I know, I am a broken record on this issue and that it is more interesting to read about the rich kids at Harvardwanting refugees and about Muslim refugees facing trialskipping out on bail, but we have to address the boring numbers stuff too.
Here is what we know:
~The President sets the CEILING for refugee admissions each year (the ceiling is a cap!). Supremes have re-written refugee law!
~President Obama set the ceiling for FY17 at 110,000 in his final months in office (he never set a ceiling that high in his previous 7 years).
~Donald Trump’s EO reset it at 50,000.
~As of today we are at 49,803 according toWrapsnet.
~The Supreme Court confirmed the 50,000 with a caveat. Anyone who could prove a “bona fide relationship” with a relative in the US or to an “entity” could come in above the 50,000 cap.
~I contend that with that stipulation, the Supreme Court has taken it upon itself to rewrite refugee law because there is a mechanism in the Refugee Act to go above the cap, but it sure doesn’t involve the courts. The President must determine that there is an emergency and he must consult with Congress—not the courts—to go above the ceiling. Where are they?
Tomorrow or the next day, we will cross the 50,000 mark.
Have we ever surpassed a refugee ceiling?
I wanted to know if we have ever gone above the ceiling and so I did some research and this is what I learned:
Since 1983 (over 30 years!), no President has exceeded the ceiling, but many of them came in way below the ceiling previously set.
From the 2007 ORR Annual Report to Congress a chart (p.4) showing CEILINGS and numbers actually admitted going back to 1983. Do you see how far below the ceiling they were in a number of years. And, note the text at the top. There is no mention of any court having any role in determining the ceiling.
Now pick it up from 2007 to right now, end of June 2017 from Wrapsnet. Have they ever surpassed the ceiling in more recent years? NO!
But, I want you take note of the fact that the US State Department (Trump’s DOS!) cannot even bring itself to put the 50,000 in the CEILING column. I explained hereabout when it was removed. In fact the chart last month (for the end of May) left out the whole ceiling column!
Note that the ceiling column is blank for FY17 although the Supreme Court confirmed it is 50,000.
By the way, ignore all the wailing and moaning by the contractors. If you check the average admissions number for 20 years up to Obama’s huge FY16, the average admissions come in at just over 62,000. If the Supremes get their way, you can bet Trump will be forced past that number. (Congress has appropriated enough money for 75,000 by September 30th!) If the President is serious, he can ask Congress for a rescission of those funds!
We will be watching every day! Any refugees over 50,000 are the responsibility of the Supreme Court having taken over the President’s constitutional authority to protect us!
It was supposed to have been yesterday that the US State Department expected the President’s FY17 50,000 cap to be reached.
When the number is reached (a ceiling set for decades by the President under refugee law), as we know, the US Supreme Court owns it because they stepped in to rewrite lawand the battle for the bona fidesbegins.
As of today we have admitted 49,793 refugees this fiscal year according to the State Department’s own Refugee Processing Center (aka Wrapsnet).
Here is theLA Times reporting that the deadline is extended because the 50,000 cap was not reached yesterday as expected. Hetfield’s name turns up in most mainstream media stories about the US Refugee Program and Pres. Trump. The media must see him as the go-to guy for quotes! Did you know that he pulls down a salary of over $300,000—doing well by doing good? Learn more about him and HIAS’s finances here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/11/13/hebrew-immigrant-aid-society-lectures-trump-never-mentions-its-pecuniary-interest-in-refugees/
Refugee resettlement agencies say the State Department has given them updated instructions on President Trump’s travel ban that extends the cutoff date for refugee admissions.
When the ban was put into place last week, the administration said refugees who had booked travel would be admitted through Thursday. After that, immigration officials would block all refugees, except those who could prove they had U.S. connections, such as close relatives.
The July 6 date was a government estimate of when the country would reach a 50,000-person cap on refugee admissions this fiscal year. Federal officials now estimate that the cap will be hit a week later, according to refugee groups.
[….]
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration at the State Department would not confirm the change and said more information would come out Thursday.
“The cap could be hit earlier, so it could be earlier than July 12,” said Mark Hetfield, chief executive of the resettlement group HIAS, formerly known as Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
HIAS is among several refugee resettlement groups that have challenged the ban, which blocks travel from six Muslim-majority countries for 90 days and suspends refugee admissions from everywhere for 120 days.
TheLA Timesgoes on to say that the Hawaii Open Borders advocates filed suit (again) looking for clarification about whether the contractors*** are bona fide entities for the purpose of bringing even more than 50,000 refugees in over the remaining roughly 2 months and 3 weeks remaining in this fiscal year.
Justices wrote that people with “bona fide” connections to the U.S. such as jobs, university admission and family could bypass the ban but left it up to the Trump administration to define which family members counted.
The administration has said that people with “close family” in the U.S. — such as a parent, spouse, fiance or fiancee, child or sibling — could go around the ban. But it blocked others, including grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles and cousins.
