“President Biden has broken his promise to restore our humanity.”
(Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the House Progressive Caucus)
Big mistake—they let Biden talk to the media!
You surely know by now that Chairman Joe blabbed to the media over the weekend that the reason he hasn’t moved on flying more of the third world to America via the US Refugee Admissions Program he helped create in 1979 is because the Administration has a crisis at the borderand can’t do two things at once.
The primary agency of the federal government for refugee admission decisions is the US State Department. Here we see that Secretary of State Antony Blinken is trying to clean things up, but he doesn’t seem to understand that he already approved the 62,500 cap increase for this fiscal year in February and it was sent to the Hill by the President via the State Department for consultation as the law requires.
The only thing missing to start the flow for these last two months was Biden’s signature.
As I mentioned on Saturday, Biden and Harris have made such a hash of the refugee program (okay by me!) that it begs the question—what else are they screwing up?
Blinken defends Biden’s refugee cap, Afghanistan withdrawal in exclusive interview
In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the Biden administration amid a barrage of criticism from Democratic lawmakers and refugee advocates for maintaining a Trump-era limit on refugee admissions for now.
While President Joe Biden pledged to admit 125,000 refugees in the new fiscal year next fall, Blinken wouldn’t commit to a number, telling ABC’s “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz, “Look, the president’s been clear about where he wants to go, but we have to be, you know, focused on what we’re able to do when we’re able to do it.”
That wait-and-see language from Blinken and the White House, citing the “decimated” state of the refugee resettlement program, enraged several prominent Democrats, as well as refugee resettlement agencies (aka the contractors***) who said they are ready to accept Biden’s pledge of 62,500 for the rest of this fiscal year.
Jayapal represents Seattle.
“President Biden has broken his promise to restore our humanity. We cannot turn our back on refugees around the world, including hundreds of refugees who have already been cleared for resettlement, have sold their belongings, and are ready to board flights,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the House Progressive Caucus, said in a statement.
Big mistake: saying they would keep anything Trump ever did!
As a result, after the White House had announced Friday that Biden would keep former President Donald Trump’s historic low cap of 15,000 refugees, the administration backtracked and said it would raise the cap next month.
“We’re able to start to bring people in who’ve been in the pipeline and who weren’t able to come in. That is starting today, and we’re going to revisit it in the middle of May,” Blinken said.
Some 35,000 refugees have been vetted and approved for resettlement in the U.S., according to the International Rescue Committee, a resettlement agency.
Handy fall back! Blame it all on Trump!
With Biden’s order, those resettlements can begin again, but they will be limited, with the administration saying Friday it would set a “final, increased refugee cap” next month after a few weeks of arrivals and blamed the Trump administration for leaving the program “broken,” in Blinken’s words.
[….]
Refugee resettlement agencies agreed that Trump left the nation’s program in tatters through funding cuts and onerous vetting measures, but they’ve said they could scale up quickly to meet Biden’s original target of 62,500, if the administration helped provide resources.
“Provide resources” is code for send more of your tax dollars to the contractors!
Instead, Biden on Saturday blamed the historic number of migrants arriving at the southern U.S. border for keeping the refugee cap low for now — a reason Blinken didn’t cite.
And, in the meantime, the World Socialist Web Sitesays they are all weaving and dodging because Biden is trying to appease the ultra-right! Huh!
Biden seeks to appease ultra-right with refugee policy
Let me ask you: are any of you right-wingers appeased by the delay in resettlement as the border is being overrun?
Again, this was an amusing unforced error on the part of the disorganized administration since the cap is just that, a cap, a ceiling, that they could have left at 62,500 while knowing they weren’t going to get anywhere near that number before the fiscal year ends on September 30th. I am not complaining, just noting the rookie political blunder.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the unhappy contractors.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris and lobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Americans Last! is their motto!
Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the contractors’ lobbying push that actually begins today on the Hill.
Update April 18th: Biden himself commits to increasing the numberof refugees to be admitted; references the border saying we couldn’t do two things at once, but now we can (oh really! so what changed?).
“This is a breathtaking betrayal of the plan to ‘build back better.’”
(Matthew Soerens World Relief, a refugee contractor)
Don’t get me wrong. I am just fine with it. In fact, I find it hilarious.
However, Biden/Harris have now so screwed-up the US Refugee Admissions Program (which I know a little about) with their ham-handed incompetence that it makes me ask how badly are they screwing-up elsewhere—-like handling the pandemic or dealing with Russia and China?
We know they are creating a catastrophe and angering most Americanswith their policy, or lack of a policy, at the southern border!
