Although stymied by the courts at other levels, the important Tenth Amendment case involving the Constitutional challenge against the federal government’s ever increasing cost-shifting to the states for the care of refugees is still alive.
There was a time when I thought that the political process was the place to change refugee policy in America, but truthfully I am seeing little hope of any real change as Trump enters his fourth year in the White House.
Cutting the number of admissions is fine, but no real structural changes have been sought for the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program by the administration. (The governor approval process seriously backfired, and Congress is useless as members cower in fear of being called racists.)
Maybe there is still some hope that the courts will see how unfair and unconstitutional it is for states to carry a financial burden placed on them by the feds.
Eagle Forum Files Brief Supporting Thomas More Law Center’s ‘Federalism Challenge’ to Tennessee Refugee Resettlement Program
ANN ARBOR, MI – The Eagle Forum and its Tennessee chapter added their influential voices urging the U.S. Supreme Court to grant the Thomas More Law Center’s request to review (“petition for certiorari”) a Sixth Circuit Court decision which held that the Tennessee General Assembly lacked institutional standing to challenge the Federal Refugee Resettlement program. Their amicus brief (“friend of the court brief”), authored by Nashville attorney Joanne Bregman, was filed late last week.
Bregman observed, “The ongoing conversations between the President and state governors concerning recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is bringing a renewed interest in federalism – the same constitutional principle of dual sovereignty which is the basis of the General Assembly’s lawsuit against federal commandeering of state dollars to fund the federal refugee resettlement program.”
The Thomas More Law Center (“TMLC”), a national nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and John Bursch, a nationally prominent appellate lawyer are representing the General Assembly without charge. Bursch authored the General Assembly’s petition for certiorari, which asks the Supreme Court to overturn the Sixth Circuit’s ruling.
The petition for certiorari, filed on March 16, 2020, objects to forcing Tennessee taxpayers to pay the costs of the resettlement: “If a state legislature cannot vindicate its rights in court when the federal government picks the state’s pocket and threatens the state if it dare stop providing funds, then federalism is a dead letter.”
Richard Thompson
The Eagle Forum, a national conservative organization with 80,000 members founded by the late legendary Phyllis Schlafly in 1972, has significantly impacted public policy at both state and national levels. The Tennessee chapter headed by Mrs. Bobbie Patray was the first state chapter to question the power of the federal government to coerce state legislators to use state revenues to fund the federal refugee resettlement program.
Richard Thompson, TMLC’s President and Chief Counsel, commented:
“Justice Scalia considered the principles of federalism, the same principles that undergird our challenge to the federal refugee resettlement program, more important to the American democracy than the Bill of Rights.
Considering the continued controversy between the Nation’s governors and the President over the best way to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, a grant of certiorari would present the Supreme Court with an opportunity to calm the waters over their conflicting claims of power by expounding on Federalism 101.”
Continued Thompson, “Because of the significance of this issue, I’m grateful that the Eagle Forum and its Tennessee chapter were able to assist our efforts to obtain Supreme Court review.”
According to the amicus brief: “Forcing state legislators to expend state resources outside of the normal appropriations process directly interferes with their duties to the state and to their constituents. If the federal government cannot compel a state to fund federal programs, then a state should not be forced to divert funding from essential and traditional state government services in order to operationalize a federal program from which the state has withdrawn.”
Tennessee initially agreed to participate in the federal refugee resettlement program. But when the federal government refused to cover the state costs as it originally promised and as the 1980 Refugee Act intended, Tennessee withdrew from the program in 2008. Nevertheless, the federal government merely designated Catholic Charities of Tennessee, a non-governmental private organization, to continue the program while still forcing the state to pay for it.
Bregman notes the threat to state sovereignty powers by federally coerced spending, especially at a time when the needs of Tennessee’s citizens are dire, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic and a series of deadly tornadoes which ripped through 100 miles of Tennessee counties.
The amicus brief concludes, “There is no room in the Constitution’s framework to permit the federal government or its agencies to take state funds without the express consent of the state’s appropriating body.”
I’m looking every day for official word from the US State Department about whether refugees will again be streaming to America after the UN/IOM shut down refugee travel in mid-March.
However, as I pointed out here a few days agoin a post that went viral, refugees have still been coming in, the spigot was never entirely closed.
But, today was the originally designated day for the flow to resume and I am seeing nothing by way of a public announcement one way or another.
You can be sure that the US State Department must have already notified their “partners” (aka paid contractors).
We will work with our implementing partners to plan for a resumption of refugee arrivals on or after April 7.
How about letting the public know, after all, we pay for it all one way or another.
And, if they are opening the refugee spigot, we need to know if tests for COVID-19 are being given before the refugee boards a near empty plane for Anytown, USA.
More people who are unemployed, hungry and in need of health care coming to America—what could go wrong!
In mid March we reported that the UN’s International Organization for Migration had halted refugee travel due to the virus crisis, so imagine my surprise this morning when I checked the data for the last two weeks of March and learned we admitted 221 regular refugees and 373 Special Immigrant Visas from Afghanistan in those two weeks.
For the entire month of March we admitted 1,110 regular refugees and 844 SIVs mostly from Afghanistan that are treated just like refugees except some can choose where they want to live in the US.
So we can’t safely fly, but nearly 2,000 ‘refugees’ were being flown into the US during March.
The refugee admissions program is scheduled (so far) to resume this week after April 7th, but it never really stopped!
Here is where the 1,110 were placed in March:
Top ten ‘welcoming’ states are: TX, OH, NY, IL, WA, KY, MA, CA, MO, and TN.
Now see this map (below) for where the 221 regular refugees were placed since the supposed suspension of travel. They must have been transported across America on near empty flights.
The vast majority of the arrivals in the last two weeks are from the DR Congo (161). See my post about how many we have now taken since Obama agreed to take tens of thousands of Congolese. We are way past 50,000 but they are still coming!
More unemployed and more hungry mouths to feed as America suffers…..
Editor: I’m not planning on posting anything today because I must try to answer some of your many e-mails and comments.
However, I just came across this information from the Refugee Council USA(the lobbying arm of the refugee industry) that explains in great detail (and with links) how trillions will be distributed and how immigrants and refugees can get their piece of the pie.
There are some stories floating around that CEOs of some of America’s largest corporations are taking pay cuts to help keep more of their lower level workers on the job as the COVID-19 crisis continues. Here is one from Forbes published two days ago.
David Miliband President and CEO of the Manhattan-based ‘charity’ International Rescue Committee. Are they reducing salaries to help the refugees they brought to America?
At the same time we are learning that the refugee agencies continue to be shuttered (staff reduced) and refugees are struggling. See refugees struggling inBowling Green, KY and in Durham, NC.
So this morning I am wondering if ‘moneybags’ Miliband and other CEO’s of leading ‘charitable’ refugee agencies were giving up large salaries to help especially the refugees they have been dropping off across America for decades. And, to save some of their low level employees from getting the budget ax.
(If the Form 990 doesn’t open, visit Guidestar,here.)
If they and others of the nine refugee contractors have begun to reduce salaries of their top employees, let me know so I can report their humanitarian generosity toward the most vulnerable among us.
To be fair, David Miliband has the most outrageous salary of the ‘non-profit’ groups changing America by changing the people, but 6-digit salaries are the norm in the refugee industry.
As I have said on many previous occasions, salaries would be none of our business if the organization was not living almost entirely on taxpayer dollars.
ANN ARBOR, MI – The Eagle Forum and its Tennessee chapter added their influential voices urging the U.S. Supreme Court to grant the Thomas More Law Center’s request to review (“petition for certiorari”) a Sixth Circuit Court decision which held that the Tennessee General Assembly lacked institutional standing to challenge the Federal Refugee Resettlement program. Their amicus brief (“friend of the court brief”), authored by Nashville attorney Joanne Bregman, was filed late last week.
