Trump Administration to prioritize Africans in FY19 refugee admissions to US

For years we have been flying Africans to America and placing them in hundreds of US towns and cities, and President Trump’s State Department will continue that trend as its number one refugee admissions priority!

 

Congolese-refugees (1)
The UN asked the US to take in 50,000 Congolese over 5 years and we are doing just that!

 

 

Frankly, as I said just yesterday if Africa doesn’t soon slow its population growth and get the Islamic extremists under control, Africa is going to sink first Europe, and then us under the weight of millions of needy (mostly unskilled) people in the not too distant future.

Based on current trends, Africa as a whole is projected to double in [population] size by 2050. Between 2050 and 2100, according to the United Nations, it could almost double again.

(from 1 about 1.3 billion in 2018 to over 4 billion in 2100!)

Yikes!  See the Africa ticking (time bomb) population clock, here.

Trump to prioritize Africa….. 

cover fy19 report

Although the US State Department has announced a greatly lowered refugee cap (30,000) for the coming fiscal year which begins this coming Monday! the administration will place a priority on Africans according to the just released ‘Report to Congress’ that explains why the President is setting the level where he is.

The full report released yesterday is here.

This year it is a slimmed-down version of a report I have handy for FY16 (Obama’s last full year) which is 71 pages.  The Trump report, at a mere 39 pages, does not go in to the great detail that Obama’s did.

I encourage serious students of the US Refugee Admissions Program to read it (LOL! I haven’t read it all yet, but I will!) because it is a very useful educational tool even if it is discouraging.

Here (below) is a screenshot of the Trump priorities. At least we can cheer about the dramatic slowdown in the Near East and Asia (where most of the Muslim countries, besides Africa, are found).

 

 

Screenshot (696)

 

And it is an improvement on Obama’s last full year when he set the ceiling for Africa at 27,500 and came in at 31,624! 

By contrast, from October 1, 2017 to September 1, 2018 (11 months of the fiscal year), Trump admitted 9,007 Africans.

But, what on earth makes anyone in the Western World think we can save Africa by serving as their population pressure valve. 

There is no way, even if we wanted to, to take enough refugees to keep up with their exploding population growth.

Let’s look at the DR Congolese 

Anne richard and UNHCR smile
Anne Richard and then UNHCR Antonio Guterres who is now Secretary General of the United Nations.  By the way, Trump is still without an Asst. Secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration

I reported here in 2013 that then Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, Anne Richard, told the United Nations (told UNHCR Guterres) that we would ‘welcome’ to America 50,000 UN Camp-dwelling Congolese over 5 years.

I just checked Wrapsnet and although we were bringing these people prior to FY14, since Richard’s announcement we have admitted 45,667 from that fiscal year up until today.

(In fact, from FY08 to the present day, we have admitted 56,106 from the DR Congo.)

And, by the way, I checked numbers for this month and in a little over 3 weeks we admitted 684 DR Congolese refugees, followed by Burma (290) in second place. In case you are wondering, most Congolese are not Muslims but there are a few in the flow to your towns and cities.

So by my calculation we have 4,333 DR Congolese to go to fulfill a promise we never needed to make!

But, do not hold your breath that it will end at 50,000 because our track record is that we just keep taking them long after the supposed cut off number has been reached—see Burmese, Bhutanese and Somalis for starters!

Endnote: I did a quick check and am not seeing anything about prioritizing persecuted white South Africans.  Let me know if you see any mention.

 

Daily Beast: Trump refugee admission reduction results in collateral damage to government contractors

No kidding!

I have to steel myself to write AGAIN about the issue of the President’s legal right to set the annual CAP (aka ceiling) for the number of refugees to be invited to the US to become your new neighbors.  But, I know how important repetition (to the point of wanting to barf) is!

scott bixby
Bixby at twitter:   @scottbix

In fact, as I read the Daily Beast story by Scott Bixby, I was heartened to see that maybe after all these years the facts about the program are beginning to be reported and understood.

Progress is being made!

Reporter Bixby actually did some good reporting when he said that many of the contractors are 97% federally funded on a refugee per capita basis.  (You know that, but believe me the average voting American doesn’t!).

Most reports by the Leftwing lapdog media about these federal contractors, aka VOLAGs, leave readers and viewers with a wrong assumption that they are paying for all of their ‘humanitarian good works’ from their own charitable pockets.  It ain’t so!

Before I get into the latest whinefest by the contractors*** consider one of my primary fundamental concerns:

Taxpayers should not be required to pay large (any!) salaries and supply non-profits with cushy office space only to have those same non-profits act as political community organizers and agitators for not just more refugees, but for more migrants, legal and illegal, trying to get to the US.