And, that is not so funny.
Now, by not going forward with his promise to reset the annual refugee cap to 62,500 for what remains of the 2021 fiscal year, RRW readers know that Biden has been pissing-off his friends in the NO Borders community.
Leading the pack of the pissed-off are the refugee contractors*** whose business it is to place third world clients in your towns and cities while being paid by you, the taxpayer, to do it.
And, see here that the final straw for those who helped Biden steal the White Housewas when a contractor, the International Rescue Committee, published a report saying Biden was ‘welcoming’ fewer refugees than President Trump.
If that wasn’t bad enough, yesterday all hell broke loose when the White House announced it would leave TRUMP’S CAP of 15,000 (or fewer) refugees to be admitted by September 30th in place.
The “faith groups” (aka contractors) were “outraged.”
Nothing Trump did should ever be left in place!
A few hours later Biden/Harris backtracked and said they would set a new higher cap/ceiling in mid-May.
Keep in mind that while running for the presidency Biden promised his 80 million (ha! ha!) voters that he would admit 125,000 annually.
There is a lot of coverage of the “betrayal.” Here is one account at Religion News Service:
Biden reverses course on refugee cap after faith groups express outrage
WASHINGTON (RNS) — President Joe Biden’s administration has reversed a decision to keep in place a historically low cap on refugee admissions left by Donald Trump, saying it will raise the ceiling next month after faith-based groups initially decried the move as an “abandonment of our ideals.”
Matthew Soerens of World Relief
Biden signed a memorandum Friday (April 16) aimed at speeding up refugee admissions this year — but that memorandum does not increase the so-called refugee ceiling, something the president has pledged to do when speaking to religious audiences.
Although the memorandum leaves open the possibility of raising that number should the United States resettle the maximum 15,000 refugees this year, news that the ceiling will at least temporarily remain at that historic low was met with disappointment by many religious communities, including the faith-based groups that partner with the federal government to resettle refugees.
By Friday afternoon, TheAssociated Press and CNN reported the Biden administration has reversed course, announcing plans to lift the Trump-era refugee cap next month in the wake of widespread pushback from allies.
The White House confirmed to Religion News Service on Friday that officials intend to revisit the refugee ceiling sometime in the coming days, saying in a statement, “We expect the President to set a final, increased refugee cap for the remainder of this fiscal year by May 15.”
Keep reading hereto see what the other Christian contractors, in addition to Soerens, had to say about their man Joe yesterday.
In a more tempered response, see what the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society is saying about the flip-flopping from the White House.
‘Relieved but disappointed’: How America’s Jewish refugee aid agency is doing 3 months under Biden
“We’re relieved but disappointed,” said HIAS CEO Mark Hetfield following Friday’s initial announcement that the cap, also known as the refugee ceiling, would not be raised.
Following the second statement, Hetfield added, “There’s no reason to delay raising the refugee ceiling. It’s just a ceiling, it’s not a floor. They should be focused on what’s the goal and how are you going to reach it?”
It is all Trump’s fault!
The fight over the refugee cap encapsulates a dilemma confronting HIAS as the agency moves from Trump to Biden. On one hand, HIAS leaders are glad that the United States no longer has a president who opposes refugees, separates families at the border and fires up his base with anti-immigrant rhetoric.
On the other hand, they say that Trump did so much harm, and made immigration so heated an issue, that it will be a challenge just to bring the immigration and refugee systems back to where they were before Trump.
Returning to a point in which the U.S. allows hundreds of thousands of refugees a year, and passing immigration reform through Congress, these leaders say, feels even more daunting. [HIAS was heavily involved in lobbying for failed Comprehensive Immigration Reform some years ago.–ed]
“It’s just a relief to have that administration in the rearview mirror,” said Melanie Nezer, vice president for public affairs at HIAS. She dubbed the Trump era “the fire swamp.”
But Nezer is cognizant as well of “the sheer amount of time, effort and creativity it’s going to take for the new administration and those of us who work on these issues to unravel and fix it.”
“The prior administration really decimated our infrastructure, our systems, our staffing,” she said. “It’s stunning to think about the damage that was done.”
[….]
Trump’s actions on immigration, beginning with the travel ban, spurred a flood of donations to HIAS.Since Trump’s term, the agency more than doubled its annual budget to $90 million. But resettling refugees — how the organization had once spent the majority of donations — became unprecedentedly controversial and difficult.
With its windfall, HIAS sued the Trump administration over its travel ban, increased its advocacy work and shifted its weight outside the U.S.
For refugee resettlement nerds there is a lot of useful information in this article, sokeep reading.
Here is the data from the State Department showing the paltry number of refugees admitted in the first half of the fiscal year.
This is what has the contractors hopping mad.
Notice (sorry the screenshot isn’t clear, but take it from me) that although we are admitting hundreds of thousands of illegal border jumpers from Central America, more are being admitted as refugees through this legal avenue.
2050 total for six months. They will have a hard time getting to even 15,000 at this rate.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the unhappy contractors.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris and lobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
“We cannot and we must not fall victims to politics of fear and hatred that drives the far-right…..[Biden] “must follow through on his promise.”
(Rep. Ilhan Omar)
In addition to abysmally low numbers, Biden hasn’t re-started the flow of refugees from Muslim countries, the flow Trump halted for a handful of countries that hate us.
Syrians, Somalis, Iraqis are waiting and frustrated, but not nearly as frustrated as the refugee contractors*** and their friends in Congress like Minnesota Somali Rep. Ilhan Omar.
As I have said before, the mystery for me is this:
How do the contractors who have been paid since at least 1980 to place refugees in your towns and cities and who have had a pipeline to the US State Department via their swamp dwelling bureaucrats (even as Trump was in the White House) not know what is going on?
Apparently they don’t and the guess is that Biden doesn’t want to look too pro-immigration as the southern border is being overrun.
Well, duh!
It is too late for that as most of America sees Biden as the most open borders President ever!
And, besides the average American voter does not even fully understand the difference between fake asylum seekers (illegal aliens!) at the southern border and the Refugee Admissions Program.
It is ludicrous to think that voters are sitting around saying, gee it’s good of Biden to stop the refugee flow right now so let’s give him some brownie points because he is slowing, by a tiny bit, the Great Replacement!
Biden’s delay on refugees baffles and frustrates allies
Senator Ted Kennedy created the present refugee and asylum system with the help of Joe Biden in 1979. Jimmy Carter signed the Refugee Act into law in 1980. A question I have asked for over a decade is this: Why has Biden’s Delaware resettled only a handful of refugees since then? Maybe Joe doesn’t like foreigners in HIS neighborhood!
President Biden sent a stark message in February to foreigners fleeing oppression, persecution and danger: The United States stands ready to help them once again. He pledged an eightfold-plus increase in the annual cap on refugees set during the Trump administration, saying he would aim for a “down payment” on that promise “as soon as possible.”
More than two months later, Biden has not made good on his vow. He has yet to sign a directive that would lift the cap for the next fiscal year or enact more-immediate changes to the Trump limits.
His advisers have provided little public clarity on why, angering many human rights advocates who say the delay is inflicting growing harm on refugees desperate to take flight to the United States.
[….]
People close to the White House’s decision-making attribute the delay to several factors. Some point to the administration’s ongoing struggles to contain a massive increase in migrants arriving at the southern border, saying they detect political concerns from the White House about expanding the refugee program at a moment when there is increasing pressure on Biden to be tougher on immigration and border security.
Jenny Yang of World Relief
“What’s missing is the political will of the president,” said Jenny Yang, vice president for advocacy and policy at World Relief, one of a handful of resettlement agencies working with the government.
The result, Yang said, is that “the program is effectively operating as if President Trump were still in office.”
[….]
Before becoming a highly paid refugee contractor CEO, Vignarajah worked for Michelle in the White House.
“Unfortunately, I think it shows that President Trump may have been effective in conflating refugee resettlements and the asylum program,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, another resettlement agency working with the government.
She said there “is no substantive reason” why Trump’s directive should remain in place, given that changing it is “not a herculean task” for Biden.
I don’t know why Lutheran CEO Vignarajah is complaining as her organization is raking in millions of your tax dollars to take ‘care’ of the Unaccompanied Alien (mostly teens) Children invading the border.
Biden cautious on immigration!
Biden’s careful posture underscores the broader caution with which he and his advisers are approaching immigration.
Keenly aware of how the issue has sparked impassioned divisions in recent years, Biden, who ran as a unifier, did not emphasize it as a candidate. As president, he and his aides have treaded lightly, wary of inflaming a polarizing debate that could threaten to his appeal to a broad swath of voters.
He didn’t emphasize it as a candidate because controlling immigration appeals to most Americans and plays in Trump’s favor!
Some of the most fervent concern has come from Democrats in the House. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who lived in a refugee camp in Kenya as a child after her family fled a civil war in Somalia, warned in a recent statement that “We cannot and we must not fall victims to politics of fear and hatred that drives the far-right.”
Biden, she said, “must follow through on his promise.”
[….]
Biden announced that he would raise the annual cap on refugee admission to 125,000 for the first full fiscal year of his administration, which begins in October. He informed Congress that his target for the current fiscal year was 62,500.
But he never signed a new presidential determination, a decision that has left Trump’s directive in place. Now, Biden is on pace to accept the fewest refugees this year of any modern president, according to a report the International Rescue Committee released last week. The Biden administration has admitted only 2,050 refugees at the halfway point of this fiscal year, according to the nonprofit organization’s report.
Data from the Refugee Processing Center.You can readily see that if Biden follows through on what he said, his numbers would eclipse anything George Bush or Barack Obama ever did.
Six months into the fiscal year and only 2,050 refugees have been admitted. They have to do some real hustling if they want to beat Trump’s lowest year of 11,814.
The report says Biden’s inaction means “tens of thousands of already-cleared refugees remain barred from resettlement and over 700 resettlement flights have been cancelled.”
Absent a reversal of Trump-era restrictions, most refugees from civil war-ravaged Syria, who have the highest resettlement needs according to the report, do not have a chance of coming to the U.S.
Refugees from other Muslim countries are also being hit hard by current rules, according to the report
[….]
Some White House allies find the president’s delay perplexing because the refugee program has attracted bipartisan support in recent years. Even some of the Republicans who have been critical of Biden’s handling of the border have called for raising the refugee cap to expand the legal pathways for immigrants to come to the United States.
Republican Senator Portman: Increase the refugee cap! Any Republican wanting to increase the cap is making the Chamber of Commerce types happy!
“The refugee program is much more of an orderly and legal process that is entirely distinct” from the situation at the border, said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). “I would increase the refugees cap from where it was in the Trump years, and I would make the asylum system work as it should.”
Because this story is so important, I’m posting it instead of aweekly round-up of refugee news.
And, besides, the US Refugee Admissions Program has been stalled for some mysterious reason by the Biden gang so there isn’t a lot new since last week.
I can only guess the hold-up is because they have created such a crisis at our wide open border with their fake refugee invasion that they aren’t beginning the large movement they promised the Left of Africans, Asians and Middle Easterners into the country fearing more anger from their 80 million voters! (Only 24% of all Americans support Biden border policies.)
That isn’t making the nine contractors***, who are paid by you and me to place them, happy.
However, two of the nine contractors are busy collecting millions to ostensibly take care of the women and kids, including some “not so nice women,” arriving at the border in historically high numbers.
Those two are the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, and Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago greet asylum seekers at the Humanitarian Respite Center at Sacred Heart Church in McAllen, Texas, in 2017, the location of the viral video from Infowars last week.
First, to get a feel for the magnitude of the crisis, see theNew York Timesstory headlined:
Young Migrants Crowd Shelters, Posing Test for Biden
The administration is under intensifying pressure to expand its capacity to care for as many as 35,000 unaccompanied minors, part of a wave of people crossing the border.
More than 20,000 children and teenagers are in the custody of a government system that is already at “103 percent of capacity,” including nearly 17,000 in shelters run by the health department, according to briefing materials from Operation Artemis, a response to the border crisis led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Government projections obtained by The New York Times show there could be more than 35,000 migrant children to be cared for by June — a prospect that one former senior health and human services official called “terrifying.”
The NYT story does not mention the role Catholic agencies are playing, but does mention Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. Of course you are led to believe that they are doing their work of moving migrants to the interior US out of the goodness of their Christian hearts.
Viral Video
Now,, see the controversial film in front of a Catholic agency in McAllen, Texas from Infowarsthis week if you aren’t one of the million or so who have already seen it.
Needless to say, Catholic Charities has blasted Jones’ video saying at Catholic World Report:
Catholic Charities Rio Grande Valley on Thursday said a viral video of their work with migrant children on the U.S.-Mexico border is “inaccurate and unauthorized.”
We have been doing our humanitarian work for years, said Pimental director of Catholic Charities Rio Grande Valley.
One of those on the scene for the confrontation in front of McAllen’s Catholic Charities facility is Tim Enlowand it is worth an hour of your time to see and hear him explain to patriot interviewer Delora O’Brien what exactly went down that day.
One of the most shocking revelations in the interview is that Enlow describes the arrival at the scene of a white man identifying himself as wealthy and from Philadelphia who claims he was told by a nun! that he could come down to McAllen and pick up a couple of van loads of single women he could care for and provide work for!
Watch it before Youtube removes it! Hat tip: Robin.
O’Brien and Enlow charge that the government, our US government, is sponsoring child smuggling!
Your tax dollars at work!
They are more right than they know since both Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) are raking in millions from the US Treasury to ‘care for’ Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC).
If you are a long-time reader of RRW, this news is not new!
I bet for others, you had no idea that YOUR TAX DOLLARS were paying these ‘religious’ charities for their work!
Data for the Bishops from USA Spending where all federal grants and contracts are catalogued.
Here we learn that the USCCB has pulled in $17.9 million in just the last 12 months for their UAC ‘care.’
The UACs represent the biggest chunk of the Bishops payola right now.
Below you can see a year-to-year comparison.
They have lost some serious money since Obama, but they are picking up steam again. See for FY21, which we are in right now, they anticipate more millions this fiscal year as represented by the yellow line.
LIRS doesn’t need to be bringing in refugees from around the world, they are doing very well taking care of the illegal alien children. The $55 million is their take (of your money) for the children! over the last twelve months.
By the way, LIRS is over 90% taxpayer funded. There is no passing the plate at Sunday services for them!
Longtime readers know thatLIRS was mired in controversya few years ago, but notice how much the Trump Administration was shelling out to them. More than any Obama year! Pity that Trump never put anyone into key positions who knew where the bodies were buried.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the contractors.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris and lobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
I am willing to blame (almost) everything on the newly installed Biden/Harris Administration, but Trump never had support for his effort to give state and local governments a say in placement of refugees. Why?
First, because the Leftwingers at three federal contracting agencies, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Church World Serviceand Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, had taken the EO to court and had already won!
The contractors have been calling the shots on locations for decades and they plan to keep it that way!
An Appeals Court, the day before Inauguration Day, had already put the nail in the coffin on this Trump effort to protect you and give you a say in refugee resettlement site selection.
More importantly, governors needed to support the plan and the vast majority, at least 18, Republican governors in the nation opposed the President, except for a handful including DeSantis and Kemp who remained quiet, leaving Governor Abbott of Texas the only Governor in the Nation brave enough to back the plan!
….most importantly, the supposed reformers working for the President apparently did not have a firm understanding of how weak most Republican governors are on immigration issues of any sort.
For new readers, most Republican governors are weak because they are backed by global corporations and the Chamber of Commerce types who want a steady supply of CHEAP labor!
Hey, and for all of you Kristi Noem fans, she DID NOT SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT on this and I suspect it is because of that big Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods slaughter house in South Dakota and its appetite for cheap refugee labor.
In addition, of course, to the myriad other meatpackers scattered across South Dakota that Noem was obviously not willing to buck. (Not presidential material in my view!)
And, even if Biden left a little (fake) wiggle room as the Breitbart article suggests in its incomplete story, there is NO concern for you from Biden/Harris— for those of you who live in the communities where refugees have been resettled and where tens of thousands more will be resettled.
Biden is aimingto bring in more refugees than any president in three decades.
The US State Department and its contractors*** will be choosing locations for the impoverished third worlders new homes as they have been doing for 40 years.
Here is Breitbart’s storywithout some of the most important facts! You can read it yourself, but remember…
As Biden arrived in the White House, there was effectively no longer a Trump EO to protect local citizens and states, and a big part of the blame goes to REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS who did not back the President.
Joe Biden Puts Americans in the Dark by Revoking Ability to Reject Refugee Dumping in Their Communities
Too bad Breitbart isn’t reading RRW!
Americans Last!
***For New Readers these are the nine federal refugee contractors who worked to put Biden and Harris in the White House and are lobbying for millions of illegal aliens to be transformed into legal voting citizens, as well as raising the refugee admissions ceiling from 15,000 this year to 125,000.
They are largely paid by you, the taxpayer, for their work of changing America by changing the people, and in so doing, are putting Americans last!
You surely know by now that Chairman Joe blabbed to the media over the weekend that the reason he hasn’t moved on flying more of the third world to America via the US Refugee Admissions Program he helped create in 1979 is because the Administration has a crisis at the border and can’t do two things at once.
“We’re relieved but disappointed,” said HIAS CEO Mark Hetfield following Friday’s initial announcement that the cap, also known as the refugee ceiling, would not be raised.
Returning to a point in which the U.S. allows 
Here is the 
In addition to abysmally low numbers, Biden hasn’t re-started the flow of refugees from Muslim countries, the flow Trump halted for a handful of countries that hate us.
Data from the 
