Category: Trump Watch!

Trump crosses 40,000 refugees mark! Over 900 in past week! Syrians lead the pack in last 4 weeks

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It has been 4 weeks since President Trump announced his 120-day “moratorium” on refugee resettlement as part of the court-halted Executive Order.  And, for the umpteenth time, I repeat that the President did not have to even announce any “moratorium” or put it in an Executive Order!  He has the power to simply stop the processing!

GW Bush loved refugees, yet at this rate Trump will bring in more refugees than Bush. Bush’s average is about 58,000. At the rate of admission for this past week, Trump will surpass that number. Trump has already passed Bush’s lowest year (2003) of 39,554. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/01/27/trump-watch-is-rumored-refugee-cap-reduction-to-50000-that-significant/

Then on March 30th we were stunned to learn that they were aiming to bring in 900 refugees a week through the remainder of the fiscal year that ends on September 30th.
If he and Tillerson keep that pace they will admit around 60,000 this year which is near the average number we have admitted since 9/11.
Do they think we are not watching?
George Bush loved refugees and he averaged under 60,000!

Sure enough, according to Wrapsnet in the last week, from April 6th to today (April 13th) they have admitted 977 refugees in ONE WEEK!

It was yesterday that I noticed Trump had passed the 40,000 mark (it was 40,180 this time yesterday morning).  Today it is 40,602 (you might get slightly different numbers depending on the time of day you check the data, I try to check around the same time every day.)
That is an increase just since this time yesterday of 402!  (See my right hand sidebar where I am tracking the numbers every few days).

Going back to the date that the “moratorium” was supposed to begin on March 16th the Trump State Department has admitted 2,496 refugees.

100 Burmese Muslims admitted to US in last 4 weeks.

Of the 2,496, topping the list are 335 Syrians! 327 of those are Muslims. Other countries, where Trump’s campaign promise of “extreme vetting” was supposed to be put in place (Somalia and Iraq), come in at 283 each, and we admitted 116 Iranians in the last 4 weeks.
Most interesting to me is that we admitted 333 Burmese (that part is no a surprise because we have been admitting Burmese minorities for years and years).
The big surprise is that in just the last 4 weeks we admitted 100 Burmese Rohingya Muslims.  When I first started writing RRW in 2007, we were steering clear of bringing the devout Rohingya to America.

VOLAGs not making so much noise now!

Have you noticed that there are fewer news stories about the Refugee contractors*** screaming bloody murder about Trump (and their loss of federal bucks) in the last week or so? I have.  Has the word gone out to shut up for awhile?
The ultimate test for me will come in September when the Trump Department of State will send its “determination” to the Hill with the proposed numbers for FY2018.  Will Trump simply cave and continue the trend he has begun to bring in the average number of refugees that we have seen in the last 15 years?

Endnote:

We will also be watching to see if the Tillerson Dept. of State will go back to holding public hearings on the size and scope of the US Refugee Admissions Program.  The Obama DOS abandoned the public hearing format in 2015 after several years of hearings that had gotten contentious. See my comments last year here.
The ‘hearing’ is usually in May or possibly early June. We will be watching!
If the Trump team were smart they would hold some field hearings so that citizens impacted by the program could voice their concerns to the Administration—but, don’t hold your breath!
*** For new readers, these are the nine major contractors (VOLAGs), paid by you, to resettle refugees in your towns and cities:

Trump Department of State supports the Muslim Brotherhood, White House caves

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Not only on the Refugee Admissions front (see my previous post), but obviously fearing powerful Islamists, the US State Department has convinced the wobbling White House to not name the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.
From Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily  yesterday:

President Trump has decided not to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, at least for now, according to published reports citing pressure from the U.S. State Department and the King of Jordan.

If Trump was going to drain the swamp, why hasn’t he hired people like Michele Bachmann, Phil Haney, Kris Kobach or any number of other extremely tough, knowledgeable and qualified people to head up key positions on immigration and on Islamic terrorism in his government?

Anonymous sources told the Washington Times that the administration “backed down from a plan to designate the Brotherhood” after an internal State Department memo advised against it.

The State Department’s argument – put forth in a memo to the White House – comes down to a belief that there is actually more than one Brotherhood and that one side is not as bad as the other because it works through democratic processes in the Middle East, the Washington Times reports.

Yet, it’s always been known that the Brotherhood operates on multiple levels.

According to scholar Martin Kramer, the Muslim Brotherhood from its early days had “a double identity.”

[….]

Former Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., one of the earliest advocates of banning the Brotherhood in the U.S., describes it as “the mother lode of global terrorism.” She told WND President Trump is unlikely to be successful in defeating Islamic terror without confronting the head of the snake.

“It is the umbrella organization from which all terrorism flows because the Brotherhood’s goal is global Islamic rule,” Bachmann told WND. “It’s no coincidence that every terrorist act stems from the same Muslim Brotherhood motivation: Global governance under Islamic Shariah law.”

