Trump Administration will cool UAC flood to America by this action!

While we are busy fixating on the ‘travel ban’ and the refugee moratorium, Trump’s Dept. of Homeland Security has begun to find those illegal alien parents who paid smugglers to get their children to the US border where they then became wards of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (in HHS). Many of the ‘children’ were subsequently turned over to their parents.  (The largest percentage of ‘children’ were teenage boys!)

Photos like this of the “beast train” bringing the ‘children’ to our southern border during the Obama Administration helped get Trump elected President, as I predicted here: https://anncorcoran2016.org/2016/01/17/obamas-new-illegal-refugee-program-vain-attempt-to-stop-a-massive-2016-border-invasion/

ICE is finding the parents! 

That should cool the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) run on the border, and save US taxpayers a bundle!
The cost of managing the UACs within ORR has been the largest part of ORR’s budget for the last few years.
A couple of our usual suspects, refugee contractors, also make a bundle from their involvement with the ‘children.’  The US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (and possibly others) benefit financially from the illegal alien kids.
From the Charlotte Observer:

WASHINGTON

The Trump administration has begun a new surge of immigration enforcement targeting parents who have paid to have their children illegally brought to the United States.

The recent arrests, which had been largely rumored but not confirmed until now, have set off a new wave of confusion and fear through immigrant communities that have already been subject to greater enforcement.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have begun sharing information with immigration agents about U.S.-based relatives of unaccompanied children. The information is being used to track down the parents, according to lawyers and government case workers familiar with the practice.

[….]

“The kids are basically being used as bait at this point,” said a field specialist with the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal agency that takes custody and shelters unaccompanied immigrant children.

[….]

Jennifer Elzea

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials confirmed Thursday that they have begun a new enforcement initiative to “disrupt and dismantle” human-smuggling facilitators, including arresting the sponsors who have paid criminal organizations to smuggle children into the United States. They did not say what charges were being applied.

“ICE aims to disrupt and dismantle end-to-end the illicit pathways used by transnational criminal organizations and human smuggling facilitators,” said Jennifer Elzea, deputy press secretary for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “As such, we are currently conducting a surge initiative focused on the identification and arrest of individuals involved in illicit human smuggling operations, to include sponsors who have paid criminal organizations to smuggle children into the United States.”

Immigration officials cited Office of Refugee Resettlement statistics on Thursday that show approximately 90 percent of all unaccompanied children encountered at the southwest border are eventually turned over to a family member residing in the United States.

[….]

In February, Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly issued new orders to agency heads that would considerably expand the number of immigrants who could be detained and deported.

One of the memos said 155,000 unaccompanied children have been detained in the past three years.

Continue reading here.
There is a very informative report, here, put out by the Congressional Research Service on the Unaccompanied Alien Children problem.  I thought this graph was useful.  It shows the number of UACs and how many are turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (although they are NOT refugees).
Note the enormous jump in numbers as the Obama Administration signaled that it would turn a blind-eye to the invasion of the ‘children.’

 

Episcopal Bishop in Maine: It is our moral obligation to take in refugees

But, is it the obligation of the US taxpayer to pay the Episcopal Church millions annually for THEIR Christian charity?  Of course that is one of the major moral questions that has driven this blog for ten years!

Bishop Lane in a 2009 story about the Episcopal church in Maine going bankrupt. http://www.virtueonline.org/episcopal-dioceses-face-downsizing-closing-parishes-more-departures

You can read the Bishop’s opinion piece at the Bangor Daily News:

With the news that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed a limited version of the president’s travel ban to go into effect, we should recall our moral obligation to assist refugees seeking a chance to rebuild their lives and create a better future for their families. As the world searches for solutions to the largest refugee crisis in global history — more than 22 million people worldwide of whom fewer than 1 percent will ever be resettled in another country — we in Maine must do our part.

It is easy to be charitable with someone else’s money!

I searched the Bangor Daily News piece for any mention of the fact (published in their own publication) that the church is receiving 99.5% of its funds for refugee resettlement from the taxpayer.
Episcopal Migration Ministries (the church’s refugee resettlement wing) is not even a separate legal entity, so our money goes directly to the church!
Therefore we, or Mainers, don’t need any lectures about moral duties!  Christian charity should be privately given, not extorted from every taxpaying American!
The first and foremost Congressional reform needed with our process of resettling refugees in the US is to bar the phony charitable non-profit middlemen*** from receiving federal dollars for their ‘charitable’ work.
I have a huge archive on Maine and its problems with refugees and asylum seekers, click here.
*** Nine federal contractors that monopolize refugee resettlement in the US:

Random thoughts on the Supreme Court decision yesterday….

See my post yesterday immediately following the surprising announcement by the Supreme Court on the Trump ‘travel ban’ from six terror-producing countries and the ceiling/moratorium on refugee resettlement across all countries and ethnic groups.
This morning I thought I might find an article or two that sounded reasonably informed about what is going to happen in the coming days and weeks.  I didn’t find anything (yet) that looks very useful. Everyone seems confused.
There is an LA Times story with a juicy nugget where they say 50,500 refugees (yikes!) are waiting in the wings from the six targeted ‘travel ban’ countries. And, a Buffalo News story is representative of the myriad stories from across the country where refugee contractors are scratching their heads about what it all means for them.  Those that get mostly refugees with “family ties” believe they will be getting their full quotas of paying clients.

Random thoughts!

So, as much as I would like to give readers guidance on what is going to happen, I can’t.  But, here are some thoughts I have in random order. Some are comments, others are questions.

Some of the articles I read this morning suggest we have more of this coming….

~The issue of bona fide relationships is going to be a huge mess.  Already the contractors and subcontractors are thinking that if they have some refugees on the way from any country, they, the contractor, will be a bona fide “entity” and therefore their refugees will get in.
~Apparently a 120-day MORATORIUM on refugee resettlement (90 days for those 6 countries is a separate part of the EO) will go into effect, except for those who can claim a relationship of some sort. If it begins on Thursday (as most are predicting), 120 days ends on or about October 26th which is 26 days in to  FY18.  It then makes me wonder what Donald Trump will do with his ‘determination’ for that fiscal year which by law he will present to Congress in September.
~After wandering in the weeds about numbers, will the Trump Administration have any will to reform the whole US Refugee Admissions Program?  It is now or never!
~Even if the Supreme Court hears the case in October, it could be months later for a decision (well in to election year 2018).
~BTW, as several news articles yesterday pointed out, there was and probably still is, a huge amount of fraud in the Refugee Admissions Program as it relates to who is, and who isn’t, a family member.  Long time readers may remember the discovery in 2008 that literally as many as 20,000 Somalis entered the US fraudulently as part of the P-3 Family Reunification program. The Dept. of State shut down the P-3 for parts of Africa for years.  The Supreme Court has now further increased the incentive for fraudulent claims of family connections.
~The Supreme Court ruling is troubling to me, actually on many levels, but they suggest that refugees with family ties get priority, while perhaps more persecuted people are left behind.  Heck, every Somali probably has a family tie to someone in the US (since way over 100,000 are here already), while a truly persecuted Syrian Christian may have no ties because so few Syrian Christians have been admitted  to the US. How did the Supremes let themselves get into this quagmire?
~The Dept. of State, with the likes of Brian Hook working with Sec. of State Tillerson, will be making critical decisions about how choices will be made about who gets in here between now and October 26th. They will be forced to depend on career bureaucrats (because Trump has moved too slowly to get people loyal to him placed in agencies across Washington) who have long-time personal relationships with the contractors.
~Although, as I said yesterday, I’m glad the Supreme Court put to rest the issue of whether Trump had the authority to reduce the refugee CEILING that he inherited from Obama (from 110,000 to 50,000), I am extremely troubled by the Supreme Court writing refugee law. The Refugee Act of 1980 is very specific about what steps must be taken for a President to go above the CEILING. The steps involve the President consulting with Congress in the case of an emergency. The court here is saying they have now stepped in to allow an increase over 50,000 (for relatives!).  What is Congress going to do—continue to hide on the subject of refugees—and give up their Constitutional power to the courts?

~Congress actually appropriated enough money for 75,000 refugees to be admitted by September 30th, so what happens to that money as the number surely won’t come in anywhere near the 75,000 level (how on earth did Tillerson/Hook get out on that limb back in May telling contractors 1,500 would be admitted every week?).
~Representatives of the nine federal contractors*** are in a tizzy (as I read many news stories this morning), some trying to put a positive spin on what the Court has done. I wondered if they wouldn’t have been better off just letting Trump’s EO go in to effect months ago and get the review over with. It would have been done by now and some normalcy returned.  Instead we are all looking to many more months of chaos, confusion and lawsuits.  So maybe we can say, that the contractors are responsible for those “vulnerable” refugees left in limbo now.
~On that point about being in a tizzy, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) is organizing a briefing call on Thursday so you can find out what they think of the decision and what they will do going forward.
From an e-mail:

To learn more about the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision for refugees and non-citizens, join HIAS for a briefing call on Thursday, June 27 at 4:30pm EST. Click here to RSVP and receive a call-in number.

[Update!  A reader has pointed out that Thursday is the 29th! So, I expect there will be an e-mail correction coming from HIAS—ed]
I’m sure I’ve forgotten some things, and if I find some great legal mind who can predict what is going to happen beginning on Thursday, I’ll send it your way.  In the meantime, send story links that you think add to the discussion to the comments here at RRW.
More later…..
***Federal contractors in a tizzy.  Since the vast majority of their annual income is from the US Treasury based on the number of refugees admitted each year, their budgets have again gone to hell. Not that  I am sympathetic about their financial mess, but this is why Congress has to get the middlemen contractors out of the refugee business!

 

Will President Trump restrict welfare use by refugees too?

When President Trump announced in Iowa last week that he planned to ask Congress for a tightening of restrictions on welfare use by immigrants—barring their use of welfare for 5 years—I wondered if he would wander in to the minefield of refugee welfare use.

Iowa announcement June 21, 2017—immigrant welfare use to be restricted (crowd cheers!).

Readers here know that refugees use social services/welfare immediately (within weeks) upon arrival and that the primary job of their resettlement contractor*** is to get them signed up for their services ASAP.
Here is Trump in Iowa last Wednesday:

“The time has come for new immigration rules that say … those seeking immigration into our country must be able to support themselves financially and should not use welfare for a period of at least five years,” Trump said.

My ears pricked up and I wondered if he means refugees too.  If he does, he can expect wailing and moaning on the level he received when he announced his original travel ban.
(See here that refugees are exempt from the Clinton-era restrictions on welfare use by immigrants.)
If Trump persuades Congress to disallow welfare for 5 years for all classes of immigrants that would certainly be a backdoor way to rein-in the US Refugee Admissions Program. Maybe, just maybe, the mostly ‘religious’ resettlement contractors*** would have to raise private charitable money or cut the number of the ‘clients’ they ‘care for.’  And, heck, maybe those meatpackers would have to go to paying higher wages as refugee families now use welfare as a back-up for low-wage earnings.
But, don’t hold your breath!
If you are interested in reading more on ‘refugee welfare’ click here for my extensive archive on the subject.
***For new readers, these are the nine federal refugee contractors whose main job is to get their refugee clients their social services in the first three months and then they move on to a new set of paying clients (they are paid by you, the taxpayer, at a per head price for placing refugees in your towns and cities).

"I'm the victim" said refugee sentenced for sex crimes in Canada, no one told me I couldn't do this!

Diversity is strength alert!
Here we go again!  Only two weeks ago we had another story *** about a refugee in Canada (a Syrian who beat his wife) blaming Canada for not instructing him on the ways of the west!
Thanks to reader ‘Saltnpepper’ for the story from the Calgary Herald:

Despite describing himself as a victim, a man guilty of child pornography and sexually assaulting minors was handed a 12-year sentence Friday.

Because I couldn’t find a photo of the refugee creep, I got the next best thing—Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau in a lighter moment.

Part of that term includes a conviction for obstructing justice when Tanzirul Alam, through hundreds of phone calls while in the Calgary Remand Centre, convinced one of his victims to lie in court for him.

Alam abused his three underage female victims and the justice system itself, said Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Sandy Park.

[….]

The man was convicted of 17 offences involving the girls, ages 14 and 15, including sexual assault, sexual contact with a person under 16, luring, making and transmitting child pornography and obstruction.

His victims were lured on the Internet, which soon led to sexual acts that were recorded on video, some of the images being shared on the Internet.

[….]

In a nearly 20-minute statement to the court, Alam, 29, insisted his difficult upbringing in Bangladesh, which included being tortured by Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists, contributed to his offences in Canada.

He said the Canadian government does a poor job in educating newcomers like him to the country’s legal realities and predicted more refugees would be committing similar offences.

One of the (naive) mothers of the abused girls said she hopes he will get mental health treatment in prison so he won’t hurt anyone when he gets out to live among Canadians.  No mention of deportation.
Wonder what the price tag is for Canadian taxpayers to feed him halal food and take good care of him for years to come!
By the way, good question—why aren’t Canadians (Germans, Swedes, Americans) telling their darlings how they must behave after being granted a good life (at taxpayer expense!) in the west?
*** Yes, we have stories too! The Left loves to tell their warm and fuzzy refugee-sees-first-snow stories, but we can play the story game too! For every refugee who goes to Harvard, I can match you with (maybe a dozen!) refugee crooks, thieves, wife-beaters, rapists, murderers or terrorists!
I have 2,110 previous posts in my refugee ‘crimes’ category, click here.