Immigrant and refugee groups are challenging the definitions in a Honolulu federal district court, saying the administration is violating the Supreme Court’s orders. A federal judge there who previously ruled against the ban in one of the cases being considered by the high court could issue a decision on the matter this week.
Refugee advocates argue that their relationship to refugees should be enough for them to gain admission to the country despite the ban. The government disagrees.
Request denied!
See it here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3890325-Hawaii-v-Trump-Clarify-Order.html
Just as I am writing this post, I see that the same Hawaii judge has denied their request for clarification. See here! Let the Supremes decide.
By the way, the other plaintiff in the case joining with the State of Hawaii is an Imam who wants more Muslims admitted to the US, here. But, Hawaii is normally at the bottom of the list of states taking any refugees!
Hey, maybe the State Dept. could put all those they bring in above the cap (it could be thousands!) in Hawaii!
Why not tell the President that when you write to him today! Give Hawaii its dearest wish—more third world diversity. Go here.
All of my posts on this topic are filed in my new ‘Supreme Court’ category.
***Federal contractors/middlemen/lobbyists/community organizers paid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities. Because their income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, the only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove the contractors from the process.
And, once we pass the 50,000 cap (aka ceiling), then the Supreme Court will be effectively running the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.
Refugees arriving over the Presidentially-determined ceiling of 50,000 are the responsibility of nine unelected judges who have decided that relatives can’t possibly be terrorists! The ceiling has been a cornerstone of the refugee program for 37 years and last week the Supremes took it upon themselves to lay out fuzzy parameters for exceeding the ceiling set by President Trump that no President in at least a decade has exceeded (maybe ever!).
I just checked the latest numbers at Wrapsnetand see that as of today we have admitted 49,255 refugees this fiscal year. (The fiscal year ends September 30th).
We should hit 50,000 within a few days. So, will the members of the court begin getting the daily Presidential security briefing when that happens? And, come to think of it, who tells the Supremes that they have exceeded their Constitutional authority? Hmmmm?
Here are the top ten ‘welcoming’ states (so much for Texas trying to get out of the program):
Just so you know, 3 states and the District of Columbia got less than 10 each (Mississippi–6, Hawaii–3, DC–2, and Wyoming–0).
This post is filed in my‘Supreme Court’archive.
I think it has dawned on them that the Supreme Court, in writing refugee law, has just exploded the decades-long concept that a ceiling is a CEILING. Here they predict that it will be a refugee free-for-all for months to come. Effectively they are saying there is NO ceiling (no longer even Obama’s 110,000) in place at least until October!
I was interested to see that Eric Schwartz is back…..
From Bloomberg:
The refugee ban will actually add more refugees.
Schwartz was Obama’s first Asst. Sec.of State for PRM (Anne Richard’s predecessor). He is now head honcho of this pro-refugee lobbying group. RI is not a resettlement contractor. https://www.refugeesinternational.org/people/
Trump used his power to reduce refugee entries for the current fiscal year to 50,000 from the target of 110,000 set by President Barack Obama. But the number of refugees who enter the U.S. is likely to end up higher. Under the Supreme Court’s June 26 ruling, refugees who have “bona fide” ties to the country may be admitted, and they don’t count as part of the cap.
Immigration advocates say that more than half of all refugees admitted each year have such ties. So even though the U.S is just days away from hitting the 50,000 figure, many more refugees may be entering the country while the 120-day ban is in effect.
“In all likelihood, I would expect we would end up with more than 50,000 this year,” said Eric Schwartz, president of Refugees International and former assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration. “Once we get to 50,000 there will inevitably be some number of refugees that meet the ‘bona-fide’ test and if the administration monkeys around with that by trying to slow down approvals, then they’ll be in violation of the court decision.”
More here. So you can tell where they are going with this…
We haven’t written much about Refugees Internationalin the last few years (ever since Ken Bacon of Clinton/Lewinsky/Linda Tripp fame died while heading this organization).
We have written several important posts on Soros groupie Schwartz, see here.
This post is filed in my new category, ‘Supreme Court’which will include all posts related to the decision handed down last week.
So far, the US Department of State says no…. Justice Clarence Thomas (Alito and Gorsuch)were right that the Supreme Court’s effort to ‘split the baby,’ with its decision on Trump’s ‘travel ban’ and refugee moratorium, will invite litigation through the remainder of the summer.
I wasn’t planning to write today (except maybe a post about this being RRW’s Tenth Anniversary) because it is Saturday of a big holiday weekend, but I want you to see that, yes, the contractors*** are getting in gear to sue the feds claiming that since refugees are assigned to them for placement in your towns, they are bona fide entities. They sue while we pay their salaries!
Longtime readers know that it is my contention that the system in place for decades, where a federal contractor is hired to place refugees in your towns and the contractor is ostensibly a non-profit (some are ‘religious’) charitable organization being paid with your tax dollars yet can file lawsuits and lobby Congress, is an outrage.
