Bill Frelick of Human Rights Watch: “…there is no requirement that the U.S. resettle a single refugee….” https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/03/31/confirmed-trumps-department-of-state-is-going-back-to-normal-refugee-admission-numbers/
Readers, more important, in my opinion, than the so-called ‘travel ban’ portion of the Trump Executive Orders held up in our power-hungry court system, is the issue of the President’s power to set the CEILING on refugee admissions for the year. My contention is that he has the right to set the CEILING and change the CEILING without any Executive Order.
The Refugee Act of 1980 says only that he must “consult” with Congress on an annual determination. If he changes the number throughout the year (the law envisions a wish to increase the number and is silent on the issue of decreasing it) he must notify Congress.
Since the number set annually is a CEILING (not a target), then there would be no need to even announce any lowering of the number during the year, nor would there have been a need to address a procedure for lowering the incoming numbers in the original law. The Dept. of State and Homeland Security would simply just bring in fewer numbers.
The dirty little secret is that for years, the refugee industry has tried to turn the CEILING in to a target, but at least Frelick is honest.
Frelick of Human Rights Watch(a pro refugee organization) knows that this garbage (the Buffalo story mentioned it again) we keep seeing that there is a minimum 50,000 refugees required under the Act is inaccurate, see what he said here.
It’s the media, the contractors, and the bureaucrat holdovers who are busy bluffing the White House by counting on the fact that no one there understands the program and its history! And, now as for the missing CEILING data…..
I’ve been following the program since 2007 and Presidents have never reached the CEILING in those years. Obama came pretty close several times, but he was under the ceiling—by huge numbers—in two years in particular.
See this chart (below) from Wrapsnetfor 2006-2016. Pay close attention to the columns for CEILING and the ultimate admission numbers. See the gap! It varies from year to year under the CEILING.
In FY11 Obama set the ceiling at 80,000 and came in with 56,424 (a shortfall of 23,576).
In FY12 Obama’s ceiling was 76,000 and he ultimately admitted 58,238 (a shortfall of 17,762). Did anyone sue President Obama for leaving thousands “stranded in war-torn countries”? No!
There were NO lawsuits and no screams (at least in public!) from the contractors!
Look at this same chart for the end of March 2017 (at that point Wrapsnet still lists the last CEILING set by Obama (110,000) his highest ceiling by far). I discussed it here.
Now here is the chart for the end of April 2017. I discussed it here. See the note! **FY2017 ceiling is currently in litigation.
Today, I decided to have a look at Trump’s numbers for May because of my earlier post today about the contractors getting excited by increasing numbers coming in, but what did I find when I checked this monthly update? Can you see what is missing?
Incompetence or an effort to obscure the facts? Did you see it? They have removed the CEILING column arguably the most useful number from this particular data base.
Why? Is it a deliberate attempt to hide facts? Or, just some dumb mistake by an underling at the Refugee Processing Center(aka Wrapsnet)? You decide.
And, one last thing, for a chuckle, note how extraordinarily high the numbers were for October, November, December of FY2017 compared to the previous ten years. Do you think the outgoing Obama Admin. was in a hurry to pour as many refugees in to your towns and cities as they could before getting out of Dodge? You betcha!
The Trump Administration is on target to blow past its own 50,000 admission determination number in 2 weeks!
As we reported here, just as the Memorial Day weekend was getting underway, the US State Department announced to its contractors that it was going to open the refugee spigot wide again for the remaining months of fiscal year 2017 (the year ends on September 30th). A picture speaks a thousand words! Lavinia Limon is the CEO of federal resettlement contractor USCRI and on her left is the CEO of Chobani Yogurt which has been a leading ‘consumer’ of refugee labor in America. “Give me your tired, your poor…” willing to work for lower wages…”yearning to breathe free.”
That means some of the federal refugee contractors, like this one in Ohio, may need to hire back some employees they had earlier let go, but there is still a question about how quickly Trump’s State Department and Dept. of Homeland Security can get the processing ramped-up abroad.
I had been waiting for the Trump White House to correct the mistake about opening the spigot, but their silence now signals that the White House is in agreement with the ramp-up! From WKSU. The International Institute of Akron is a subcontractor of one of nine major contractors (USCRI***in this case):
President Obama authorized 120,000 [No! It was 110,000!—ed] refugees for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30.
