That would be the announcement that the State Department was going to almost double the number of refugees being admitted to the country from around 900 a week to 1,500 a week. (So far that rate has not materialized!)
We reported the stunning news from the New York Times here.
Thanks to Richard at Blue Ridge Forum (on twitter @highblueridge ) for sending us this tweet from twitter extraordinaire Mike Cernovich. @Cernovich has 298,000 followers and here is what he posted on May 30th:
So who is Brian Hook?
Hint! He worked against Donald Trump in the primary and now he sits next to Tillerson’s throne!
This is not how one goes about draining the swamp!
More tomorrow……
Category: The Opposition
Supreme Court could announce fate of Trump 'travel ban' and refugee ceiling reduction at any time
According to AP at ABC News, here, they have likely already decided and an announcement will come next week.
There are two major issues at stake (maybe more than two, but two for me!). The first is whether the President has the authority to ban, for a limited time, all entry to the US from six (mostly Muslim countries that are hotbeds of terrorism) in order to keep us safe while they review the entry screening process. Again, this involves all those of all religions and ethnic groups entering the US through any means from those six countries.
The second issue, and the one more interesting to me, is the one addressed by the Hawaii court (9th Circuit), but NOT by the Maryland court (4th Circuit), and that is whether the President has the legal right to come in at any number below the refugee admissions CEILING set last fall (in this case set by Obama), or more specifically has a legal right to announce a mid-year lowering of the admission ceiling for all refugees, of all religions, from all countries! And, does he have the legal authority to put in place a 120-day moratorium (again all countries, all religions) while the federal government reviews the screening process for refugees.
Presidents always come in under the CEILING, some by very significant numbers, and no one has legally challenged previous presidents on that issue. There may have been some squawking by federal refugee contractors***, who receive a large portion of their budget based on a per head payment, when Bush came in way low in the wake of 9/11, but I don’t think he was taken to court over it.
See what I said here about how Obama failed to reach some of his ceilings:
In FY2011, they were 23,576 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue President Obama?
In FY2012, they were 17,762 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue President Obama for leaving thousands “stranded in war-torn countries”?
I have my fingers crossed that Justice Department lawyers knew enough to separate the two issues (the overall travel ban from the CEILING issue) which should never have been addressed in the same Executive Order in the first place.
Here is what ABC is reporting:
The Supreme Court has almost certainly decided what to do about President Donald Trump’s travel ban affecting citizens of six mostly Muslim countries.
The country is waiting for the court to make its decision public about the biggest legal controversy in the first five months of Trump’s presidency. The issue has been tied up in the courts since Trump’s original order in January sparked widespread protests just days after he took office.
The justices met Thursday morning for their last regularly scheduled private conference in June and probably took a vote about whether to let the Trump administration immediately enforce the ban and hear the administration’s appeal of lower court rulings blocking the ban.
The court’s decision could come any time and is expected no later than late next week…..
[….]
The case is at the Supreme Court because two federal appellate courts have ruled against the Trump travel policy, which would impose a 90-day pause in travel from citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, said the ban was “rooted in religious animus” toward Muslims and pointed to Trump’s campaign promise to impose a ban on Muslims entering the country as well as tweets and remarks he has made since becoming president.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the travel policy does not comply with federal immigration law, including a prohibition on nationality-based discrimination.
That court also put a hold on separate aspects of the policy that would keep all refugees out of the United States for 120 days and cut by more than half, from 110,000 to 50,000, the cap on refugees in the current government spending year that ends Sept. 30.
More here.
If the court rules against Trump on this last point, I see the contractors getting what they always wanted—the President’s determination set in September in advance of the fiscal year would become a TARGET that must be reached, and not simply a CEILING not to be exceeded. (The Refugee Act of 1980 does have a mechanism for increasing the ceiling during the course of the year that requires consultation with Congress, but is silent if the President comes in low.)
For a laugh, as the contractors argue in the Supreme Court that the President (in this case, Donald Trump) doesn’t have the right to set the ceiling, they say this (see here) about a bill in Congress that would eliminate some Presidential power to set the ceiling:
“….it would remove presidential authority to set the number of refugees who may enter the country per year.”
Make up your minds—does the Prez have the power or not? Truth be told, this is about Donald Trump and not if the president was Mark Zuckerberg!
***Federal refugee resettlement contractors are paid by you, on a per head basis, to place refugees in your towns:
- Church World Service (CWS)
- Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
- Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
- International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
- US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
- Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
- World Relief Corporation (WR)
Human Rights Watch badgers Japan to take refugees….
….and join the union of nations experiencing Islamic terror attacks!
Well, they didn’t exactly say that, but that would be the ultimate result if Japan opened its borders to migrants from Africa and the Middle East.
Japan, along with a tiny handful of countries has made the decision to fight to maintain its unique JAPANESE culture (Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are most visibly fighting for the same thing!) against enormous pressure to invite in the third world .
Every few years (see my Japan archive), pressure builds for the country to take in more than its present handful of refugees. So here we go again!
From Human Rights Watch:
When looking for solutions to the global refugee crisis, Japan is often identified as a country that could do more. It contributes generously to the United Nations refugee agency but does very little in terms of recognizing asylum seekers in Japan or in resettling refugees stranded, often in terrible conditions, in Thailand, Lebanon, Kenya, Pakistan and elsewhere.
On a recent visit to Tokyo I raised this issue in meetings with members of both houses of parliament from the ruling coalition. We discussed resettlement. In each meeting, the most awkward moment came when I presented the politician with a list of countries that have resettled refugees, and how many they have accepted. The politician scanned the list, saw that other advanced economies had resettled many thousands of refugees, and noted that Japan’s total was less than 20 per year.
[LOL! I bet they scanned the list and made a mental note that most of the countries on the list are having more crimes and are battling Islamic terrorism while they, in Japan, live in relative peace!—ed]
The current government, like its predecessors, repeats the stance that Japan is not an “immigration country.”
HRW to Japan: you can’t just bring in a handful of Burmese, how about some Muslim Somalis, Syrians and Iraqis to make life more exciting! They have screwed up their own countries and they want a chance to screw up yours!
Hang in there Japan we are cheering for you! You have a right to keep Japan for the Japanese!
White House and anonymous leakers at DOS (and outside DOS) in battle over refugee costs
Can you believe it! Reuters is reporting on four anonymous leakers (inside and outside the Dept. of State) who are saying chief White House aide Stephen Miller is trying to skew numbers to make the refugee program look more expensive than they claim it is!
Most interesting to me is that a former State Department “official” is in on the effort to skewer Miller (and Trump of course!).
Can you say ‘Obama shadow government’!
Editor: Sorry I’m giving you a quicky post here. I am preparing for something this evening and have no time for more comment and analysis, except to say that getting at the true cost of the overall migration of impoverished third world refugees to middle America is almost impossible because in most states, the welfare offices do not track and separate out the different classes of immigrants using social services, medicare, or sending kids to school.
For federal budget planning, I’m guessing Miller is trying to get at the true cost to admit the refugees in the first place which is where the federal budget costs are initially incurred for decision-making needed by September.
Here is Reuters on the ‘Deep State’ undermining the White House (again!), getting more cocky by the day aren’t they!
Two studies that President Donald Trump hopes will buttress his case to cut the number of refugees are at the heart of a fight between senior White House adviser Stephen Miller and career U.S. government officials over immigration policy, four current and former officials said.
Trump in March ordered the U.S. State Department and other agencies to tally only the costs of resettling refugees but not the benefits that policy experts said refugees can also bring, including tax revenues, professional skills and job creation. [Virtually impossible, and are we going to tally medicare, schools, housing, SSI and criminal justice system costs for how many years?—ed]
A current official said Miller had convened meetings with State Department staffers to discuss the refugee cost reports. When department specialists proposed including refugees’ economic contributions in the studies to produce a more balanced assessment, Miller rebuffed the idea, one current and one former U.S. official said.
The White House said Miller did not hold meetings on the specific subject of the cost reports and that Trump’s overall fiscal year 2018 budget proposal sought to “make transparent the net budgetary effects of immigration programs and policy.”
The current and former officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they believe, however, that the administration wants to help make a case to restrict refugee flows by creating a skewed analysis.
“It’s a policy outcome in search of a rationale,” said a former U.S. official familiar with the debate.
Continue reading here and prepare to be outraged!
Endnote: If Henshaw and Bartlett are not the leakers, they better find out who is! They are responsible for whoever is talking to the press! Like it or not, they work for President Donald Trump!
117 Leftwing groups/refugee contractors oppose bill to BEGIN to reform refugee program
I haven’t said much about this bill re-introduced in Congress last week mostly because it doesn’t go far enough to really reform the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.
In my view anything that leaves the United Nations choosing our refugees and the non-profit ‘religious’ (and secular) charities being paid by the head to place those third world people secretly into unsuspecting towns and cities doesn’t go far enough.
The financial incentive (that per head payment) to unelected non-profit groups (who then lobby Congress) for more and more paying clients (aka refugees) must be completely abolished.
Halfway measures, as this bill represents, if it ever even got through Congress and to the President’s desk would take away any incentive for abolishing the Refugee Act of 1980 and rewriting the whole thing, so I’m not a believer in taking the ‘first steps’ as I am sure the advocates of this bill are calling it.
Read the text yourself, here, there are some bones thrown to states/communities to have some say in whether they will ‘welcome’ refugees or not, and there is some effort made to get at the fraud that we know is rampant overseas.
The only hope for real reform is if the Trump Administration has the guts to send a determination of ZERO (refugees) in September for FY18 with the proviso that Congress undertake total reform of our refugee admissions policy before any more are admitted!
President Trump or Congress won’t have guts unless you bombard them!
That is what the well-organized and well-financed Open Borders crowd does all the time! See here…..
Here is what the contractors*** and the Leftwing/social justice crowd are telling Congress about HR. 2826:
“….it would remove presidential authority to set the number of refugees who may enter the country per year.”
That last line of my screenshot (of a portion of the letter) made me laugh. So, they are worried about the President losing his authority to set the CEILING—any President other than Donald Trump I presume! So far they have made it clear that Trump is not permitted to have that power!
Quick! tell the Supreme Court! They are admitting that the President has the authority to set the number to be admitted to the US each year!
The letter continues…
Then here (below) are the groups that signed it. If you are involved in any of these groups/churches etc. let them know what you think.
Many of the federal contractors paid to place refugees in your towns are on this letter. The Ethiopian Community Development Council is not here nor is World Relief. Episcopal Migration Ministries is represented by the Episcopal Church (we learned here the other day that they are one and the same).
Also not here is the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. I have noticed lately that they aren’t signing on to this type of joint political letter. Maybe you have gotten to them through your parishes?
LOL! You can tell how far Left this list is by the fact that SEIU signed it!
This post is filed in my relatively new category ‘what you can do’ in response to so many readers asking the question.
You can bombard your member of Congress, your US Senators, and the White House about what you think should be done about the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program. Then tell your church leaders what you think if your church signed on to this letter in your name!
*** This is the list of the nine federal contractors being paid by the head to place refugees in towns across America. Those in red below signed this letter of opposition to the House Judiciary Committee.
- Church World Service (CWS)
- Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
- Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
- International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
- US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
- Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
- World Relief Corporation (WR)