Phil Haney, former Homeland Security officer and co-author of the whistleblower book “See Something Say Nothing,” said it’s no coincidence that the State Department is heading up the opposition to declaring the Brotherhood a terrorist organization.

“It’s the same shallow argument we’ve been hearing for years,” Haney said. “We refuse to take them at face value and ask what do they, themselves, say they intend to do? This is willful blindness if you can’t take the Muslim Brotherhood at face value. This is part of the swamp that needs to be drained.”

Indeed, two months in to the new Administration and we see little effort being made to drain the swamp as we told you here earlier this morning.
Continue reading here for the 13 reasons why the Muslim Brotherhood is dangerous for America and the world.
Surely not lost on readers here at RRW is the fact that in order to advance the caliphate the MB needs people—migrants/Muslim refugees—placed in communities large and small throughout America.

Confirmed! TRUMP's Department of State is going back to normal refugee admission numbers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily received word from a US State Department spokesperson that YES, as the HuffPo reported yesterday, the Administration is going to admit 900 refugees a week for the remainder of the fiscal year which ends September 30th.

As of yesterday, that would mean that 62,482 could be the expected total.  The average since 9/11 has been around 64,000.  (See all admission numbers since 9/11 here.)
So big deal! The Trump team would be admitting only a small number below the average of George Bush and Barack Obama years.  The Dems, the Open Borders Left, the contractors with fat salaries, the Chamber of Commerce and RINO big business lackeys are surely all jumping for joy.
Some have suggested that all we have is Donald Trump, so I need to tone it down.  You aren’t going to hear me making excuses for him.

He is either being rolled by the bureaucrats or he (or Tillerson) has been convinced that businesses need the cheap labor.  Either way, it doesn’t look good!

Fortunately, since no one pays me for my work and my writing, I don’t have to tone anything down!
Here is what Hohmann learned from a “State Department Spokesperson” yesterday:

The U.S. State Department is ramping up refugee admissions back to more normal levels after it had slowed to a trickle over the past month under President Donald Trump.

WND has confirmed through a State Department spokesperson that the administration is set to more than double the number of refugees arriving in U.S. cities from the current 400 per week to 900 per week.  [Frankly I was surprised that they were even bringing, or planned to bring 400 a week—ed]

On March 15 a federal judge, Derrick Watson in Hawaii, issued a nationwide injunction stopping the State Department from enforcing or implementing sections 2 and 6 of President Trump’s March 6 executive order. Section 6[b] lowers the cap on refugee arrivals to 50,000, down from the 110,000 level set by President Obama.

After the court’s ruling, which was upheld Wednesday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the cap reverts back to the Obama level of 110,000.

Consequently, the State Department continues to accept refugees and this includes scheduling travel for refugees who have been screened and are otherwise approved for travel.

“The Court Order issued on March 15 prohibits the enforcement or implementation of Section 6 of the EO,” the State Department spokesperson told WND. “Section 6 of the EO includes a cap on refugee admissions into the United States of 50,000 for FY 2017. In accordance with the Court Order, and consistent with both our operational capacity and our capacity under available funding, we have increased the current pace of refugee arrivals to approximately 900 individuals per week. ” [So this means they must have lots of your money still available (or is coming from Congress!) to spend on admitting refugees!—ed]

Do the math, this comes out to approximately 62,482!

….the 62,482 is not a historically low number. In fact, it’s just barely under the per-year average of 64,000 since 2002.

Continue reading here.

Do NOT believe the lie that they have to aim to bring in 110,000 refugees just because Obama set a ceiling for FY2107 for that number.  That was not a normal number. It was by far the highest ceiling Obama had ever proposed.

Bill Frelick of Human Rights Watch: There is no requirement that the US must admit a single refugee. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/03/20/hawaii-judge-thumbs-nose-at-ag-sessions-yes-my-order-applies-to-refugee-ceilingmoratorium/

And, there is nothing MANDATORY about that number.  They are trying to fool us and the media!

I am repeating this section of a recent post.  The contractors have been for decades trying to turn the President’s ceiling into a target to be achieved, now Trump is helping them do that!

…look at this chart (below) very carefully.   When I found it at Wrapsnet, the last year, 2016, was not complete.  (Know that we ultimately brought in just short of the 85,000 ceiling (a rare occurrence)).

The federal refugee resettlement contractors have long wanted the president’s ‘determination’ each year to be a GOAL (a target) not a CEILING! But, the law says it is a ceiling. Look at the column for CEILING and the column for the number actually admitted!

What do you see?  Rarely does the number admitted reach the CEILING.

In FY2006, they were 28,777 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue the President?

In FY2007, they were 21,718 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue the President?

In FY2008, they were 19,809 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue the President?

In FY2009, they were 5,346 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue the President?

In FY2010, they were 6,689 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue the President?

In FY2011, they were 23,576 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue President Obama because he didn’t reach the ceiling? No!

In FY2012, they were 17,762 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue President Obama for leaving thousands “stranded in war-torn countries”? No!

 
You need to let the President know what you think.  Click here for the White House comment page. After you tell Donald Trump how disappointed you are, then be sure to let your voice be heard in the offices of your Member of Congress and US Senators!
One last thing, even if the Justice Dept. has hopes of successfully appealing the rogue judge’s decisions on the USRAP ceiling, there is no reason that they must open overseas processing at this time and jerking a lot of people around all over the world!
This post is filed in our Trump Watch! category as well as ‘refugee statistics’ and ‘where to find information.’

Huffington Post: State Department says it will up refugee arrivals to 900 a WEEK!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have increased the current pace of refugee arrivals to approximately 900 individuals per week.

(State Department spokesperson)

 
Oh geez! What the heck is the Trump Administration doing?
As we have said repeatedly, Trump’s refugee admissions are not at the mercy of two rogue judges. He can bring in any number under the CEILING set either by Obama (110,000) or his reduced ceiling (50,000).

As far as we know, Sec. of State Rex Tillerson has not chosen a political appointment to head up the Population, Refugees and Migration department that runs the USRAP, thus the program is run by long-time federal employees with close ties to the contractors and to media like the HuffPo!

After resettlement contractors reduced their staffs (their federal funding depends on a per head payment for each refugee they resettle), now, if the Huffington Post is right, their numbers will go up from a previously predicted 400 per week to 900 per week and are complaining about being understaffed!

If you calculate 900 a week for the remaining (approx. 26 weeks in this fiscal year) and add that number to the number of refugees as of today (38,789) the result is approximately 62,189.

To put that number in perspective, the Bush Administration was BELOW that number in 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007 and 2008.
Even Obama was below that number in 2011 and 2012! (see here).

(We told you here that as of yesterday they have not ticked-up to 900 a week, yet!)
Here is what HuffPo is reporting:

The number of refugees being resettled in the U.S. has shot up ever since a federal court struck down portions of President Donald Trump’s second executive order on immigration earlier this month.

While this has allowed many to breathe a sigh of relief, it’s placing serious strain on the organizations responsible for bringing refugees to America and helping them resettle.

“In accordance with the Court Order, and consistent with both our operational capacity and our capacity under available funding, we have increased the current pace of refugee arrivals to approximately 900 individuals per week,” a State Department spokesperson told The Huffington Post in a statement on Tuesday. “New refugee pre-screening interviews will continue to be scheduled and conducted at Resettlement Support Centers around the world.”

Trump has signed two executive orders attempting to prevent refugees from finding safe haven in the United States since entering office. Both were legally challenged amid mass protests.

His first order, signed on Jan. 27, halted the refugee resettlement program for 120 days, among other things, and slashed the number of people who could be resettled in the U.S. from 110,000 in the 2017 fiscal year to 50,000.

As a result, the number of refugees entering the country weekly had been limited to 400 people, in an effort to avoid reaching the 50,000 quota too soon (the 2017 fiscal year ends on Sept. 30). Fewer refugees means less money allocated to the agencies that resettle refugees, since they receive federal funding contingent on the number of people they take care of.

Parts of this order were struck down in federal court in February, but the quota remained unchanged. So the 400 per week figure was in effect until Trump’s revised ban was struck down in a Hawaii federal court on March 15, only hours before it was supposed to be implemented.

Continue reading here.
This is further evidence to explain why the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is “cautiously hopeful.”
Next, I need to find out what role Congress is playing—have the RINOs increased funding for the USRAP (US Refugee Admissions Program)?

587 refugees admitted since 120-day moratorium should have started, Syrians top list

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It has been 13 days since the Trump Administration said it would begin a 120-day moratorium on admissions through an Executive Order blocked by two rogue judges.

Is it Tillerson or Trump leaving the door open a crack?

Instead of doing what the Trump Department of State is legally permitted to do, without an EO, and pause the program, we have admitted 587 additional refugees since I checked the data on the morning of March 16th (moratorium was to begin that day).

Topping the list are 116 Syrians and not far behind 107 Somalis.

Other countries sending us their supposed refugees in the last 13 days include Sudan (22), Iraq (50), Iran (36), Burma (44), DR Congo (23) and one of the most maddening is El Salvador (35).  There is no question that the El Salvadorans are NOT refugees.  Many other countries are represented by smaller numbers.
Each one of these ‘refugees’ will cost US taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars over the next 5 years.
Yesterday we learned that federal contractors are hopeful that Trump will actually aim for Obama’s dream number of 110,000 refugees for FY2017 (which ends on September 30th).
As of this morning, according to Wrapsnet, we are at 38,693!

Trump needs to get a pep talk from the Visegard 4!

By the way, as far as I know, the bureaucrats in the Dept. of State are still running the program. I haven’t seen any news about Trump and Tillerson picking an Asst. Sec. of State for Population, Refugees and Migration.  Have you?