Politico: Sec. of State Tillerson arguing with White House's Miller over refugees?

07/03/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A word of caution! All of these reports being leaked out about conversations between the White House and the State Department must be viewed with a skeptical eye.
That said, this story sounds plausible because we know that Stephen Miller, a longtime Trump aide and expert on immigration and refugees, is a key White House strategist on the subject.

The 31-year-old Miller has been at Trump’s side since the earliest days of the Trump campaign.

We also have gotten previous suggestions that Tillerson aide Brian Hook (a Bushie) is soft on the refugee program, see here. Could Hook be the source for the discord story?
Now that the Supreme Court has added a new wrinkle by doing away with the whole concept of a Presidentially-designated CEILING that is a cornerstone of the Refugee Act of 1980, we can imagine that disagreements are surfacing between the White House immigration hardliners and the DOS which is largely being run by career bureaucrats who loved Obama and Hillary.
I suspect it is the ‘careers’ who put together the bragging graphic, here. Ten Pittsburghs is going to sell the USRAP? Did the Secretary’s office ever eyeball it before it was posted?
Here is what Politico is reporting:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson argued with senior White House aide Stephen Miller over immigration issues last week in a second recent clash with the White House.

Miller pushed Tillerson and the State Department to be tougher on immigration and make changes to the programs they control, according to four people familiar with the conversation in the West Wing. John Kelly, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, was also present.

It is pretty outrageous to attribute the news of discord to “four people familiar with the conversation.” One person might have leaked it back to the DOS and three career bureaucrats are then “familiar with the conversation” and presto! Politico has a story with four sources!

The lead Politico reporter, Josh Dawsey, quoting “four people familiar with the conversation” says on his twitter page that he is a “cigar & bourbon” kind of guy (what is that on his shirt?). Politico welcomed him in December with this comment: “We are very excited to welcome Josh to the newsroom on December 12, and to turn him loose on Washington and the incoming Trump administration.” http://talkingbiznews.com/1/wsj-reporter-dawsey-hired-by-politico-to-cover-white-house/

[….]

Miller has been holding meetings to address how to further curb the entry of refugees into the United States, per two administration officials, and has closely worked with senators on legislative proposals to sharply cut other forms of legal immigration. [ I sure hope to learn that reform of the US Refugee Admissions Program is on the Administration’s list of legislative proposals! If it isn’t than we will never see any real reform!–ed]

[….]

This week, CNN reported that the White House has proposed moving the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs to the Department of Homeland Security, along with its bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. [See my post here.—ed]

Those are among the State Department’s biggest functions and are among the government’s largest immigration arms. They control refugee vetting and releasing passports, among other issues.

[….]

Tillerson has grown increasingly frustrated at the White House and chafed at taking direction from younger Trump aides and not being able to implement State Department policies and offices like he would like, people familiar with his thinking say. [Who the heck are “people familiar with his thinking?” Dawsey could be making up this whole story!—ed]

Tillerson has grown especially agitated that less experienced figures like Miller – who previously worked on the Hill for attorney general and former Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions – have been giving him commands.

The former ExxonMobil CEO was promised autonomy by Trump and is fond of reminding others of that.

More here.
Politico reporter Dawsey has a lot of nerve reporting that Miller is somehow less experienced than Tillerson about immigration and immigration law!
Endnote: I think it’s time for all of us in the blogosphere to start highlighting especially young reporters (Dawsey is only 5 years out of Journalism school!) who act like kingmakers (or destroyers) and report stories based on ‘sources familiar with someone’s thinking!’

Refugee industry lauds Supreme Court, says we will get many more refugees in coming months

07/02/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I think it has dawned on them that the Supreme Court, in writing refugee law, has just exploded the decades-long concept that a ceiling is a CEILING. Here they predict that it will be a refugee free-for-all for months to come. Effectively they are saying there is NO ceiling (no longer even Obama’s 110,000) in place at least until October!
I was interested to see that Eric Schwartz is back…..
From Bloomberg:

The refugee ban will actually add more refugees.

Schwartz was Obama’s first Asst. Sec.of State for PRM (Anne Richard’s predecessor). He is now head honcho of this pro-refugee lobbying group. RI is not a resettlement contractor. https://www.refugeesinternational.org/people/

Trump used his power to reduce refugee entries for the current fiscal year to 50,000 from the target of 110,000 set by President Barack Obama. But the number of refugees who enter the U.S. is likely to end up higher. Under the Supreme Court’s June 26 ruling, refugees who have “bona fide” ties to the country may be admitted, and they don’t count as part of the cap.

Immigration advocates say that more than half of all refugees admitted each year have such ties. So even though the U.S is just days away from hitting the 50,000 figure, many more refugees may be entering the country while the 120-day ban is in effect.

“In all likelihood, I would expect we would end up with more than 50,000 this year,” said Eric Schwartz, president of Refugees International and former assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration. “Once we get to 50,000 there will inevitably be some number of refugees that meet the ‘bona-fide’ test and if the administration monkeys around with that by trying to slow down approvals, then they’ll be in violation of the court decision.”

More here. So you can tell where they are going with this…
We haven’t written much about Refugees International in the last few years (ever since Ken Bacon of Clinton/Lewinsky/Linda Tripp fame died while heading this organization).
We have written several important posts on Soros groupie Schwartz, see here.
This post is filed in my new category, ‘Supreme Court’ which will include all posts related to the decision handed down last week.

Refugee contractors planning lawsuits: are resettlement contractors 'bona fide entities?'

07/01/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

So far, the US Department of State says no….
Justice Clarence Thomas (Alito and Gorsuch) were right that the Supreme Court’s effort to ‘split the baby,’ with its decision on Trump’s ‘travel ban’ and refugee moratorium, will invite litigation through the remainder of the summer.
I wasn’t planning to write today (except maybe a post about this being RRW’s Tenth Anniversary) because it is Saturday of a big holiday weekend, but I want you to see that, yes, the contractors*** are getting in gear to sue the feds claiming that since refugees are assigned to them for placement in your towns, they are bona fide entities.
They sue while we pay their salaries!
Longtime readers know that it is my contention that the system in place for decades, where a federal contractor is hired to place refugees in your towns and the contractor is ostensibly a non-profit (some are ‘religious’) charitable organization being paid with your tax dollars yet can file lawsuits and lobby Congress, is an outrage.
Congress could do something about this, if it had the will (the Labrador bill is insufficient), but since leading Congressional Republicans are in the pockets of lobbyists (Tyson Foods for instance!) and the Chamber of Commerce in need of cheap labor, no real reform ever happens.
Carving itself out as the leader of the pack for political advocacy is the politically aggressive Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). HIAS was a litigant in one of the cases before the Court.

I just checked USA Spending and found that HIAS got over $104 MILLION from taxpayers since FY08.
And, what do you know, the feds paid them over $4.1 million in the 5 days before Donald Trump was inaugurated.
Here, about 3 weeks later, HIAS organized a NYC rally against Trump featuring speaker Rep. Keith Ellison. How much of your money was used for their protest?
Yesterday we learned a lot about what they plan to do next—sue!
And, LOL!, the Christian Post says not one word about how the do-gooder organizations are paid per refugee head to do their good works!

Refugees with connections to the nine refugee resettlement organizations in the United States should be allowed to enter the country in accordance with the Supreme Court’s ruling Monday that allowed a limited version of President Donald Trump’s travel ban to go into effect, advocates argue.

[….]

After the nation’s high court decided Monday that it would allow a scaled-back version of Trump’s March 6 executive order on immigration to be enacted, opponents of the travel ban were left wondering whether the the Supreme Court considers relationships with a refugee resettlement organization to be the type of “bona fide” relationships necessary to allow them to enter the country, once the 50,000 refugee cap set for fiscal year 2017 is met in July.

In 2016, Nezer of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was the chair of the Refugee Council USA (this lobbying consortium of the refugee industry has revolving chairmanship). RCUSA in August of 2016 said they wanted Obama to set a ceiling of 200,000 for FY17. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/08/02/lobbying-arm-for-refugee-resettlement-contractors-wants-us-to-take-200000-refugees-in-fy2017/

As the travel ban — which bans immigration from six Muslim majority countries for 90 days and refugee resettlement for 120 days — took effect on Thursday, the Trump administration explained in guidelines sent to U.S. embassies and consulates what it considers to a “bona fide relationship.”

[….]

As for entities, the guidelines state that people seeking access to the United States must show formal proof of their relationship with the a business or educational institution. However, an administration official declared in a press call Thursday that “the fact that a resettlement agency in the United States has provided a formal assurance for refugees seeking admission is not sufficient, in and of itself, to establish a bona fide relationship under the ruling.”

[….]

Legal action has already been filed to seek clarity on the Supreme Court’s order, which was somewhat vague about what constitutes a “bona fide” relationship. On Thursday, the state of Hawaii asked a federal judge to clarify the ruling and argued that the administration’s interpretation is too narrow and violates the ruling.

On a press call Friday, leaders of resettlement agencies authorized to resettle refugees in the United States decried the administration’s interpretation of the ruling. [You see how deceptive the press is—“authorized”—how about “contracted and paid!”—ed]

“Our argument is that under an interpretation of a clear reading of the Supreme Court decision is that a relationship with a resettlement agency does establish a ‘bona fide’ relationship for purposes of the ban,” said Melanie Nezer, the senior vice president of public affairs for HIAS, which was founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. [They dumped “Hebrew” from their name a few years ago. I guess when you are resettling large numbers of Muslim refugees, the word Hebrew was an impediment.—ed]

[….]

“We also imagine the debate about this in the administration, thinking that there was significant debate among people who really do understand resettlement in the administration and those who don’t,” Nezer said. “It seems pretty clear that this decision was made by people who don’t know or don’t much care about how resettlement works.”

[By the way, I don’t think the Supreme Court knew much about resettlement either or perhaps they wouldn’t have been rewriting refugee law, but that would be the fault of whoever presented the case for the Justice Department.—ed]

[….]

Director of the lobbying arm of the refugee industry Naomi Steinberg says 26,000 refugees are in the pipeline. What a convenient number. We are at 50,000 and Congress has appropriated enough money to admit 75,000 this fiscal year. If we hit 75,000, it will be about 10,000 ABOVE the average for the last ten years!

Around July 6 is when the United States is expected to hit the 50,000 refugee cap for fiscal year 2017 that Trump set in his executive order. After that, the “bona fide” standard will be going into effect for refugees, Nezer explained.

See my post yesterday about July 6th.
As of today we are at 49,225 refugees admitted this fiscal year. We may not see new numbers reported at Wrapsnet until the 5th or 6th.

[….]

Naomi Steinberg, the director of Refugee Council USA, added that there are over 26,000 refugees total who have gone through security vetting and have been approved to the come the United States and be resettled around the United States.

More here.
All of my posts related to what the Supreme Court ruled last week are archived in my category—Supreme Court.
*** For new readers, these are the nine contractors that monopolize refugee resettlement in America. Saying they are “authorized” to resettle refugees is a media deception. They are paid out of the US Treasury per head for every refugee they resettle. The incentive is always to bring more while they pretend to be doing this work completely from humanitarian motives!
The UN/US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed until we stop paying non-profit groups to advocate and lobby for their vested (Leftist!) interests.

State Department: refugee free-for-all until July 6th!

06/30/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Everyone wants to know what it all means… there is the 90-day travel ban (everyone, not just refugees) from six majority Muslim countries and then the 120-day moratorium for all refugees from all countries, but only for those refugees who don’t have certain relationships with those who got here before them.
And, so far it looks like resettlement agencies may not count as having “bona fide” relationships as ‘entities,’ but all of that could change next month, next week or the next minute! Therefore I am not going to wander in to the weeds of all this or lose sleep over it. We will just see how things evolve because there is nothing we can do to influence it all anyway.

By legislating from the bench, the Supremes have made it likely that even fewer persecuted Syrian Christians will be admitted to the US before late fall.

Just so you know we are at 49,248 refugees for this fiscal year when I checked Wrapsnet earlier this morning. We will hit 50,000 probably by July 6th, then what?
And, just to give you some comparison, that 49,248 is the highest number of refugees (excluding FY16) that we have admitted by the end of June in the last ten fiscal years, so the contractors*** shouldn’t be whining about a lack of paying ‘clients’ this year.

Syrian Christians now have an even smaller chance of getting to the US.

While I was at Wrapsnet, I checked the Syrian numbers. We have seeded 6,397 Syrians in to your towns and cities this fiscal year (which ends on Sept. 30th). Of the 6,397, 6,258 were Muslims of some variety. That puts the rate at 98% Muslim for the year (so far) for Syrians.
That same rate (Muslims to others) applies for the 1,809 Syrians Donald Trump’s State Department admitted since inauguration day.
As I continue to mention, because we have admitted so few Christian Syrians, any applying now likely will not have relatives here while the Muslims will, so expect the Syrian Muslim relatives to continue to be admitted (thanks to the Supreme Court writing refugee law!) because we all know that if they are relatives of someone here already, they couldn’t possibly be terrorists, right?
Here are a couple paragraphs from Vox. They and other leftwing media are trying very hard to figure out what it all means for their friends who make a living in the refugee industry and for those wanting more new Democrat voters that refugees represent. And, of course, so that they can further vilify Donald Trump.

What the ban means for refugees who don’t have “bona fide” family members in the US according to the categories laid out by the State Department. Many advocates have argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling should permit nearly all refugees to enter the US, because refugees have to be placed with a resettlement agency before entering the country, and that should count as a “bona fide” relationship. But the Supreme Court didn’t specify that, and the administration doesn’t seem to be taking it that way.

In a press call on Thursday, a senior administration official said that “the fact that a resettlement agency in the United States has provided a formal assurance for refugees seeking admission is not sufficient, in and of itself, to establish a bona fide relationship under the ruling.” It’s not yet clear whether this means refugees will only be admitted if they already have close family in the US, or whether some stage in the resettlement process will count as a “bona fide” relationship. And all refugees who are scheduled to arrive in the US through July 6th will be able to come without incident. But after that, tens of thousands of refugees, and the resettlement agencies in the US that employ people to help them, remain under a cloud of uncertainty — and it’s not looking good.

State Department Press Briefing with unidentified speakers!

Trump senior administration officials speaking to the media: From the Department of Justice we have [Senior Administration Official Five]. From DHS we have [Senior Administration Official Four]. From State we have [Senior Administration Official Two] and [Senior Administration Official Three]. [Senior Administration Official One] is from the White House. Whoever it was that opened the press briefing we have no clue.

Thanks to Vox for alerting us to the State Department press briefing to selected media here yesterday. You can read it inbetween your Independence day festivities.
Wouldn’t you think that the Trump Administration would at least try to be more open and transparent than the previous administration. I’ve noticed over the years that at these briefings, no one is permitted to know by whom they are being briefed!
No one in the Administration wants their name used—-just disgusting!

We’re joined today by senior administration officials from the White House, Departments of State, Homeland Security, and also from Justice. From the Department of Justice we have [Senior Administration Official Five]. From DHS we have [Senior Administration Official Four]. From State we have [Senior Administration Official Two] and [Senior Administration Official Three].

As a reminder, the call will be conducted on background. Attribution should be to senior administration officials.

Transcript of press briefing, here.
My previous posts on the this topic are filed in a new category: Supreme Court.

Random thoughts on the Supreme Court decision yesterday….

06/27/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

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!