President Trump cut that in February to 50,000. But the State Department sent a memo in late May telling refugee groups they would no longer be restrained by weekly quotas.
Liz Walters of the International Institute of Akron says resettlement numbers have always ebbed and flowed, with the agency resettling as few as 25 and as many as 130 a month. She says how many will be coming now depends on what happens overseas.
“The big question mark is how many folks have been in process overseas and how quickly they can start to schedule those folks for travel or at what point they finish up their security clearances and can get them here before the end of the fiscal year.”
[….]
Walters notes that Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year [begins Oct. 1, 2017—ed] includes funding to resettle 50,000 refugees, the minimum under the law.
As far as I can tell, there is no legal minimum!
I’m not lawyer, and perhaps there has been some case law or regulations that I don’t know about, but as I read the Refugee Act of 1980, there is no requirement for any specific number after 1982. Here (below) is the Act on admissions. There is a lot of discussion about procedures if the President needs to ‘up’ the numbers, but I don’t see any prohibition about going below 50,000!
Be sure to read the lawyourself and see that “consultation” is with the House and Senate Judiciary Committees and as far as I can see only requires the President to supply them with information. I repeat!
Do you see how clever the refugee industry propaganda machine is—we are only talking about admission levels, not reform of the whole program.
The only way to force Congress to scrap/reform the Refugee Act of 1980 is for Donald Trump to set the admissions number at zero for FY18 and tell Congress, no more until they get to work. Heck, make them work through the month of August!
He also has the power to stop the flow right now without any Executive Order.
Today the Trump admission level is at 47,434 (Wrapsnet) and, at the admissions rate announced on the eve of Memorial Day, he will thus blow past the 50,000 mark (set by him) in 2 weeks!
***By the way, USCRI is approximately 97% funded by you—taxpayers! See here.
I recommend that all of you interested in the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program have some fun at theRefugee Processing Center(aka Wrapsnet). Play around with the databases and you can learn a lot about what is happening in your state and of course in the country. Because Donald Trump has not put his people in place in the DOS, Simon Henshaw, a career official, is in charge of the US Refugee Admissions Program. https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/bureau/213334.htm
Today I wanted to see exactly who are the Trump refugees and where were they placed.
Here (below) is the breakdown of nationalities (top 12) admitted by the Trump Department of State which is still largely being run by the bureaucrats because, at least for the department of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), there is still no Trump appointee running the bureau.
Henshaw, at right, would have been the person responsible for the shocking announcement last weekthat the number of refugees arriving per week are going to jump dramatically.*** Here are the top 12 sending countries:
DR Congo (2,579) The Obama Administration promised the UN we would take 50,000 and we are getting pretty close now.
Burma (2,083) A whopping 541 of these are Muslim Rohingya
Iraq (1,711)
Syria (1,626)
Somalia (1,564)
Ukraine (1,275)
Bhutan (1,104)
Eritrea (765)
Iran (751)
Sudan (406)
El Salvador (392) Not refugees, these are the result of a special illegal program Obama set up!
Afghanistan (385)
So where did Trump’s 15,726 refugees go:
Alaska got 23 and Hawaii, Wyoming and Washington DC ‘welcomed’ zero. The fact that Hawaii, begging for more diversity, got zip is so telling.
Here are the top ten states receiving Trump’s refugees:
***15,726 is about 874 refugees a week entering the US since Trump was inaugurated. We are told that the number will be jumping to 1,500 a week shortly.
Sorry to all of you who follow RRW regularly to have to keep repeating myself, but I want to blow a gasket every time I see a story about “plummeting” refugee admission numbers.
The story that steamed me this morning is one Drudge has listed (what is going on with Drudge, losing his mojo?).
Here is the story from Pew(I know what Pew is!) with this blaring headline:
Pew: Refugee arrivals in U.S. decline sharply as world crisis grows
What Pew is doing in its story (besides skewing the news against Trump), read it yourself, is comparing October FY17 (9,945) the first month of this fiscal year when Obama was pouring refugees in at an unheard of rate to April FY17 (3,316) when frankly Trump is bringing in a moderate number of refugees.
Look at this chart (again!) (from Wrapsnet):
After you note that October FY17 was the largest first month (by far) of any fiscal year in the last eleven, then take note that Trump’s April (3,316) is larger than Bush’s April 2007 (2,060) or even Obama’s April 2011 (2,190). So what the h*** are they talking about! I don’t recall any story in 2011 bashing Obama for his huge drop from October FY11 to April FY11!
I also had a chuckle as I read the Pew story about how the numbers are plummeting in Texas, but not a mention that the state withdrew from the program and that although it is up and running now (without the state government), the transition to the Wilson-Fish program did cause a slight slowdown. Texas is still the number 2 state behind California for refugee admissions this year.
Remember that when Trump came in to office he wanted a MORATORIUM on refugee resettlement for 4 months while they reviewed the program for security concerns and, now long-forgotten, they wanted to look into the issue of notification to communities. That would have caused “plummeting” admission numbers.
With no talk of reforming the program anywhere in sight, Trump is now on schedule to admit to the US somewhere around 60,000 refugees this year. Compare that to Bush in 2007 and Obama in 2011 and 2012—all three years under 60,000!
Endnote: As of today we are at 45,732 for this fiscal year. See my right hand sidebar where I am tracking the numbers every few days.
And check out the fact that they have removed the CEILING (which is not a target!) from the chart for this year—the Obama dream number for FY17 of 110,000 has been removed. (See that Obama never had a ceiling that high for his previous 7 years! Why was that?)
The President’s budget for next year is out, but I have to be completely honest with you, going through these numbers is not my thing!
And, consider that it is Congress that will in reality set the agenda and budget for refugee admissions by how much money they are sending to the program and ultimately out to the federal resettlement contractors.
In searching around this morning, I’ve found several indicators of what Trump might do, what he has done, what the budget might dictate, and how the contractors are reacting, and I will leave it to you (who have more patience to wade through numbers than I) to analyze the numbers. Just so you know, as of today (5/24/2017), note (from Wrapsnet) that Trump is now at 45,172 admitted refugees for this fiscal year (FY2017 ends on September 30th). (Average refugee admissions for the last ten years is around in the low 60,000s.)
Resettlement contractors happy with FY17 budget!
I missed this: The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was very happy with the Continuing Budget for the present fiscal year. See here earlier this month:
Today (May 5) President Trump signed into law a $1.1 trillion government spending bill to keep the government running through September 30, the end of the current fiscal year.
Sigh of relief! Maybe no salary cuts for the top executives? https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/11/13/hebrew-immigrant-aid-society-lectures-trump-never-mentions-its-pecuniary-interest-in-refugees/
Within that massive bill are a few items of particular importance for refugees who, after fleeing war and persecution, have either found safety abroad or are beginning new lives in the United States.
The spending bill funds the Office of Refugee Resettlement at a level equal to last fiscal year.ORR oversees the domestic side of U.S. resettlement and facilitates refugees’ integration and economic success in this country. This funding will allow ORR and its partner agencies (including HIAS) to continue providing services for refugees, asylees, unaccompanied refugee and asylum seeker children, Cuban and Haitian entrants, and Iraqi and Afghan Special Immigrant Visa recipients.
Also included is $3.06 billion for Migration Refugee Assistance, which is $99 million more than the Trump administration requested.
This funding will enable the U.S. State Department to provide humanitarian aid to refugees overseas as well as resettle refugees in the United States.
The bill also extends the Lautenberg Amendment, which ensures a safe means of exit for religious minorities from Iran and the former Soviet Union who are approved to come to the United States. [Bunch of hypocrites! They say Trump can’t legally select Christians over Muslims, but they have supported choosing Jews as a priority from Iran and Russia for decades!—ed]
This funding agreement, which originated in the House of Representatives and passed both chambers of Congress before it reached the President’s desk for signature, ensures that the U.S. refugee resettlement program will be sufficiently funded for the remainder of this fiscal year.
This means that communities in states across the country will be able to continue doing what they already do so well every day: welcoming newly arrived refugee families and helping them to integrate by providing a strong start in their new home.
Today marks a victory for our partners in Washington and around the country, who have been advocating for continued U.S. support for welcoming and protecting refugees. But there is still so much more we can and should be doing.
We continue to urge the Trump Administration to resettle at least 75,000 refugees this fiscal year.
That was May 5th. They have friends in the Republican Congress!