The story is entitled:

The New Collateral Damage in Trump’s War on Refugees

The Trump administration has cut the number of refugees they let into the country by a third. That decision could gravely harm organizations that assist those already here.

(Emphasis is mine)

When the Trump administration announced its intention to slash the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States to the lowest level in nearly four decades, the decision sparked worry among thousands of displaced persons who feared that the nation’s doors were now closed to them. But in addition to the record number of global refugees seeking safety from unrest in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the admissions cap will likely also harm organizations designed to help the thousands of displaced people who do make it safely to the United States.

As the U.S. government slows the number of legal refugees who can enter the country to a trickle, the nine private voluntary agencies with cooperative agreements with the State Department to help settle those refugees must now contend with a potentially devastating budget crunch.

miliband-in-manhattan
Reporter Bixby picked the wrong contractor to quote. The International Rescue Committee headquartered in Manhattan is headed by David Miliband, a British national, sucking down a nearly $700,000 annual salary as the NON-PROFIT organization fires lower level staff. The IRC received $846 million from the US Treasury since 2008.

“It’ll have a tremendous impact on the number of people who are able to access these life-saving services,” Nazanin Ash [working for Miliband—ed]  vice president of policy and advocacy at the International Rescue Committee, told The Daily Beast. “There’ve been over 150 office closures over the last two years, and that shutters a vital resource in many communities across the country.”

[….]

Government grants, provided on a per capita basis tied to the number of refugees assisted, account for as much as 97 percent of the resettlement grants for these organizations. Lower resettlement admissions therefore mean fewer federal dollars—and program funding is now set to plummet as precipitously as the number of admitted refugees.

That loss in grant money threatens a funding shortfall that could endanger community-based resettlement offices nationwide, as well as programs intended to help those who have fled their homes to establish a life in the United States, from housing placement and food support to professional support, English classes and community integration.

[….]

Under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the president has the sole authority, following consultation with Congress, to determine the maximum number of refugees who can be resettled in the United States, called the Presidential Determination. Under President Donald Trump, the Presidential Determination was decreased from 110,000 in 2017 to 45,000 refugees in 2018, one-seventh of its peak. Even then, the cap is a limit, not a requirement—so far, only 20,918 refugees have actually been admitted to the United States this year.

Don’t miss my post on the myth of Obama’s 110,000 ceiling, here where I said this:

Never once in his previous 7 years did he propose a ceiling (a cap!) that high and he came no where near that number of refugees admitted.

LOL! Now they are really stretching.

Below Melanie Nezer of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (which received $186 million from the US Treasury since 2008) says, because of that meany Trump, you are being deprived of the joy, of not getting to know refugees who might have been placed in your towns.

new-site-development-guide
If it was going to be such a positive thing to open more communities for refugee placement, then why did the Obama State Department keep those sites under consideration secret from us?

Do not forget that these nine contractors were working closely with the US State Department in the Obama years to locate as many as 40 new resettlement sites and it was all being kept secret from you—the citizens of the 40 or so new targets.

If you were to benefit so much from being ‘chosen’ then why were they keeping those sites secret?

See Judicial Watch sues State Department for new sites under consideration!

The Daily Beast continues:

Nezer cautioned that the grant reduction won’t just negatively affect the refugees they’re intended to serve, but may foster a sense of isolation and complacency among native-born Americans.

“Fewer resettlement offices means fewer opportunities for people to volunteer and work with refugees,” Nezer explained. “If fewer refugees come, and fewer Americans get to engage directly with refugees, that kind of starts a cycle where there’s less direct connection” with refugee populations.

“As fewer comes and fewer Americans get to have that relationship, then there’s less support for letting refugees in at all.”

There is much more in this story, but its getting way too long.

Read it all here, see that reporter Bixby, trying to make a case for bipartisan support for the program, tells us how angry REPUBLICANS in the House and Senate are at the President for not consulting them as the law stipulates.  See my post here on that.

These R’s are just a bunch of phony-baloneys who cared not one whit about past consultation requirements when numbers were large!

Many only care about one thing—cheap labor for their pals at global corporations and at the Chamber of Commerce!

 

***Here below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.

You might be sick of seeing this list almost every day, but a friend once told me that people need to see something seven times before it completely sinks in, so it seems to me that 70, or even 700 isn’t too much!

And, besides I have new readers every day.

The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!

And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’

The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)!  And, get them registered to vote eventually!

From my most recent accounting, here.  However, please see that Nayla Rush at the Center for Immigration Studies has done an update of their income, as has James Simpson at the Capital Research Center!

With “public charge” rewrite, Administration building a legal wall to help slow migrant flow to America; however, refugees will still get welfare

President Donald Trump has many avenues to slow the immigration steam roller that is changing America by changing the people.

Making it harder for wannabe future ‘new Americans’ to stay, is to require that they won’t suck off the federal teat in the process of advancing toward a green card and future citizenship.

stephen miller smirk
Stephen Miller is at it again says Politico

But before you get excited, know that refugees and asylees (and a whole bunch of other categories of legal immigration) are exempt from a proposed rule change.

When the bill that became the Refugee Act of 1980 was debated in Congress, ol’ Teddy Kennedy promised that we weren’t simply bringing more impoverished people to America to place on welfare.  He lied!

I want to know why the supposed humanitarian NGOs (the contractors) presently being paid by us, the taxpayers, to take care of refugees can’t use their own money to feed and house the refugees they say they love.  After all, they claim that the refugees quickly find work and become self-sufficient!

Here is Politico which obviously is sending a message for Dems and Leftwingers to strongly oppose (protest!) the proposed rules they claim are straight from the evil brain of White House aide Stephen Miller. Never mind that controlling immigration was the primary reason Donald Trump was elected to sit in the Oval Office and Miller is one of the few who remember the promise!

The Leftwing media focus on Miller is a classic Saul Alinsky tactic.  I suspect he finds the attacks amusing.

Politico:

Immigrants may be denied green cards if they’ve received benefits

 

The Trump administration proposed expanding its pre-election crackdown on immigration by denying green cards to legal immigrants if they have received government assistance.

Under the new rule, which the Department of Homeland Security posted online Saturday, immigrants can be denied so-called “lawful permanent residency” if they’ve received certain government benefits — or if the government anticipates that they may do so in the future.

The measure represents the latest move by White House aide Stephen Miller to reduce drastically all immigration to the U.S., both legal and illegal, and reflects his strong conviction that doing so will improve congressional Republicans’ chances in the midterm elections. The benefit programs targeted include the the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (welfare), Medicaid, and Medicare Part D (prescription drug subsidies).

The regulation could force millions of low-income families to choose between government assistance and permanent settlement in the United States.

Advocates fear it could ultimately restrict children’s access to food and health care.
The move will affect mainly legal immigrants and their families, since undocumented immigrants are not eligible for most federal benefits.

[….]

The proposed regulation would provide a more robust enforcement mechanism for longstanding statutory boilerplate that bars immigrants “likely to become a public charge.”

[….]

Hans+von+Spakovsk
Trump’s fatal error in the end could be his failure to put people like Von Spakovsky in his administration so loyal aides like Miller would not be virtually alone in fighting the deep state.

Roughly one million people become lawful permanent residents each year — a generous allotment, according to Hans von Spakovsky, a senior fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation.

“We can be choosy about who we allow into the country,” he said. “One of the primary factors ought to be ensuring that the legal immigrants who come in are people who can financially support themselves.”

Approximately one-third of the federal budget goes to health insurance subsidies and social safety net programs, according to the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — an expenditure the Trump administration and Republicans seek to reduce.

[….]

A range of activists spent months preparing for the rollout of the proposed regulation and plan to wage an opposition campaign. The proposal will now be subject to a public comment period, an opportunity for opponents to mount an assault on the plan.

A coalition led by the National Immigration Law Center and the D.C.-based anti-poverty Center for Law and Social Policy will push for a wide range of businesses, organizations and government officials to submit comments.

Refugees, Asylees, Cuban/Haitians, Special Immigrant Visa holders, those here through the ridiculous ‘temporary protected status’ program, more! are all exempt!

The prospective regulation wouldn’t apply to all immigrants. Refugees and asylees are exempt, as are certain victims of domestic violence and children who qualify for “special immigrant juvenile status,” which is available to minors who were abused, neglected or abandoned by a parent.

Foreigners who apply for “temporary protected status” to remain in the U.S. after a natural disaster or armed conflict in their home countries will also be exempt, so long as they received a blanket waiver to absolve them of any public charge considerations.

See Jim Simpson’s chart on how many refugees and others have been approved as ‘new Americans’ in the last ten years and know that all of these will be exempt!***

simpson-table-1
It isn’t clear if the UAC ‘children’ will continue to receive welfare but I suspect they will.

 

Continue here if you wish.  Politico, through its long report, is helping the Left figure out who opposes the draft measure and offering a blueprint on how best to fight it including stalling it by overwhelming the system with thousands and thousands of comments.

***If you need more proof than what Politico says, here is a screenshot of a portion of the draft regulations exempting refugees and asylees.  This is from page 85 but more exemptions are on page 86,87,88, and 89!

 

Screenshot (1454)_LI
The list of exemptions goes on for four more pages!

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

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

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!