The bill seeks to change the Refugee Act by putting a floor of 110,000 refugees as the minimum number to be admitted annually (among a Christmas tree of other provisions).
If you are saying, well, ho-hum, won’t go anywhere with Trump in the White House and the Senate controlled by Republicans, you need to take a broader view.
This is what the savvy Leftists do—they stake out their dream territory for the day when Trump is gone. He will be gone sooner or later. But, in the meantime they use initiatives like this one to keep their base engaged and it ticks me off because conservatives are always playing defense to their offense.
Where are the bills that could stake out a position on the immigration restriction side—-heck how about a bill calling for a moratorium on all immigration to America!
It won’t happen of course, but it would be a way to energize the base and lay down a marker.
The New Deal for New Americansis a marker the Open Borders Left is throwing down! It is to attract media attention and to move the needle in that direction—in the direction of their ultimate goal, a borderless world!
Mass. immigrant advocates join Sen. Ed Markey to celebrate introduction of visionary New Deal for New Americans Act
Markey and Millona at press event announcing bill. Media opportunity? How many media outlets were even in attendance? Doesn’t matter because they make it look like there is press in the room. It is all for show.
Dozens of advocates and leaders of immigrant- and refugee-serving organizations joined U.S. Senator Edward J. Markey at Agencia ALPHA today to celebrate the introduction of the New Deal for New Americans in the U.S. Senate.
The bill, which is strongly supported by the National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA), co-chaired by MIRA Executive Director Eva A. Millona, was introduced in the House last October and has 39 cosponsors so far, including U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley, James McGovern and Joseph P. Kennedy III.
It would provide federal leadership to increase access to citizenship; support local organizations that welcome newcomers; expand high-quality workforce development and English-language programs; increase access to legal counsel; and embrace America’s global role as a refuge.
To give these issues greater prominence and institutional support, it would also create a National Office on New Americans to lead a federal inclusion and integration strategy coordinated with state and local governments and community stakeholders.
[….]
A key provision of the bill would be to eliminate the annual ceiling for refugee admissions,which has dropped precipitously under the Trump administration, to just 18,000 for fiscal 2020, and replace it with a floor. The minimum annual admissions would be 110,000 – the same as the ceiling set by former President Obama for fiscal 2017 – to recognize America’s role as a refuge for people from around the world.
For new readers: the Refugee Act of 1980, which will be 40 years old on March 17th, gives the power to the President to set a ceiling for refugee admissions.
They don’t want to take the chance that another President like Trump would have that power. You need to know that Obama never came anywhere near 110,000 either. According to the Refugee Processing Center, his average annual admissions number was 69,946 over his 8 years in office.
Rarely do we get any reports on how many citizens take time to contact elected officials about their unhappiness with the refugee admissions program.
Governor Little with Mr. Chobani Yogurt in Twin Falls. Twin Falls is number 10 in the top cities in the nation ‘welcoming’ refugees on a per capita basis.*** Any wonder why the governor jumped on the bandwagon for more refugees for Idaho.
So it was interesting to see that in Idaho citizens took action in a big way to criticize their Republican governor when he encouraged the US State Department to send Idaho more refugees and thus went against the President’s reform effort.
Unfortunately I can give you only a tiny snippet of this story as it is behind a paywall. Surely some Idahoans will subscribe to the Idaho Press for the whole story.
Records show opposition to refugees, Gov. Little’s work to support resettlement program
Gov. Brad Little’s decision to continue to allow refugee resettlement in Idaho wasn’t out of step with his colleagues elsewhere, writes Post Register reporter Nathan Brown. Nineteen Republican governors told the Trump administration in December and January they wanted to keep taking refugees, with just Texas Gov. Greg Abbott asking to opt out.
Not everyone was happy with it. Facebook comments and Twitter replies on Little’s accounts quickly filled with people angry at his decision, and hundreds of people contacted his office to express their displeasure.Documents provided in response to a public records request show both the scale of the blowback and his administration’s work to present facts to justify the governor’s decision.
Note to PayPal donors! I want to thank all of you who send me donations for my work via PayPal. I very much appreciate your thoughtfulness. However, PayPal is making changes to their terms of service and I’ve decided to opt-out beginning on March 10, 2020.
“He (CEO Hetfield) expects HIAS to spend $80 million this year, its largest budget to date.”
I recently showed you, here, that indeed the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (one of nine federal refugee resettlement contractors***) is doing better under the Trump administration than it did previously for most of the Obama years.
Now here is news where HIAS CEO Mark Hetfield tells us why that is.
They are expanding their offices into Central and South America, and elsewhere.
So why the wailing about the Trump administration’s reduction in numbers? HIAS can certainly do its ‘religious charitable work’ elsewhere and stop pushing more migrants to America, right?
Refugee crisis continues to grow, HIAS director says
When we spoke earlier this week, Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, was traveling through Central and South America, visiting some of the organization’s many offices in the region. The number of those offices continues to grow.
We’ve long had programs in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama for refugees from Colombia,” Mr. Hetfield said. But now, with the refugee crisis in Venezuela, the organization has had to create new centers to handle the situation. And while thousands of refugees are streaming out of Venezuela, others continue to come in.
Only one year ago, HIAS had 45 offices across the world; today it has 71.
Most are in Central and South America and Mexico. “Our office in Ecuador has 250 staff members, with 16 offices across the country,” Mr. Hetfield said. He noted that in the United States, Venezuelans comprise the number one asylum-seeking group, “but nobody seems to be noticing this crisis.”
HIAS also has offices in Africa, Israel, and the United States. “We aspire to be where there is a refugee crisis,” Mr. Hetfield said.
Here is my favorite bit of news from this story!
They don’t want to reform the US Refugee Admissions Program because they fear they would lose in a fight in Congress because they know the American people are not on their side!
Unfortunately, he noted, “All international and domestic law is basically responding to the problems of World War II. It hasn’t been updated to reflect realities. And people are afraid to revisit it because of the fear that if we reopen it, it will be contracted rather than expanded.”
See my post yesterday about a Catholic publication pushing the BIG LIE that the Refugee Act of 1980, which is 40 years old this month and needs to be repealed or reformed, was signed into law by Ronald Reagan. It was not! Our peanut farmer President was responsible for creating the dysfunctional program that set up the taxpayer-funded money stream to these nine contractors.
***For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that operate as a huge conveyor belt monopolizing all refugee placement in America.
A ‘religious’ message from CWS one of three federally funded contractors suing to stop the President’s effort to reform the UN-driven Refugee Admissions Program.
And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.
The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?
I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.
Note to PayPal donors! I want to thank all of you who send me donations for my work via PayPal. I very much appreciate your thoughtfulness. However, PayPal is making changes to their terms of service and I’ve decided to opt-out beginning on March 10, 2020.
I wasn’t planning to post anything this morning because I figured I really needed to catch up on all of my e-mails and other messages on social media. I don’t want to appear rude and not respond to your many inquiries, but it seems that I can never catch up! (LOL! New readers may not know that I have no staff, I just do what I can on my own.)
Anyway, my plan was to do some catching-up this morning until the first article I read in my alerts was this one from the Catholic Standardpeddling the myth I thought had been corrected long ago when Grover Norquist (of all people) was selling the fake news that Ronald Reagan signed the Refugee Act of 1980 into law.
But, alas here it is again!
Revisionist history is not a good look!
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops was testifying along with others in the refugee industry at a House hearing this past week.
Bishop urges Congress to show compassion, solidarity with refugees
WASHINGTON (CNS) — During a Feb. 27 congressional hearing about the status of the nation’s refugee program, Washington Auxiliary Bishop Mario E. Dorsonville quoted someone who is not frequently mentioned on Capitol Hill: Pope Francis.
“Today I am here to echo the Holy Father’s message: to recognize that we must at all times, but particularly at this moment of great global turmoil, recognize the most vulnerable and welcome them to the extent we are able,” he said.
The bishop, chairman of the migration committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, pointed out to the members of Congress and others seated in the hearing room that he was there to offer his perspective as a naturalized immigrant to the United States from Colombia.
He was one on a panel of four people addressing the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, looking at the status of the U.S. Refugee Program, a week before 40th anniversary of the bipartisan Refugee Act of 1980, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan.
Bipartisan my foot!
The Refugee Act of 1980 was the brainchild of Senator Ted Kennedy; Senator Joe Biden was a chief sponsor; and it was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on March 17,1980 (St. Patrick’s day as a gesture to Kennedy).
Reagan was not elected president until November of that year.
I hate it when Christians lie! The ends do not justify the means!
No bipartisanship here: Warren Magnuson, Tip O’Neill, and Jimmy Carter DEMOCRATS all!
Get ready for all sorts of media hoopla this month as the Refugee Act of 1980 is 40 years old!
If your local media runs any story that mentions Reagan signing the Act into law, you need to take action and force a correction. Watch for it!
For more on the USCCB, don’t miss my postwhere I reported that they are losing millions of taxpayer dollars under Trump.
Note to PayPal donors! I want to thank all of you who send me donations for my work via PayPal. I very much appreciate your thoughtfulness. However, PayPal is making changes to their terms of service and I’ve decided to opt-out beginning on March 10, 2020.
Note to PayPal donors! I want to thank all of you who send me donations for my work via PayPal. I very much appreciate your thoughtfulness. However, PayPal is making changes to their terms of service and I’ve decided to opt-out beginning on March 10, 2020.