A couple of days ago (May 22nd), the President unveiled his FY18 budget and here at the Daily Caller we learn that it includes enough funding for 50,000 refugees for FY18 (begins September 30th, 2017), but just like the CR discussed above, Congress can, and likely will, add more money for MORE refugees! Why would Republicans who control Congress want more refugees? That is easy: cheap immigrant labor for their big business donors and for the Chamber of Commerce!
The markers are being laid down!
Trump wants 50,000 and they want 75,000 for FY18!
Here is what the refugee industry is saying about this budget, from their lobbying arm in DC yesterday—the Refugee Council USA:
WASHINGTON, DC—Refugee Council USA (RCUSA), a coalition of 24 U.S.-based non-governmental organizations*** dedicated to refugee protection, urges Congress to fund refugee programs at levels that reflect the reality that the world is currently experiencing the worst refugee crisis since World War II. The last thing that the United States should do during a time of historic refugee crises is to cut lifesaving refugee budget accounts.
The lobbying arm of the refugee industry is RCUSA. Its present chair is a Dutch citizen, Hans van de Weerd, lecturing us about American values. Bio: http://www.rcusa.org/staff/ Photo twitter: https://twitter.com/hansvandeweerd
“Now more than ever, we must allocate funding to programs that align with our American values of freedom, compassion and opportunity,” Hans van de Weerd, Chair of RCUSA, said. “The United States has historically been a global refugee protection leader, both through strong support for refugees overseas, as well as through funding a robust domestic refugee resettlement program. We can, and must, continue to do both. During this challenging and tumultuous time, we urge the Committees on Appropriations to demonstrate support for America’s leadership in the world and our longstanding tradition of welcome by robustly funding these important humanitarian accounts during the FY 2018 appropriations process.”
[You see, they know they can get to Congress even if Trump has slightly reduced the numbers—ed]
RCUSA is requesting that at least 75,000 refugees be resettled in FY18, and believes that the Administration’s budget proposal that would support the resettlement of 50,000 is inadequate and an abdication of U.S. leadership.
RCUSA is advocating for a continuance of FY17 funding levels, and therefore recommends funding of $1.688 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Refugee and Entrant Assistance (REA) account. The REA account, which funds the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), is a crucial component of fostering refugee integration and self-sufficiency. In addition to providing services to resettled refugees, ORR is tasked with implementing social services for unaccompanied minors, asylees, Cuban and Haitian entrants, Special Immigrant Visa holders, victims of human trafficking, and survivors of torture. The President’s budget proposes a 31% cut to refugee services that help refugees achieve long-term integration and economic success and assist communities and local partners in welcoming new Americans. RCUSA also recommends $3.604 billion in funding for the Department of State’s Migration and Refugee Assistance (MRA) account. The MRA account provides overseas assistance to displaced refugees, supports admissions to the U.S. of the most vulnerable refugees, and funds lifesaving services in humanitarian emergencies.
[….]
RCUSA also strongly opposes the president’s proposal to eliminate the Department of State’s Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance (ERMA) account, which for example, in recent years has provided stabilizing assistance to countries of first asylum that have given safety to South Sudanese and Syrian refugees. RCUSA urges a continued funding level of $50 million for this account in FY 2018.
I’ve included that last paragraph above because this ERMA fund is nothing to fight about. It is no great shakes for Trump to have omitted funding for it. Yes, it saves US taxpayers some money, but readers in the past have confused it with money used to bring refugees to America. It is for assistance abroad and not for resettlement here, so don’t let Trump people tell you this is some sort of victory. The battle lines are shaping up and it is pretty clear that the refugee industry is going to the Republican Congress to stop the President from reducing numbers to 50,000, a number that we think is outrageously high for a President who campaigned on stopping the program, at least temporarily, all together.
Sadly, instead of a fight about abolishing or reforming the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program (and getting the fraud out of it!) it sure looks likes it is going to be a fight simply over numbers—50,000, 75,000, or somewhere in between. At this stage it appears that the Trump Administration hasn’t any fight left for this issue.
***Go here to see all members of the Refugee Council USA. All nine federal resettlement contractors are a part of this lobbying office. I suppose one could look at this 75,000 demand as a comedown for them. In August of 2016 they urged Obama to set the ceiling at 200,000, see here. But, again, they are always pushing, pushing and pushing.
For new readers, the nine federal refugee contractors you pay to bring refugees to your towns and cities:
