Protesters eager for more refugees demonstrate against President Trump
I know, I know, you are probably getting sick of hearing from me on the issue of the upcoming Presidential Determinationon the number of refugees to be admitted to the US in Fiscal Year 2019 which begins on October first—less than 2 months from now.
But, I must keep talking about it because the Open Borders Left and especially the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors are lobbying day and night to pressure the Prez into going back to the levels they enjoyed during the Obama presidency.
You might call it refugee ‘cap wrangling season’ as the players in the refugee resettlement circles in Washington jockey for position for the coming fiscal year.
Everyone is waiting to see what Sec. of State Pompeo will say.
A lot rides on the ceiling, or cap, the President, by law, sets for the coming fiscal year—how many refugees could be admitted and where they might come from. It is a power assigned to the President by then Senator Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter as they pushed through, and Carter ultimately signed, the Refugee Act of 1980.
Besides the push from the Leftwing Open Borders gang for more diversity for America, and Dems for more voters, a lot of federal money for nine federal resettlement contractors*** is at stake.
I hope not to be talking about it every day (seeyesterday’s post), but when I saw this Politico story I figured it included a little nugget that you should know about, namely that the President threw out the number 5,000 in last years ‘cap wrangling season.’
The annual negotiating about how many refugees the President should aim to admit to the US in the coming fiscal year, which begins on October 1 of this year, is underway.
But the difference between those machinations for say 2016 when the refugee resettlement contractors***, which are paid by the head to place refugees in your towns and cities, were pushing for 200,000 and upand Obama set the ceiling for his final year at 110,000 and today demonstrate that the President, who ran on reducing the numbers, is keeping his word.
Stephen Miller has been with the President since early in the campaign. I had a laugh just now. When looking for a photo for this post I see that the vast majority of Miller’s media photos show him with a scowling expression on his face.
25,000 is the number being bandied about, but rumors persist that Miller continues to think that a cap of 15,000 would take care of the TRULY persecuted people.
TheNew York Times has a very detailed report. I can’t snip it all, but encourage you to read the whole thing.
Don’t lose sight of one important point:
We have a backlog of 700,000 asylum claims to process. Those are people who got in to the US by some other means (mostly illegal) and claim they should be considered as refugees. If granted refugee status they become eligible for all the welfare goodies a UN-chosen refugee flown to the US gets.
Therefore as the refugee contractors help more and more migrants coming illegally across our borders file asylum claims, they are only making it worse (under this President) for refugees waiting abroad.
As of August 1, the US admitted 18,251 refugees to the country with 48 states sharing the load.
George Bush previously held the record for low admission years following 9/11. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/04/03/trump-on-pace-to-break-bush-record-of-lowest-refugee-resettlement-numbers-since-1980-law-enacted/
There are only two months left in the fiscal year (FY19 begins October first) and at the present rate, the Trump Administration should come in just over 22,000.
Previous low admission years came in the wake of 9/11 when President Bush dramatically slowed the program out of concerns for national security.
Here is a map fromWrapsnet of where the 18,251 have been placed thus far.
Note that Texas is the numero uno ‘welcoming’ state even though the governor officially withdrew the state from the program (shows how futile that was!). Turning the red state blue!
(See my right hand sidebar where I have recorded each month’s number of ‘new Americans’ this fiscal year.)
Wyoming has never had a refugee program and Hawaii (the state that loves diversity) rarely gets any!
According to the LA Times, as paying refugee clients decline, refugee NGOs are now focusing on helping immigrants of all stripes on a longer term basis, presumably by raising private money! Could this be a reawakening of real Christian charity?
I’m really sick of these stories. I see them all over the country (this is the PR run-up to the President’s decision on how many refugees the US will take in FY19, a decision expected to be made public in September).
However,this storydid have a few bits of information that are useful and make it worth posting.
Arrivals of refugees have hit historic lows. To stay afloat, resettlement agencies re-brand
The door to the nonprofit World Relief, tucked between a dance studio and a tutoring company on the second floor of a Garden Grove strip mall, still says “refugee resettlement services.”
In 2015, we obtained a World Relief internal letter instructing staff to not read Ann Corcoran’s blog! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/10/31/former-refugee-contractor-ceo-america-needs-refugees-to-teach-us-how-to-love-one-another/
But it’s been nearly a year since a new refugee has walked through it.
The number of refugees admitted to the U.S. since President Trump took office has dropped to its lowest level in decades. As a result, the office and dozens of other refugee resettlement operations across the country have been forced to close, shift their resources or re-brand.
One of the advances I’ve seen over the last decade is that the media now reports that the contractors*** are paid by the US taxpayers on a per refugee basis.
Nine nonprofits across the country are federally approved to resettle refugees and receive government funding for each case they handle.Until last year, each of them had an office in Southern California.
But World Relief and four others have shut down in the region, suspended operations, laid off staff or reduced their hours.
[….]
The office closed its refugee operation last July and shifted its resources to helping immigrants, which had long been a sideline of its operation.
[….]
The declines [in refugee admissions] left many agencies depleted of federal funding and struggling to survive.
Even in places where new refugees are still arriving, changes are afoot. The International Rescue Committee office in Glendale, which once resettled more than a thousand refugees each year, has received only about 100 people this year.
“The need just isn’t there in the same way anymore,” said Martin Zogg, the group’s executive director. “So we have to give people other jobs to do.”
I would like to think that the nine resettlement contractors listed below have seen the light and are raising private money and not depending on the money trees growing in Washington, DC for their charitable ‘good works,’ but my cynical side says they are just trying to stay in business until Trump is no longer President and the refugee spigot opens again.
Sorry if you are sick of me saying it, but there will be no long term change to our refugee policy and program as long as there are no changes in the law during the Trump years.
***I post these as often as I can because new readers need to know that these quasi-government groups (funded with taxpayer dollars) are also politically pushing for more immigration of all sorts in Washington—they are not simply refugee advocates.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.
