Not surprisingly, here is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) out with its action alert e-mail minutes after today’s Trump Administration press conference asking the Leftwing open borders gang to call the White House to oppose more vetting and to do more for refugees (HIAS’s paying clients).
See my post earlier today about how HIAS supports a religious test for refugees—the ones they want admitted to the US!
See the phone numbers HIAS has kindly supplied for us. Call the White House and thank the President for keeping us safe and for slowing the flow of expensive refugees to your towns and cities.
And, send us a donation! We have a lot of big salaries to pay! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/11/13/hebrew-immigrant-aid-society-lectures-trump-never-mentions-its-pecuniary-interest-in-refugees/
More later………….
300 refugees living in the US suspected of having Islamic terror connections!
For me, that is the biggest news that came out of the press conference this morning.
Here is the brief story atBreitbart:
Washington (AFP) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating around 300 refugees admitted into the United States for suspected terror-linked activities, US officials said Monday.
Too bad that the Justice Dept (before Sessions got there) dropped the ball and couldn’t answer judge’s questions about refugee terrorist numbers after the first EO.
The officials gave the figure as justification for a just-announced 120-day halt on admitting refugees from any country to review security vetting procedures.
“Today more than 300 people, according to the FBI, who came here as refugees are under an FBI investigation today for potential terrorism-related activities,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.
Unnamed spokesman at DHS:
“The salient fact here is that there are 300 individuals admitted and welcomed to the United States in the refugee admissions program who either infiltrated with hostile intent or who radicalized after admission to the United States,” he said.
Full text of the order is here. I don’t have time to look at it now.
We need to figure out if the 120 days starts when this EO goes in to effect on March 16th, or are they counting the 120 days back to the earlier January date. If it is the January date, then that stinks because there has been no halt for over a month now. If you find out let me know!
Who is Lautenberg? You will see below. First the news that CNN is reporting this morning (that the new EO will likely come today).
And, the Wall Street Journal was suggesting last evening also that the newly revised Executive Order (the so-called travel ban) could come today. If early reports are correct, the new EO will express no preference for saving Christians of the Middle East and Africa.
Here are a few highlights that involve the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, from the Wall Street Journal:
The new version is expected to still ban travel from several Muslim-majority nations, but unlike the original, it will leave Iraq off the list, several people familiar with the planning said. [The irony is that the refugee terrorists we have caught in the US were mostly Iraqis!—ed]
No preference for Christians?
The new order is expected to remove a provision giving preference to refugees who are members of religious minorities, which was expected to benefit Christians coming from Muslim nations, several people said. It is unclear if this or possibly other changes would be enough to address those concerns.
The revised order is expected to again temporarily suspend the admission of refugees to the U.S., but unlike the original, it is likely to treat Syrian refugees the same way as those from other countries, people familiar with the planning said. The original executive order suspended the entire refugee program for four months and indefinitely suspended admission of Syrian refugees.
Let’s talk about this issue of a religious test!
We have had a religious test for certain special groups since 1990! Senator Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat from New Jersey, served in the US Senate beginning in 1982. He died in 2013. He put into federal law a provision to FAVOR religious minorities from Russia, later expanded to include those from Iran. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lautenberg
You will hear representatives of the federal resettlement contractors scream that we can’t possibly favor Christians because our Muslim friends will get mad at us, but……. We have been giving special treatment and admitting certain religious minorities AS REFUGEES for decades under a law commonly referred to as the Lautenberg Amendment!
How do you think we justified admitting religious minorities from Russia including since FY03, 1,965 Jews and 11,410 Russian Muslimsknown as Meskhetians (out of a total of 19,440 ‘refugees’ from Russia)! (Numbers from Wrapsnet) What on earth made them “refugees?”
Lautenberg was later extended to include Iranian religious minorities.
Our old pals at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society have been patting themselves on the back for decades for their work under Lautenberg!
From their website (emphasis mine):
The Lautenberg Amendment, first enacted in 1990 as part of the U.S. foreign operations budget to facilitate resettlement of Jews from the former Soviet Union, allowed HIAS to bring tens of thousands to safety. As the worldwide refugee situation changed, the Lautenberg Amendment was expanded to include persecuted religious minorities in other countries, such as Jews, Christians, and Baha’is from Iran.
Despite being a crucial part of U.S. refugee policy, it expires each year and must be reauthorized.
They then direct readers to a pdf, here.
This is a screenshot of the opening page of the document: https://www.hias.org/sites/default/files/lautenberg_amendment_backgrounder.pdf
I had a quick look at Wrapsnet for just this fiscal year (10/1/2016 to today) and learned that we admitted 1,637 ‘refugees’ from Iran (635 processed through Vienna, Austria as of January 31, 2017, data not yet available through February). Of those only 122 were Muslims, so the remainder (1,515) were religious minorities including 26 Jews.
We have a religious test!
We processed from Russia from the first day of fiscal year ’17 (October 1, 2016) to January 31, 2017, 251 so-called ‘refugees.’ 29 were Russian Jews.
We have a religious test!
I’m not a lawyer, but if the courts don’t allow a Trump Executive Order to give preference to African and Middle Eastern Christians, how is it that the Lautenberg Amendment (recently extended by Congress) is legal? And, has been legal and Constitutional for going on 27 years?
Can we rightly expect HIAS to stand in support of Trump’s original concept of a religious test that would allow Christians in majority Muslim countries to have access to the US Refugee Admissions Program? Don’t hold your breath!
Politico is reporting that it will be tomorrow, but who knows.
What we do know is that the portion of the Executive Order reducing the number of refugees being permitted entry to the US this fiscal year was not affected by the court wrangling and that the federal refugee resettlement contracting agencies*** are going to mount a campaign against Trumpno matter what the new EO says. Pow-wow on the EO? Hope it includes step #2, getting Congress to reform the Refugee Admissions Program.
Their money is already being cut off by virtue of the reduced numbers since they are paid by the head for each refugee client they place. (Fewer clients=less money for them) This morning we have admitted 37,323 refugees in FY2017, and the Trump team says the number for the year will not go over 50,000.
But, I am repeating (until I want to barf) that 50,000 is not that low considering that George W. Bush had 4 years under that number, see here. And, as soon as he left office, Obama opened the spigot.
Here is Politico:
President Donald Trump is expected to sign on Monday a new executive order on his controversial travel ban at the Department of Homeland Security, according to senior government officials familiar with the matter.
It is unclear how significant the changes to the current order will be or whether the White House will continue a court fight over its old order.
The original order restrained immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, temporarily halted the entry of refugees and indefinitely shut down the entrance of refugees from Syria.
White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was heading on Saturday to Mar-a-Lago “for an EO launch meeting” with a team from the Department of Justice. They will meet with DHS officials and the president, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Repeat seven times!
I’ve lost track of how many times I have said it, but tinkering around the edges and simply reducing the number to 50,000 will do nothing to reform the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.
Only a complete moratorium for an extended time will force Congress to BEGIN to examine the present flawed system.
If not reformed/trashed/re-written (or whatever), the next President can just open the spigot wide again!
Congress is only too happy to hide on the subject, Trump must make them do their jobs!
*** These are the nine federal contracting agencies that monopolize the system of placing refugees in your towns and cities:
I checked the numbers at Wrapsnet this morning and see that since I reported last on Wednesday (March 1) we had admitted 296 additional refugees.
The UN asked the US to help clear out their camps for the DR Congolese and as of today we admitted 37,913 in just over 3 years. 50 arrived since Wednesday.
Readers will recall that the US State Department notified its refugee resettlement contractors to expect the flow to stop on about March 3rd. Clearly it hasn’t stopped yet.
Of the 296 admitted since Wednesday, 105 were from four of the seven countries identified in the so-called “travel ban.”
None came in the last few days from Libya, Syria or Yemen (but readers should know that in the last few years only tiny numbers, if any, came from Libya or Yemen). But, it was a surprise to see that Syria was down to zero in the last couple of days.
The big winner in the gang of seven countries was Somalia which sent us a whopping 77 refugees since Wednesday.
Other big winners, among the usual sending countries, were Burma (97, 12 of those were Muslims) and 50 came from the DR Congo.
DR Congo! The UN said take 50,000 and we said yes, master!
Long time readers will remember that we promised the United Nations, here in 2013, to admit 50,000 from the DR Congo over 5 years. Only a small number of those are Muslims, but they represent some very traumatized women (with lots of children) who will require expensive mental health treatment,here. Their contribution to the US economy will surely be a negative one as we are clearly importing extreme poverty in this case.
I see that as of this morning we have admitted 37,913 from DR Congo since FY2013!
This is a prime example of a key reform we expect the Trump Administration to make. If we are going to admit some refugees….
We should decide which ‘refugees’ we take, not simply jump when the United Nations tells us to!
Did your state get Congolese? Here is a map from Wrapsnet showing where the DR Congolese were distributed since FY13:
If you can’t read Florida, it is 1,329. Alaska is 72 and Hawaii 0. A reminder: Wyoming is the only state that never started a refugee resettlement program.
The top three receiving states are Texas, Arizona, and North Carolina.
Tell President Trump to stop jumping when the UN tells us to help them clean out their refugee camps!
Endnote: I suspect the delay in the new travel ban announcement is that the State Department is waiting to clear the last refugees through airports world wide.
This post is filed in ourTrump Watch!category as well as ‘refugee statistics’and ‘where to find information.’
My DR Congo archive is here.
