as if nothing was ever said (before or after the Presidential campaign).
Here are the numbers this morning: Since FY2017 began on October 1, 2016, we have admitted 43,241 refugees, and are on target to have a slightly below average admissions year, as I reported here. However, we have admitted more refugees at this point in the fiscal year than any year in the previous ten. Since Inauguration Day on January 20th, Donald Trump has admitted 13,224 refugees. Including:
Afghanistan (340)
Iraq (1,599)
Somalia (1,394)
Sudan (303)
Syria (1,534)
And, since the day the moratorium was supposed to begin to assess security screening (March 16th), Trump welcomed 5,135.
Here (from Wrapsnet) is where the 1,534 Syrians were placed from January 20th up to this morning: Alaska and Hawaii got zero.
This post is filed in our ‘Trump Watch’ category, click here.
Yesterday was a fantastically inspirational day. I hope you all enjoyed it.
I’ve been a Trump supporter from the earliest days of his campaign, but I also know something about how Washington works and so I see my job, in addition to continuing to report what is happening in your states and around the world on refugees, as a nag to attempt to keep the Trump Administration honest and moving toward slowing immigration and thus assuring greater security for us all. Trump Watch! starts today!
In Gettysburg in October, here, Donald Trump outlined a plan for his first 100 days which included making progress on building the wall and securing our borders.
Many of those illegal aliens (Africans!) coming across the bordernow are fake refugees who will be attempting to claim asylum, so the border is of concern to us in addition to the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program. This is what Donald Trump promised would be happening immediately:
Additionally, on the first day, I will take the following five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law….
* FIFTH, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting.
We assume “on the first day” means Monday, January 23rd!
Our Trump Watch! will report daily on how many refugees are coming in through the Refugee Admissions Program (RAP) in addition to other news about immigration in general. (BTW, we admit thousands of immigrants through myriad LEGAL programs from “terror-prone” regions. I don’t want to leave you with the notion that it is only ‘refugees’ coming from Islamic hotspots.)
See our benchmark postyesterday.
So while we were enjoying the festivities in DC, the US State Department admitted 168 more refugees just yesterday.
We will be watching in particular refugee numbers from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Syria. There are many others coming from other regions as well that must be stopped. I’m thinking of the Rohingya from Burma and Bangladesh, Ethiopians, Eritreans and some other ethnic groups as well, but it will be those 4 we report on regularly. Yesterday, Afghans topped the list of the four we will watch: 55 Afghans arrived in your towns, 45 Iraqis, 30 Syrians and no Somalis on Inauguration day.
See my 100 days countdown clock in the right hand sidebar! Donald Trump was elected primarily because of the issue of jobs and immigration, we sure hope he (with Congress attempting to railroad him!) does not get bogged down on Obamacare. Obamacare can be fixed over the course of the year, but uncontrolled immigration, in addition to threatening our security and way of life, is robbing Americans of jobs and changing the demographic makeup of America daily!
“Warrior spirits” needed to advance the Trump agenda!
Elections have consequences and one of those is that political appointees must resign by Inauguration Day. Two key political appointees run the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program—the Asst. Sec. of State for Populations, Refugees and Migration (often abbreviated as PRM) and the Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Dept. of Health and Human Services. Carey with federal contractor the Lutheran’s Linda Hartke. Carey had previously been a contractor himself. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/09/03/lutheran-immigration-and-refugee-service-is-95-funded-by-taxpayers/
We told you about the resignation of Anne Richard, here, the other day. And, two days ago we received a copy of Bob Carey’s farewell message. (See it below).
I want to make a couple of points about it. First note that Carey says the FY2015 Annual Report to Congress is out (see here, as of this writing it isn’t on their website). He brags that it has been issued in “record time.” No it was not.
According to the Refugee Act of 1980 it was supposed to be out by the end of the 4th month following the close of the fiscal year, so it was supposed to have been out by January 31, 2016! See my 2013 discussion of how the ORR has played fast and loose with that requirement since the Clinton era.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that although Carey is leaving, he has left planted in the ORR, Anastasia Brown, who previously worked for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and headed the Refugee Council USA(the lobbying arm of the refugee industry). She is a longtime hardliner on bringing more refugees to the US, including more Muslims as she recommended at a US State Department hearing I attended. Anastasia Brown
I was shocked in 2013 to see Anastasia Brown testify on behalf of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to the US State Department that she wanted more Rohingya Muslims admitted to the US.
Because, seeded throughout the government are going to be people like Anastasia Brown, Hans von Spakovsky, a Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, in an important analysis at Conservative Reviewabout Trump’s incoming team, said this of those who will be leading government agencies where entrenched bureaucrats will fight change. (Hat tip: Richard at Blue Ridge Forum)
….the most important characteristic the Trump administration should look for in its political appointees is a warrior spirit!
Here is Bob Carey’s farewell letter from the day before yesterday. BTW, Ken Tota has been around there for a long time and they let him run the agency in between political appointees.
In the last five days, the Obama Administration has admitted the astronomical number of 2,432 refugees.
Today is the big day! And, it feels like a huge holiday. I wasn’t going to post anything since you will be glued to the tube, or maybe even in Washington, but I figured what the heck, I have news to report. Ha! Ha! It was a rush job, but we got as many in as we could since Election day!
On January 16th I told you that the daily average of arriving refugees had dropped from earlier in the fiscal year (the 2017 fiscal year began on October 1, 2016), but I checkedWrapsnetthis morning and see I must revise that assessment! As of today, Inauguration Day, we have admitted 29,895 refugees, that is a rate way above any numbers we have seen at least since the years preceding 9/11,see here.
As of January 15th, the number was 27,463. That means in the last 5 days Obama admitted 2,432!
Trump Watch begins tomorrow!
Unless the data base disappears, I plan to begin reporting daily (starting tomorrow) overall numbers and numbers for specific nationalities in my Trump Watch series. So here are some benchmarks for today for FY17:
Overall admissions: 29,895 (267 per day average)
Afghans: 748
Syrians: 4,588
Somalis: 3,806
Iraqis: 4,560
Here is where the Syrians (98% Muslim) have been placed between October 1, 2016 and January 20, 2017: If you can’t read Florida, it is 276. Alaska and Hawaii got zero Syrians so far.
I just had a look at our category, ‘Where to find information’and there is a lot of good stuff posted there.
In an interview at Refugees Deeply, Anne Richard, Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, says she is “shocked” by the national conversation on refugees and laments that the once bipartisan support for refugee resettlement has almost disappeared during Obama’s term in office. Editor: Anne Richard is a political appointee and as such she must have tendered her resignation or will be doing it before Friday. Career bureaucrats will be running the refugee program until the Trump people pick a replacement. In December Bill O’Reilly called for a complete one year moratorium on refugee resettlement, something that would have been unheard of prior to the Obama Administration. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/12/06/fox-news-bill-oreilly-calls-for-one-year-moratorium-on-refugee-resettlement/
Most of the interview focuses on Richard’s struggle to find something that the highly publicized September refugee forum at the UN did to advance their agenda.
We saw the event as a publicity opportunity to advance Hillary Clinton’s Presidential bid and to denigrate Donald Trump whose message about unvetted refugees being placed in unsuspecting communities was resonating with voters. The publicity stunt fizzled especially as countries refused to make any firm commitments.
You can read about it in the first part of this report at Refugees Deeply. In the closing paragraphs of the interview she bemoans the fact that the Refugee Program, once supported on both sides of the aisle, has become a politically charged issue and that there are now members of Congress, governors and some in the media calling for a complete halt to it.
I could tell her where they went wrong, but that isn’t my job. Here is what she said to author Daniel Howden:
(Emphasis is mine)
The end of the Obama era coincides with the emergence of deeply polarized views in the U.S. on the country’s leading role in resettling refugees.
The arrogance and secretiveness of those administering the RAP is partially responsible for the divisiveness surrounding the resettlement of refugees. Keep it up! Keep calling concerned citizens the “ugly element.”
The Obama administration has faced strong domestic opposition to increasing the number of refugees it resettles each year from from 85,000 in the fiscal year of 2016 to 110,000 in 2017. Republican lawmakers, most notably in Texas, have sought to block federal resettlement programs for Syrian refugees. The son of Republican nominee Donald Trump recently compared Syrian refugees to poisoned Skittles on social media.
Richard said she had been “shocked” by the U.S. national conversation this year. “We’ve had pushback on refugees. There has always been an ugly element that believes that the latest wave of newcomers are not to be trusted.” [It is nothing Obama or she did, it is all about you haters!—ed]
She said that there had traditionally been bipartisan support for the U.S. giving refuge to the most persecuted people in the world, as “that is who we are,” but that this is now under threat: “What’s most alarming about the current discourse in American politics is that it’s a departure at the leadership level from defending that.”
More here.
I don’t want to leave readers with the idea that Obama did nothing to advance his agenda to diversify America, he did plenty. We are now talking about refugees in the 100,000 range as normal when only a few years earlier, we were resettling about 60,000 on average. Obama also managed to increase the number of Muslim refugees coming in from places where it is impossible to vet them. Anne Richard was a well-paid VP for one of the federal refugee contractors, the International Rescue Committee. Prior to that she worked for the State Department. It will be interesting to see if she revolves back to a federal contractor job.
As we have said on many previous occasions, who the Trump team nominates for this post will be telling. The job requires approval by the Senate.
***Update*** One of our readers has reported that Ms. Richard is already gone and is now an Adjunct professor at Georgetown Univ. according to LinkedIn:
