State Department: 30,000 refugee cap for FY19 may not be final number!

09/23/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We too were surprised when Secretary of State Pompeo announced a cap of 30,000 refugees to be admitted to the US in FY19 which begins in nine days.

Although as we have chronicled over the years, the State Department and Congress have played loosey-goosey with the required “consultation” between the branches over the refugee numbers for the coming year, Pompeo’s surprise announcement did seem premature.

(See my post of last year about what the process is supposed to entail, here.)

Goodlatte and Trump — Judiciary Chairman Goodlatte to the Prez: We want to “consult” on refugee cap. So Bob, where is the hearing also required by law!

Now we see there is some waffling after a sanctimonious Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte has called out the Administration for not “consulting” with them first.

Many legally-required consultations over the last ten years have been nothing-burgers where a few staffers from the State Department went to the Hill to meet with staffers there to discuss the coming refugee year.

I don’t know if any Members even show up. I asked my Congressman if I might be permitted to go to the consultation one year and he reported that, no the public was not permitted to attend.

Although, in most years the consultations were perfunctory, there was one exception recently and that was the big show that Secretary of State John Kerry put on for FY2016 about Obama’s inflated 110,000 determination in the fall of 2016. (They thought Hillary was going to win and they were flexing muscles and getting ready for the big year ahead!)

Otherwise there has been only scant attention paid to the law requiring that the President consult with Congress over the numbers.

Now here we see that the outgoing Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, wants his consultation.

Heck, maybe the Administration can give him a consultation next month, or in November, and hold up the whole darn thing with zero coming in in the interim!

From The Hill:

Goodlatte: Administration undercut law, Congress by setting refugee cap

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) on Thursday accused the State Department of defying the law by proposing a sharp reduction in refugees to the United States.

The charge marks a rare rebuke of the administration from Goodlatte, who wants officials to consult “immediately” with Congress before establishing a final cap on refugees to be accepted into the country next year.

“The law is clear: the Administration must consult with Congress prior to the President’s determination of the annual refugee ceiling,” Goodlatte said in a statement. “But this did not happen this year, and the Trump Administration has no excuse for not complying with their obligation under the law.”

[….]

Democrats have pounced on the cutbacks, warning that the administration is undermining the country’s historic role and international credibility as the world’s safe-harbor for threatened populations and a champion of human rights.

Republican critics have focused less on the figures than on the legality of the administration’s move to establish a cap without first seeking input from Congress. Earlier this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) condemned the administration’s unilateral move.

[….]

Goodlatte took that criticism a step further, suggesting no refugee cap can be legally established without Congress weighing in first.

“There is a real question as to whether the President can even set a number of refugees that carries the weight of law unless it is done after an appropriate consultation with Congress,” Goodlatte said.

He’s also calling for reforms that would empower Congress, not the administration, to have the ultimate say in determining that annual number.

By the way, Goodlatte has been responsible for this committee and the refugee program for years and never really pushed for serious reform of the Refugee Act of 1980. Oh yeh, he proposed some legislation, but never made it a priority.

Now we see that in response, the State Department is saying there is wiggle room in that 30,000 cap. The Hill story continues….

On Tuesday, the day after Pompeo’s announcement, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the administration plans to consult with Congress before finalizing its refugee ceiling. The cap “may” change, she said, based on those talks.

Hey folks, don’t think this means the number could go down!

Remember I said it should be zero, which would be the only leverage the White House would have to push a complete overhaul of an ill-conceived US Refugee Admissions Program.

Where is Goodlatte’s hearing?

Before the President makes his final ‘determination’ a hearing “shall be held” in the House and Senate Judiciary Committees!

So let’s have the full legal requirements carried out which includes a public hearing by Goodlatte’s committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee centered around a report the State Department is supposed to send to Congress as part of the consultation process.

Let’s begin following the law now and maybe the whole decision can be dragged out for months.

Hundreds of refugees being removed from “squalid” housing in Omaha, Nebraska

09/22/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is one more reason that the Trump Administration should be pushing for a complete review of the US Refugee Admissions Program with an eye to up-ending—dumping entirely or re-writing—the foolish system put into motion by the Refugee Act of 1980.

We simply can’t bring in so many refugees that they then live in squalor, placed there by some supposedly ‘religious’ charities paid by US taxpayers with virtually no oversight of what they are doing and no accounting of where our money goes.

And, not to mention, having an economic, cultural, and health impact on Americans kept in the dark about the arrival of poor third worlders to their neighborhoods.

Omaha apartment inspections — Inspectors entering housing complex where hundreds of Burmese refugees were placed by a resettlement contractor working for the US State Department.

Maybe not ‘humanitarian’ at all!

Some might say we are actually promoting slave labor for the meatpacking industry and other giant globalist companies.

It is a long story, and you should read it all at the Omaha World-Herald (hat tip: Joanne):

Squalid Omaha apartments housing refugees targeted by city operation in ‘humanitarian effort’

City of Omaha housing inspectors descended Thursday morning on a north Omaha apartment complex to inspect units and potentially remove and relocate up to 500 refugees from Myanmar living among bedbugs, lice, rodents, gas leaks, mold and other squalid living conditions.

Officials described the operation at the Yale Park Apartments, near 34th Avenue and Lake Streets, as a “humanitarian effort” involving code enforcement, police and fire personnel, as well as members of the philanthropic community and social service agencies who could be tasked with finding temporary housing for hundreds of people.

[….]

Tenants, which include an estimated 175 children, may be forced to live out of community centers equipped with cots in coming days as the scramble begins to find places for them to stay. City officials said they’re trying to respect the tenants’ cultural wishes, too, which likely includes being placed together as much as possible.

[….]

Three men entered the courtyard Thursday morning wearing white hazmat suits and orange rubber boots. People wearing Omaha Public Schools, Heartland Family Services and Lutheran Family Services gear were standing by.

More here.

The reporter wants us to believe that the problem is entirely the landlords fault, but doesn’t tell us that it was Lutheran Family Services, a federal resettlement contractor, that was likely responsible for placing refugees in questionable housing in the first place.

Meatpacking laborers!

The article tells us that many of the Burmese work in meatpacking at nearby Cargill. (Yes, the same Cargill company we mentioned here yesterday with the E.Coli recall).

In 2017 Cargill in Nebraska expanded the size of a plant that then required more laborers. See here.

Learn more about Cargill at wikipedia, it might change some of your buying habits.

If these meapackers want the refugee laborers maybe they should subsidize better housing for them! Or, better still, go back to paying good wages so Americans will be happy to do the job!

Stephen Miller wins again trumpets NBC News, outmaneuvered his elders in setting refugee cap

09/21/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is driving the Open Borders Left nuts (and the globalist RINOs) that Stephen Miller is still in the White House and still pushing what they call a hardline immigration agenda.

If you are new to all of this, you should know that before he devoted himself to the Trump campaign and presidency, Miller was a staffer for then Senator Jeff Sessions, chairman of the refugee/immigration subcommittee in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Sessions consistently fought for you—the “deplorables” as Hillary called you—the America worker and average American taxpayers footing the bill for ever-increasing numbers of immigrants (illegal and legal).

niki haley and pompeo — We are told by NBC News that Ambassador Haley and Sec. of State Pompeo both wanted more refugees than the 30,000 cap announced and that they “got rolled” by a kid.

I wish I had time to say more, but here (below) is the headline at NBC News. We are told that US Ambassador Nikki Haley wanted more refugees than the 30,000 cap announced a few days ago.

(By the way, I wrote here that the cap should have been zero until the program was thoroughly reviewed and either dumped or reformed.)

Stephen Miller wins again: Haley, other foes excluded from immigration meeting

A planned cut in the number of refugees the U.S. admits is the latest win for hardliner Stephen Miller, who keeps beating the Trump admin’s pragmatists.

WASHINGTON — Days before the Trump administration announced plans to slash the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. to its lowest level in 40 years, Trump senior adviser and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller made his case for fewer refugees to a room of senior officials at the White House.

Stephen-Miller-with-Jeff-Sessions — Stephen Miller with his earlier boss Senator Jeff Sessions

His sales job was made easier by the absence of top officials who disagree with his stance. They weren’t there because they weren’t invited, according to two people briefed on the discussions. Missing from the room last Friday were U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Mark Green, both of whom have promoted a more generous policy toward refugees fleeing poverty, famine and persecution, the two sources said.

The planned cut in the refugee cap, now just 30,000 for the coming fiscal year, is the latest win for Miller, who has outmaneuvered opponents in and outside the administration to push through a crackdown on all forms of immigration.

[….]

In the administration’s internal discussions, Defense Secretary James Mattis — who was also absent from the Friday meeting — and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had consistently opposed reducing the ceiling for how many refugees could be allowed into the country next fiscal year, former officials, humanitarian experts and Congressional staffers from both parties told NBC News.

But after the meeting of top officials at the White House, Pompeo unveiled plans Monday to scale back the cap for refugees in 2019 to its lowest level since 1980. The secretary gave no explanation as to why he had changed his position, or how that number was arrived at during the closed door “principals” meeting.

[….]

“Pompeo got rolled,” said one former official familiar with the deliberations who served under Republican and Democratic administrations. The secretary “got manhandled by a kid who knows nothing about foreign policy,” said the source, referring to the 33-year-old Miller.

What is this foreign policy crap—this is about domestic policy and what out-of-control immigration is doing to American citizens in American towns!

You must read it all!

Go here and see that Miller, who is carrying out the agenda the President campaigned on, is up against seasoned ‘moderates’ who frankly are working against key immigration restriction policies that we elected Trump to carry out.

I have said it many times to many people lately—you will know when the Trump presidency ends (when we go back to uncontrolled immigration) and that is when Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller are gone from Trump’s team. And, you can bet there are many on both sides of the political aisle working toward that end.

Fact sheet on asylum is very useful; largest number of ‘new’ Americans are Chinese

09/21/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A couple of days ago I reported on the Asylum process which is part of the Refugee Act of 1980. The difference from the US Refugee Admissions Program is that these wannabe ‘refugees’ are already in the US usually illegally and they claim they will be persecuted if returned home.

It is a huge backlog of cases that is concerning the Trump Administration and is why they say that a 30,000 cap on the refugees the UN/US State Department bring in to the country is all we can handle. I assume they are expecting more than the 20,000-30,000 asylum seekers who have been approved each year for the last ten will grow with their stepped- up processing.

I have no time to snip this Fact Sheet from the American Immigration Council on ‘Asylum in the US,’ but you will find it answers many of your questions.

Although AIC is a non-profit legal advocacy group promoting more immigration, the facts seem pretty straight forward.

Take note of the definition of ‘refugee’ and see that they still pretty much stick to the original definition that doesn’t include a lot of expansions.

Oh, and for those who have asked, asylum seekers, who often wait years for an asylum hearing (while free in America), are permitted to work after a certain time.

What I didn’t mention the other day was where most of the asylum seekers who are approved come from.

Total Asylum Grants by Country of Nationality, Fiscal Year 2016

asylum_in_the_united_states_figure_2-620x397 — From the American Immigration Council Fact Sheet

I’m urging all of you to start paying attention to the tens of thousands of ‘refugees’ being approved as your new neighbors after they got in to the US illegally, or came in on an approved visa and then asked for asylum.

The Boston Bombers got in through the asylum system.

AG Jeff Sessions carrying out Trump immigration restriction agenda

09/20/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….and boy are the Leftwing Open Borders agitators steamed!

Former US Senator and now Attorney General Sessions, who you will recall got on the Trump train in the earliest days of the campaign, is quietly carrying out an immigration restriction agenda at the Justice Department and in the courts.

The primary reason we elected this president in the first place was to get immigration under control and Sessions is doing that!

Trump and Sessions 2 — If the President foolishly pushes Jeff Sessions out of the Justice Department, the Senate will never confirm a replacement who would carry out the immigration control agenda that Sessions has undertaken.

Yesterday, I told you about the asylum scam, here, and today we bring your attention to Mother Jones with this headline:

Sessions Is Poised to Make It Vastly Harder for Asylum-Seekers to Get Out of Detention

A new decision from Attorney General Jeff Sessions is likely to make it dramatically harder for tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to get out of detention.

How many asylum-seekers are in detention and how many are free to roam America while waiting for a decision? I don’t know the answer, but when I find it, I will let you know. But, know that thousands of wannabe refugees are simply free across America. Vast numbers of them will never show up for their asylum hearing.

On Tuesday, in a now-familiar tactic, Sessions used his broad authority over America’s immigration courts to refer a case to himself. The move will allow him to reinterpret a 2005 decision from the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals that gives some migrants the ability to get out of detention on bond. Sessions now appears likely to strip many detained immigrants of that right.

The self-referral comes two weeks after the Trump administration proposed a rule that would allow it to detain migrant families indefinitely. Combined, these two moves would make families seeking asylum much more likely to spend months or even years in detention.

And, what should be done now is a massive public relations campaign by the US throughout Mexico and Central America about how asylum seekers will be detained maybe for years. Such an effort could have a chilling effect on the hordes hankering to move north.

Mother Jones continues…

Under current law, asylum-seekers who cross the border without authorization are entitled to bond hearings before an immigration judge if they establish a credible fear of being persecuted in their home country. In a strange twist, asylum-seekers who request protection at official border crossings—the government’s preferred route—must ask Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to grant them parole, rather than asking a judge to grant bond. That distinction matters because ICE has shown an almost complete unwillingness to grant parole under Trump.

Eleanor Acer, the director of the refugee protection program at Human Rights First, says eliminating bond hearings would have an “absolutely devastating impact” on migrants because of the difficulty of being granted parole by ICE. “This is just not who we are as a country,” she says. “This should not be a country where people are thrown into jails and not even allowed to see a judge who decides whether or not they could be released from detention or not.”

Sessions’ decision to review the case is the latest step in the Trump administration’s systematic crackdown on asylum-seekers. In June, Sessions all but eliminated gang and domestic violence as grounds for asylum after referring a different case to himself. Earlier this month, the Trump administration proposed a rule to terminate the Flores settlement agreement, a two-decade-old court settlement that prevents the government from detaining migrant children for more than about 20 days. The proposal would allow the Trump administration to detain families indefinitely.

By the way, this is very significant—eliminating fear of violence back home as a grounds for gaining refugee protection and ultimately US citizenship!

We have told you over the years how the Open Borders Left is systematically eroding the definition of who is a refugee. A legitimate refugee, under the 1951 UN Convention, must be able to prove that he or she (personally!) would be PERSECUTED for one of several reasons including race, religion, political views, if returned to their home country. There is nothing in the definition about escaping violence or even war.

In recent years we have been allowing border-crossers to claim they are escaping gangs and abusive husbands to gain a legal foothold in America. Sessions is forcing adherence to the original law and not allowing this expansion.

Continue reading Mother Jones here.

If Sessions is forced out, you can be sure that the likes of Eleanor Acer and MS-13 gang members will be whooping with joy!

And, Trump will have signaled that he is abandoning an immigration control agenda.

For me, how we manage immigration is the only issue that matters for the future of America.

If you agree and are looking for something to do, let the President know that you like what AG Sessions is doing on the only issue that matters!