Congress could do something about this, if it had the will (the Labrador bill is insufficient), but since leading Congressional Republicans are in the pockets of lobbyists (Tyson Foods for instance!) and the Chamber of Commerce in need of cheap labor, no real reform ever happens.
Carving itself out as the leader of the pack for political advocacy is the politically aggressive Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). HIAS was a litigant in one of the cases before the Court.
I just checked USA Spending and found that HIAS got over $104 MILLION from taxpayers since FY08.
And, what do you know, the feds paid them over $4.1 million in the 5 days before Donald Trump was inaugurated. Here, about 3 weeks later, HIAS organized a NYC rally against Trump featuring speaker Rep. Keith Ellison. How much of your money was used for their protest?
Yesterday we learned a lot about what they plan to do next—sue!
And, LOL!, the Christian Post says not one word about how the do-gooder organizations are paid per refugee head to do their good works!
Refugees with connections to the nine refugee resettlement organizations in the United States should be allowed to enter the country in accordance with the Supreme Court’s ruling Monday that allowed a limited version of President Donald Trump’s travel ban to go into effect, advocates argue.
[….]
After the nation’s high court decided Monday that it would allow a scaled-back version of Trump’s March 6 executive order on immigration to be enacted, opponents of the travel ban were left wondering whether the the Supreme Court considers relationships with a refugee resettlement organization to be the type of “bona fide” relationships necessary to allow them to enter the country, once the 50,000 refugee cap set for fiscal year 2017 is met in July.
In 2016, Nezer of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was the chair of the Refugee Council USA (this lobbying consortium of the refugee industry has revolving chairmanship). RCUSA in August of 2016 said they wanted Obama to set a ceiling of 200,000 for FY17. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/08/02/lobbying-arm-for-refugee-resettlement-contractors-wants-us-to-take-200000-refugees-in-fy2017/
As the travel ban — which bans immigration from six Muslim majority countries for 90 days and refugee resettlement for 120 days — took effect on Thursday, the Trump administration explained in guidelines sent to U.S. embassies and consulates what it considers to a “bona fide relationship.”
[….]
As for entities, the guidelines state that people seeking access to the United States must show formal proof of their relationship with the a business or educational institution. However, an administration official declared in a press call Thursday that “the fact that a resettlement agency in the United States has provided a formal assurance for refugees seeking admission is not sufficient, in and of itself, to establish a bona fide relationship under the ruling.”
[….]
Legal action has already been filed to seek clarity on the Supreme Court’s order, which was somewhat vague about what constitutes a “bona fide” relationship. On Thursday, the state of Hawaii asked a federal judge to clarify the ruling and argued that the administration’s interpretation is too narrow and violates the ruling.
On a press call Friday, leaders of resettlement agencies authorized to resettle refugeesin the United States decried the administration’s interpretation of the ruling. [You see how deceptive the press is—“authorized”—how about “contracted and paid!”—ed]
“Our argument is that under an interpretation of a clear reading of the Supreme Court decision is that a relationship with a resettlement agency does establish a ‘bona fide’ relationship for purposes of the ban,” said Melanie Nezer, the senior vice president of public affairs for HIAS, which was founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. [They dumped “Hebrew” from their name a few years ago. I guess when you are resettling large numbers of Muslim refugees, the word Hebrew was an impediment.—ed]
[….]
“We also imagine the debate about this in the administration, thinking that there was significant debate among people who really do understand resettlement in the administration and those who don’t,” Nezer said.“It seems pretty clear that this decision was made by people who don’t know or don’t much care about how resettlement works.”
[By the way, I don’t think the Supreme Court knew much about resettlement either or perhaps they wouldn’t have been rewriting refugee law, but that would be the fault of whoever presented the case for the Justice Department.—ed]
[….]
Director of the lobbying arm of the refugee industry Naomi Steinberg says 26,000 refugees are in the pipeline. What a convenient number. We are at 50,000 and Congress has appropriated enough money to admit 75,000 this fiscal year. If we hit 75,000, it will be about 10,000 ABOVE the average for the last ten years!
Around July 6 is when the United States is expected to hit the 50,000 refugee cap for fiscal year 2017 that Trump set in his executive order. After that, the “bona fide” standard will be going into effect for refugees, Nezer explained.
See my post yesterday about July 6th. As of today we are at 49,225 refugees admitted this fiscal year. We may not see new numbers reported at Wrapsnet until the 5th or 6th.
[….]
Naomi Steinberg, the director of Refugee Council USA, added that there are over 26,000 refugees total who have gone through security vetting and have been approved to the come the United States and be resettled around the United States.
More here.
All of my posts related to what the Supreme Court ruled last week are archived in my category—Supreme Court.
*** For new readers, these are the nine contractors that monopolize refugee resettlement in America. Saying they are “authorized” to resettle refugees is a media deception. They are paid out of the US Treasury per head for every refugee they resettle. The incentive is always to bring more while they pretend to be doing this work completely from humanitarian motives!
The UN/US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed until we stop paying non-profit groups to advocate and lobby for their vested (Leftist!) interests.
