Six Republican Senators question Trump refugee admissions, appear to want MORE refugees admitted to the US

05/13/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

By sending a bipartisan letter like this (below) with the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Dick Durban (leader of the Senate Jihad Caucus!) as co-signers, Oklahoma Senator James Lankford signals that he wants more refugees for his state and at the same time shows complete ignorance about the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program—how it works and what its goals are—not to mention the fact that this letter with its hostile tone is a clear signal that these six do not support President Trump’s stated refugee reduction goals.

Senator James Lankford, leader of the pack of six Republicans questioning Trump and Tillerson about refugee flow to US. Sure sounds like they want MORE refugees! What! No ‘pockets of resistance’ in OK?

If any of these six Republicans is your Senator, you need to educate him or her quickly if there is still any hope of Trump’s campaign promises being fulfilled or the USRAP being reformed at all.
With friends like these….

Senator James Lankford (R-OK)

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT)

Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ)

Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC)

Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

Here is what ‘Foreign Affairs’ says about the letter in an article entitled: “Senator Lankford Encourages Trump Administration to Support Assistance for Refugees and Victims of Genocide”

WASHINGTON, DC -Senator James Lankford (R-OK) sent a bipartisan letter to President Trump to inquire about the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), which has successfully resettled more than three million refugees from various parts of the world to American communities in all 50 states.

Specifically, the letter encouraged the administration to uphold USRAP as it enables the United States to fulfill key international commitments and assist those fleeing genocide and oppression.

[….]

Lankford was joined by Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Mike Lee (R-UT), Thomas Carper (D-DE), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Thom Tills (R-NC), Edward Markey (D-MA), Jeffrey Merkley (D-OR), Christopher Murphy (D-CT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).

More here.
Apparently those Republicans signing the letter do not know we are NOT saving the Syrian Christians from genocide. And, it is pretty shameful that Senator Lankford, a former Baptist leader in OK, doesn’t know that fact—we are NOT saving the Christians of Syria through this program!
According to Wrapsnet, in FY17 we have admitted 6,132 Syrians (that is since October 1, 2016 through today). Of that number 6,001 are Muslims (the vast majority Sunnis). That makes the Syrian flow to America right now 98% Muslim. So much for saving those facing genocide. Oh, there were a whopping 22 Yezidis in the arrival numbers.
By the way, letters like this one, meant to draw media attention, are usually generated by lobbyists working for the ‘refugee resettlement industry‘ (see my previous post) which has many lobbyists working The Hill. A lobbyist, or several lobbyists, will write the letter and then find some willing Senate staffer who will persuade the boss to sign on (might not take much persuasion!). The lobbyists shop the letter around to Senate offices.
Our side (the pro-reform side!) on the UN/US RAP has no lobbyist dedicated to this issue working The Hill which is all the more reason that you, grassroots citizen activists, must call-out your Senators on this letter especially those of you in Oklahoma!
Here is the letter:

The Honorable Rex Tillerson

Secretary

U.S. Department of State

2201 C St NW

Washington, DC 20520

The Honorable John F. Kelly

Secretary

U.S. Department of Homeland Security

3801 Nebraska Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20530

Dear Secretaries Tillerson and Kelly,

We write regarding current administration of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), which has successfully resettled more than 3 million refugees from around the world to American communities in all 50 states. The USRAP is a critical pillar of our national foreign policy and enables the United States to fulfill key international commitments. Refugees come from the most vulnerable and persecuted populations around the world and are the most securely vetted travelers to the United States, spending an average of two years in the application process prior to approval.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, we are in the midst of the largest refugee crisis in modern history. More than a year ago, on March 17, 2016, then-Secretary of State John Kerry formally designated the actions of ISIS as genocide. As part of that declaration he said: “[ISIS] is… responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other minorities… [ISIS] kills Christians because they are Christians; Yezidis because they are Yezidis; Shia because they are Shia. …naming these crimes is important. But what is essential is to stop them.” While the recognition and need to address these horrific crimes is important, we must not lose focus of the need to also protect others fleeing persecution around the world.

As you know, Executive Order 13769, issued on January 27, aimed to place a temporary 120-day halt on the USRAP and reduce the total refugee admissions for Fiscal Year 2017 from 110,000 to 50,000. This Executive Order was subsequently rescinded by Executive Order 13780, issued on March 6. Executive Order 13780 also aimed to place a similar halt and reduction on the USRAP. However, the U.S. District Court of Hawaii issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) on March 15 followed by a preliminary injunction on March 29, which currently prevents the implementation of portions of this Executive Order, including the entire section addressing the USRAP.

Given that there is currently no active provision from either of these Executive Orders affecting normal USRAP administration, we respectfully request a response to the following questions regarding the current status of USRAP operations, both domestically and internationally:

1. In light of the Hawaii District Court’s decision to block enforcement of the EO dated March 6th, does the Administration anticipate admitting refugees consistent with the previous Administration’s Presidential Determination for FY17 or will the Administration release a new Presidential Determination? How many refugees does the Administration anticipate admitting this Fiscal Year?

2. Is the U.S. continuing to conduct overseas interviews of both Priority-2 Direct Access applicants, including U.S.-affiliated Iraqis, and of applicants referred to the USRAP by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees? If so, how many individuals are currently going through this process and how long will this process take? If not, under what legal authority?

3. Given the genocide designation from the U.S. State Department, are survivors designated as a special humanitarian concern?

a. How many nationals and residents of Iraq or Syria who are members of a religious group subjected to genocide by ISIS and are at risk of forced migration have been admitted to the United States as refugees since March 17, 2016?

b. Under which mechanisms are these individuals able to apply and interview for admission to the United States as refugees?

c. Are survivors of genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes, eligible for Priority 2 processing under the refugee resettlement priority system? If not, why not?

i. If so, how many have been admitted since March 17, 2016?

4. During the seven weeks between the issuance of EO 13769 and the March 15 TRO, please describe any changes the Administration made to USRAP operations, including instructions given to all personnel responsible for carrying out USRAP duties in a way that continues to provide for the security of the American people while also maintaining the United States as a refuge for those fleeing persecution.

a. If changes were made, how will these changes continue to impact USRAP operations and capacity in the future?

b. If changes were made, what immediate effect have these changes already had on the USRAP’s overall resettlement capacity, including the impact on overseas Resettlement Support Centers and on domestic resettlement agencies?

c. What steps have you taken since the issuance of the TRO, including the rescission of relevant instructions to USRAP personnel, to restart the administration of the program?

5. We understand that there are DHS-approved refugees awaiting final medical clearances and travel bookings. What is the Administration’s timeframe for resettlement of these refugees?

a. How many cases within this group are cases of reunification with family members already in the United States?

b. How many cases within this group are genocide survivors?

6. In addition to these DHS-approved refugees, there are more in earlier stages of the screening process. Are agencies continuing the application and screening process for these refugees? If so, are there any new difficulties that would have the effect of slowing down the review process? If not, under what legal authority?

a. Of all refugees who have currently begun the resettlement process, how many are US-affiliated Iraqis?

Thank you for your attention to this matter, and we look forward to your timely response.

Sincerely,

Enduring mystery: How did Delaware dodge the refugee bullet for decades?

05/12/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There is a short news item at Delaware Public Media about how a Jewish refugee agency in Delaware is waiting for seven families (likely Muslim families based on their country of origin) they hope they will soon be settling in Delaware—the First State. So I thought I might revisit a topic I haven’t discussed for a long time and that is the origin of the Refugee Act of 1980.

Senators Biden and Kennedy are responsible for the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program. See list below of other Senators deeply involved in 1979.

But, first here is a portion of the short piece at Delaware Public Media:

The state of Hawaii’s stay on Trump’s second travel ban suspends the FY17 cap for refugees – currently set at 50,000.

That opens the door for refugee families from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Eastern African country of Eritrea in line to come to the First State, but none of them have travel plans in place yet.

Jewish Family Services of Delaware Refugee Resettlement Coordinator Sarah Green says that currently, the families are stuck in Jordan and Ethiopia.

“It’s hard to know what’s happening,” Green said. “We just have to wait and see. We get a very limited view of what’s happening over there.”

She says her agency is taking the approach that these families could arrive any day – and working to ensure they’ll be comfortable when they reach Delaware.

[….]

There’s reason to expect they could arrive soon. According to the U.S. State Department, 900 flights for refugees to the U.S. are being scheduled every week.

As of this morning, 831 new refugees arrived in the US in the past week (5/5-5/12) according to Wrapsnet. And, that puts us at 44,072 this fiscal year.

At this rate the Trump Administration will hit 50,000 in about 7-8 weeks. Will they stop at 50,000 which should happen around the first week of July? That is the question!

Delaware, in some ways, is more interesting to me than some of the other very low refugee admission states (LOL! including Hawaii). See chart below.
And that is because then Senator Joe Biden was one of the chief sponsors of the Senate-generated Refugee Act of 1979 (S.643) which became the Refugee Act of 1980 when Jimmy Carter signed it in to law the following year. You can learn more about it here. Pay special attention to the part about how states were NOT to be burdened with welfare costs of refugees.
Here are the co-sponsors of S.643 another of Senator Ted Kennedy’s swamp-America-with-immigrants bills:

So how is it that Delaware is in the bottom ten locations for refugee seeding when then Senator and now former Vice President Joe Biden is that state’s most prominent political figure? Did he welcome refugees to America in 1979, but keep them from swamping Delaware with diversity for decades?

Wrapsnet data only goes back to FY2003, but that gives us enough years to see a pattern. (For researchers more diligent than I am, you can go back through all the previous annual reports and put the data together from the very beginning, but I expect the pattern is similar in the early years.)
So from FY03 through today (in FY17) we admitted 886,324 refugees to America (not including asylum seekers) and Delaware got a whopping 139 of them!

In the years Joe Biden was Vice President, Delaware got only 50 refugees.

Here are the last ten locations for refugee placement from FY03 to the present. What the heck is “Unknown State?” Does that mean 68 refugees were placed secretly somewhere? Yikes!

If Delaware Public Media really wanted to do some important work, reporters there should try to find out exactly why and how Delaware dodged a bullet for so many years when their claim to fame, Veep Joe Biden, sponsored the original law and then apparently kept diversity-seeding from the state! (It is not because of the state’s small size since Rhode Island got thousands more than Delaware).
For new readers, this post is filed in my ‘where to find information’ category and in ‘Refugee statistics.’

Minnesota Dept of Health needs $5 million to fight infectious diseases in immigrant population

05/11/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Hey, since many of the refugees and other immigrants now causing expensive infectious diseases to spread in the state are a result of Obama’s migration policy, maybe he could contribute his $3 million speaking fee to Minnesota as a partial payment to handle the crisis!
Here is the latest news generated by the recent Measles epidemic in Minnesota. As of Tuesday there were 50 diagnosed cases, most (45) are in the ‘Somali community.’
And, we are told that refugees don’t cost state and local taxpayers a dime!
From Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart:

Minnesota Health Commissioner Dr. Ed Ehlinger sounded an alert on more frequent and costly threats to the public health, referencing measles, tuberculosis, and even the Zika virus and syphilis, according to a statement released by the MDH on Wednesday as reported by Hometownsource.com.

Remember this story! Gov. Mark Dayton: If you don’t like our Somali refugees, get out of Minnesota because they are here to stay! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/10/16/mn-governor-dayton-dont-like-immigrants-get-out-of-minnesota/

“In recent months, state and local public health officials have had to respond to a series of infectious disease outbreaks including multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, hundreds of new cases of syphilis, and now, the largest measles outbreak the state has faced in nearly 30 years. These outbreaks come on the heels of extensive public health efforts in 2016 for the Zika virus response and in 2014-15 for Ebola preparedness,” he added…..

[….]

Minnesota is currently in the middle of the largest outbreak of measles in over twenty years. As of Tuesday, 50 cases of measles have been diagnosed in the state since the first case was reported on April 11, 45 of which have been diagnosed in Somali Minnesotans.

As Breitbart News reported previously, 90 percent of the 168 cases of active tuberculosis diagnosed in Minnesota in 2016 were foreign-born, much higher than the 67 percent of foreign-born cases that accounted for the 9,287 cases of active TB diagnosed in the United States in 2016.

Fourteen of those cases were from newly arrived refugees, eleven of whom were diagnosed with active TB in medical screenings overseas but were nonetheless allowed to resettle in Minnesota by the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security.

Continue reading here. The article is chock full of important information and links to follow.
See my ‘Health issues’ category, here, where I have archived 329 previous posts about health issues (including mental health issues) involving the refugee flow to America.
I wondered here if this Measles outbreak started with a newly arrived refugee from Somalia (or from elsewhere in East Africa since a large number of our Somalis come from UN camps in Kenya).
BTW, Slate had a hysterical story the other day claiming this Measles outbreak is Trump’s fault—not because he is admitting infected Somalis, but because he hangs with “Anti-vaxxer pals.” Huh?

Mr. Cool goes to Milan, is paid millions to announce that "climate refugees" will flood the first world

05/11/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Changing the subject?
Just in case Islam-generated conflicts run out of steam in the Middle East and Africa, Barack Obama crossed the Atlantic to collect a speaking fee reportedly in the $3 million range to pronounce that, as a result of global warming there would be a refugee crisis “unprecedented in human history.”

Unbuttoned to mid-chest: We are told that Mr. Cool forgot his tie. If you are a former President of the US staying in what must be the most expensive hotel in the city, isn’t it possible to send out for a wonderful selection of beautiful ties? http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447465/obama-climate-speech-milan-offered-nothing-new

He wants to make sure that world Open Borders activists (and global corporations looking for cheap labor) wouldn’t run out of reasons to tear down borders to the first world (if Islamic conflicts fail to do a good enough job).
Obama talked extensively in the speech about the impact of warming, while several reports lately say the earth is entering a cooling period. So which is it?
Below is some of what Obama said in what some, here are calling a “contradictory speech.”
From the UK Independent:

Climate change could produce a refugee crisis that is “unprecedented in human history”, Barack Obama has warned as he stressed global warming was the most pressing issue of the age.

Speaking at an international food conference in Milan, the former US President said rising temperatures were already making it more difficult to grow crops and rising food prices were “leading to political instability”.

“Floods on sunny days”—bad, very bad….

He said the United States was currently experiencing “floods on sunny days”, increased wildfires and, in Alaska, increased coastal erosion as the ice melts and no country was “immune” to the problem.

If world leaders put aside “parochial interests” and took action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by enough to restrict the rise to one or two degrees Celsius, then humanity would probably be able to cope. [So, might we shut up about this issue if sunspot activity and natural cycles restrict the rise to one or two degrees?—ed]

Failing to do this, Mr Obama warned, increased the risk of “catastrophic” effects in the future, “not only real threats to food security, but also increases in conflict as a consequence of scarcity and greater refugee and migration patterns”.

“If those rain patterns change, then you could see hundreds of millions of people who suddenly find themselves unable to feed themselves, because they’re already at subsistence levels.

“And the amount of migration, the number of refugees that could be resulting from something like that, would be unprecedented in human history.”

Dare I mention the scientific notion of carrying capacity and that a population die-off might be mother earth’s way of staying in balance (okay stone me!).
Continue reading here.
I have a ‘Climate Refugees’ category with 49 previous posts on the topic, here. I don’t know if they have settled their differences, but early-on the climate refugee agitators were at odds with the ‘humanitarian’ refugee agitators over the use of the word “refugee.” ‘Humanitarians’ were angered by environmentalists stealing the word that they had over decades built up as one that invokes warm and fuzzy feelings among people who know nothing.

Ignoring history: 1,300 years brings us to the Islamization of Minnesota

05/09/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The news hook for this latest article by Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily is the failing Countering Violent Extremism effort to rehabilitate wannabe Jihadists, but the great value of this article is its overview of world history and how Minnesota can be used as an example of the stealth jihad, creeping shariah and the growing dimmitude at all levels of government.
No time to say more!
Please read it! Click here.
And buy Hohmann’s book!