Lawrence Bartlett, State Department refugee chieftain sidelined?

01/10/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The federal refugee contractors, that altogether receive over a half a billion a year of your money to place refugees in your towns and cities, must be using reporters at Reuters to get their messages out to the public.

Screenshot (1242) — I laughed when I saw that Reuters used a shot from when Bartlett headlined the Heritage Foundation ‘educational’ panel discussion on the US Refugee program last September. I had planned to do the same thing (use a shot from the panel discussion). When Heritage held this event, with inside the beltway types, I knew they had no clue about what was really happening with refugees in your towns and cities. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/09/14/is-the-heritage-foundation-selling-you-out-on-unus-refugee-admissions-policy/

Here we have news that Lawrence Bartlett, some of you have seen his advocacy for more refugees (and antipathy to local citizens) first hand, has been sidelined at the US State Department. Later in the Reuters story he says, not so fast!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. official who has been a defender of refugees has been sidelined within the State Department in what some advocates and former officials fear is part of the Trump administration’s goal of limiting refugee resettlement in the United States.

Lawrence Bartlett, head of refugee admissions at the State Department’s Population, Refugees and Migration bureau, is now on a temporary assignment at another office, a State Department spokeswoman said.

Bartlett’s future leadership of the refugee office has been in doubt for months. He is now a temporary senior adviser at the State Department office that handles requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Sending a civil servant of his experience and rank to that office is unusual, according to current and former U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A current official described such a re-assignment as a form of internal exile like being sent “to Siberia.”

Really! Is that why the State Department has an abysmal record and reputation for not answering FOIA requests? Either they do nothing there or they work really hard to figure out what not to tell you. When they do tell you, it is YEARS later! Is that why it is like Siberia?
Bartlett says he has “NOT been permanently reassigned.”

Yeganeh Torbati — The Reuters go-to gal for Hans? https://twitter.com/yjtorbati

Bartlett did not respond to a range of questions about his new role, but did say he has not been told the assignment is permanent.

“I can assure you that I have NOT been permanently reassigned from my position with the refugee program,” Bartlett wrote in an e-mail to Reuters.

Refugee advocates say Bartlett was a strong and effective advocate for the resettlement program inside the Trump administration.

I found this little nugget (below) interesting. Here we learn that the State Department Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration bureaucrats chit-chat via e-mail regularly with their contractors. Hey! what about us! We pay for all this, why can’t we see those e-mails.
Gee maybe we could FOIA them!

Since approximately November, Bartlett has not been included on communications between the State Department and outside refugee agencies that he normally would have been, one person involved in refugee resettlement said.

Keep reading here.
Reuters quotes Hans (again). So is Hans Van de Weerd the conduit for getting anti-Trump messages out of the DOS and Homeland Security and to Reuters?
See my complete Lawrence Bartlett archive here. Prior to being assigned to the FOIA office, Bartlett was in Puerto Rico for a month, here.

Federal refugee resettlement contractors blast Trump for ending 'temporary' status for Salvadorans

01/10/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Temporary Protected Status (legal!) program is designed to give a break (usually 18 months) for nationals, from another country who are already in the US when the natural disaster or civil war happens, to stay here until the country is on its feet again.
In March, Salvadorans (and El Salvador), will have had a 17 YEAR break.
For 17 years hundreds of thousands have had time to produce nearly 200,000 more children, get jobs, drivers licenses (and I will bet vote!). See USCIS on TPS for El Salvador here.
Calling the program ‘temporary’ is a joke.
It has to end sometime and the Trump Administration has decided that September 2019 is it!
The Leftwing Open Borders activists, including obviously refugee resettlement contractors***, have been working toward amnesty for a decade or more and the Salvadorans would have been a recipient of such an amnesty.

Matthew Soerens of World Relief says El Salvador will be destabilized when they lose all of those US dollars Salvadorans send home—US dollars that leave the US economy!

In the Gang of Eight bill they would have been essentially hired by the feds to do for the newly amnestied what they do for refugees—get them signed up for their services (aka welfare). And, it would have expanded their Left-leaning political power through their immigrant dependents.
So it is no surprise to see them complaining now!
Here is the Christian Post reporting on our old pals:

Christian leaders and organizations are speaking out against the Trump administration move on Monday to terminate protected status for thousands of El-Salvadoran immigrants who have been allowed to live and work in the United States for over a decade. [For over a decade, you mean nearly two decades!—ed]

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen on Monday made a decision to terminate “Temporary Protected Status” that has allowed El-Salvadoran immigrants to legally work and live in the U.S. since two earthquakes struck the Central American country in 2001. The move could affect up to nearly 200,000 people and it’s a move that prominent evangelical leaders pressured the Trump administration not to make.

The administration claims the decision, which takes effect in September 2019 after an 18-month transition period, was made after an “inter-agency consultation process” determined that “the original conditions caused by the 2001 earthquakes no longer exist.” Yet, human rights advocates are warning that El Salvador is not economically able to sustain a massive return.

“But the reality is that El Salvador is among most violent countries in the world & among poorest in Western Hemisphere,” Matthew Soerens, the director of church mobilization for the evangelical refugee resettlement organization World Relief, tweeted on Monday. “It will be significantly destabilized by sudden insertion of so many returnees & by sudden halt of remittance money sent home by workers in US.”

So how long must we be blackmailed by threats of a destablized El Salvador? How long must we watch US dollars leave the US economy in the form of remittances? And why should refugee contractor World Relief care? These are NOT refugees.
But, if they do care so much, World Relief (and the US Bishops) could do the really brave thing and instead of living in comfort/collecting handsome salaries and bullying Americans into ‘welcoming’ the stranger, go to El Salvador and help the people where they live!

And, of course the US Bishops whine! (See that they got $95 million from taxpayers in 2016 for their Christian charity for migrants, here.)

“The decision to terminate TPS for El Salvador is heartbreaking. As detailed in our recent delegation trip report to the region, El Salvador is currently not in a position to adequately handle the return of the roughly 200,000 Salvadoran TPS recipients,” Bishop Joe S. Vásquez, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee on migration, said in a statement, adding that the decision will “fragment American families.

Fragment American families! The families could go together to their homeland!
For my Evangelical readers, you may not know that there is a Leftwing Open Borders Evangelical consortium. You need to do a little research to see if your church is involved.

The Evangelical Immigration Table, a coalition evangelical organizations that represent millions of believers across multiple denominations, also pressured the Trump administration to extend the TPS program for El Salvador until a permanent legislative fix can be enacted through Congress.

More here.
***These are the nine federal contractors who are paid by you to place refugees in your towns. If there were millions given amnesty in the coming years those groups listed below would be hired by the feds to help them get settled and get their taxpayer-supplied stuff.

There can be no immigration reform as long as taxpayers finance these political agitation groups masquerading as humanitarian charities:

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society lawyers "save" Somali from deportation

01/05/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In a touching tale, HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), bragged on its blog yesterday that, in a Baltimore, MD court, it saved Somali illegal alien Yaasir from deportation back to Somalia.

Screenshot (130) — Only one retweet in 19 hours? You can see how much people like this story!

The tale goes from one touching scene to another, in Yaasir’s 22-years, all written (and told by Yaasir) to elicit sympathy from the reader, and is likely what they presented to the court in Baltimore.
Read it here, then let me take the story to its bare bones (stripping it of all the fluffy feel-good language):

~There were bombs and fighting, but Yaasir’s family was not directly targeted.

~His big problem was because he was in a lowly clan and the more powerful clans were always out to get them. (Clans are central to Somali culture and we have admitted to the US most, if not all, of them. Somalis discriminate against each other by clan. Is this our problem?)

~He was warned by family members to not play with children from the more powerful clans, but he did it anyway.

~As a teen he got into (as HIAS describes it)—“a bit of a scuffle”—with kids from a more powerful clan. Dumb? They kidnapped him, he says, and beat him up for two days.

~Not able to interact with other teens (What? no teens in his clan liked him either?), he quit school.

~HIAS: “Yaasir soon fell in love with a girl from a more powerful clan and impregnated her.” Her brothers came to kill him. Our problem?

~Angry father told him to get out and go to South Africa.

~Problem is that South African blacks hate Somalis (see my entire archive on South Africa here. BTW, we are taking black African refugees from the rainbow nation. Insanity!). HIAS: He “began to encounter severe discrimination and abuse by hostile South Africans.” I have to laugh because HIAS wants you to believe that the discrimination was from white South Africans!

~After a few months in SA, he ‘married’ a Somali woman and got her pregnant (or was it the other way around?)

~He always had to run from the South African police because he had no documentation. So he sends pregnant wife back to ‘unsafe'(?) Somalia.

~He then “made his way” to the US border beginning after he flies to Brazil. (There is zero mention of how he found enough money for a global jaunt!). This is perhaps the biggest issue that is never discussed—where did this kind of money come from?

~His struggle northward is described as “treacherous” which HIAS uses to show what a determined young man he is and therefore worthy of becoming an American.

~HIAS doesn’t tell us how, or when, he was detained on America soil. Was he here for months/years before he came to the attention of authorities, or was he detained as he crossed our southern border?

hetfield at NY anti-Trump rally — HIAS CEO Hetfield speaking at their anti-President Trump rally last February!

But nevermind, the tale ends happily when Yaasir finds himself in the arms of HIAS lawyers who work hard to get him through the asylum process.
As a successful asylee he becomes eligible for all the welfare benefits a refugee gets—which is pretty much everything! And…

He is free in America and getting ready to bring his ‘wife’ and child (and probably parents, brothers, sisters, etc) to live with him happily ever after in America. (As soon as HIAS lawyers can stop DJT from killing chain migration!)

Go here to read Yaasir’s “fight” at HIAS’s blog.
For our huge archive on HIAS click here.
They are one of the nine federal resettlement contractors (paid with taxpayer dollars) placing refugees in your towns and cities, but obviously they are busy on a whole host of fronts to help Muslims and others get in to the US.
Readers need to know that I am not picking on HIAS to the exclusion of other contractors, it is just that they send out such tantalizing material for me to write about compared to some others.

Refugees, which is it: Meatpacker laborers or helping the "oppressed?"

01/04/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Ali Noorani of the National Immigration Forum tries both arguments in USA Today.

ali noorani twitter — Ali Noorani on twitter: @anoorani https://twitter.com/anoorani?lang=en

I wasn’t planning to post on one more hysterical story about Trump refugee numbers being low and thus decimating the refugee contractor industry, but I can’t resist mentioning one little bit of the story entitled:

Refugee admissions to U.S. plummet in 2017

Before I get to Noorani, Mark Krikorian summed it up with this:

“Elections have consequences,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower levels of legal and illegal immigration. “This is what he said he’s going to do, and he’s doing it.”

Readers, for years and years, refugee advocates pretended they have nothing to do with the global meatpacking industry and its ‘need’ for cheap migrant labor, but now even savvy DC operatives like Noorani trot out the argument feigning concern for Midwestern economies.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which has advocated for a higher refugee cap, said many Midwestern cities depend on refugees to work in the meat-packing and poultry plants that sustain their struggling economies.

Okay and if that establishment Rightwing argument doesn’t float your boat, he moves on to moral duties, historic roles and oppressed people so he can hit the Leftwingers too:

As more migrants are fleeing their homelands, Noorani said now is the worst possible time for the U.S. to retreat from its historic role as a “moral beacon” for the oppressed.

“There are ways to help refugees get to places of safety and begin a new life that serves the American interest,” Noorani said. “Past administrations have been able to do that. This administration is not that so interested.”

American interest? Or global meatpackers’ interest (subsidized by US taxpayers)?

This “new life to serve American interests” was on full display in a Washington Post story (hat tip: Melanie) the other day about a South Dakota turkey plant and how it gets its migrant laborers (this time plane loads from Puerto Rico to join the refugee labor force, but they have to pay back their airfare out of their paychecks!).
It made me sick, especially because I traveled to Huron in the summer of 2016 to see how that plant, Dakota Provisions, was changing (forever) the city of Huron.
Is this what Noorani thinks “serves the American interest?” Grover’s interests maybe?

If I ever stop writing this blog, I’m writing a modern day “The Jungle.” It is long overdue!

I can happily skip eating turkey!

Top USCIS refugee official leaving; more evidence admissions slowdown could continue

01/03/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We reported here on January 1 that the Trump refugee numbers, at the present rate of arrival, would come in at half of the CEILING of 45,000 set for FY18.
By the way, George Bush had two years that saw refugee admissions in the 20,000 range.
Trump will set a record if he comes in below George W. Bush’s two lowest years of 27,070 (2002) and 28,117 (2003).
(Yesterday, Michael Leahy at Breitbart posted a more detailed look at the numbers so far.)

hans van de weerd bald — Hans Van de Weerd of the two hats (IRC and RCUSA) is the go-to-guy for media comments these days. As you know RCUSA is the lobbying arm of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program. My question: is Hans still a Dutch citizen? Bio here: http://www.phocuswrightconference.com/Whos-Coming/Speakers/2016/Hans-Van-de-Weerd

Here Reuters reports on the retirement of Barbara Strack (hat tip: Joanne):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – One of the top U.S. government officials working on refugee issues announced her impending retirement on Tuesday, and refugee advocates expressed concern about the fate of the country’s resettlement program which faces mounting pressure from the Trump administration.

Barbara Strack, a career official and chief of the Refugee Affairs Division at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, did not specify when she will leave her post, but USCIS spokesman R. Carter Langston said it would be in January.

[….]

“It’s something I’ve been planning towards for a long time, and it’s not driven by policy considerations,” Strack said. “I will deeply miss the colleagues and friendships that I‘m leaving behind, and the important mission of refugee resettlement. It’s been a privilege to be part of this community for the last 12 years, working to make the U.S. refugee resettlement program robust and secure.”

Advocates expressed concern at the timing of Strack’s retirement, saying it could further hamper U.S. refugee admissions. It was unclear immediately who would replace her.

[….]

The Refugee Affairs Division, which Strack oversees, includes dozens of officers charged with interviewing refugees abroad for resettlement in the United States.

[….]

Advocates for resettlement and some U.S. officials have expressed alarm at what they see as a slowdown in trips abroad known as circuit rides, in which USCIS officers interview refugees.

“The number of circuit rides has gone down drastically with currently only a few planned,” said Hans Van de Weerd, chair of Refugee Council USA***, a coalition of non-governmental groups working on refugee issues. “Many more will need to be scheduled soon to resettle 45,000 refugees and we don’t have any information about whether they will.”

More from Reuters here.
*** See my recent post on RCUSA the lobbying shop for the nine federal contractors which receive the vast majority of their funding from the US taxpayer. With the reduction in paying clients (aka refugees) entering the US, their budgets are taking huge hits. Go here and see IRC salaries, spokesman Hans does not make the top tier.