With “public charge” rewrite, Administration building a legal wall to help slow migrant flow to America; however, refugees will still get welfare

09/23/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

President Donald Trump has many avenues to slow the immigration steam roller that is changing America by changing the people.

Making it harder for wannabe future ‘new Americans’ to stay, is to require that they won’t suck off the federal teat in the process of advancing toward a green card and future citizenship.

stephen miller smirk — Stephen Miller is at it again says Politico

But before you get excited, know that refugees and asylees (and a whole bunch of other categories of legal immigration) are exempt from a proposed rule change.

When the bill that became the Refugee Act of 1980 was debated in Congress, ol’ Teddy Kennedy promised that we weren’t simply bringing more impoverished people to America to place on welfare. He lied!

I want to know why the supposed humanitarian NGOs (the contractors) presently being paid by us, the taxpayers, to take care of refugees can’t use their own money to feed and house the refugees they say they love. After all, they claim that the refugees quickly find work and become self-sufficient!

Here is Politico which obviously is sending a message for Dems and Leftwingers to strongly oppose (protest!) the proposed rules they claim are straight from the evil brain of White House aide Stephen Miller. Never mind that controlling immigration was the primary reason Donald Trump was elected to sit in the Oval Office and Miller is one of the few who remember the promise!

The Leftwing media focus on Miller is a classic Saul Alinsky tactic. I suspect he finds the attacks amusing.

Politico:

Immigrants may be denied green cards if they’ve received benefits

The Trump administration proposed expanding its pre-election crackdown on immigration by denying green cards to legal immigrants if they have received government assistance.

Under the new rule, which the Department of Homeland Security posted online Saturday, immigrants can be denied so-called “lawful permanent residency” if they’ve received certain government benefits — or if the government anticipates that they may do so in the future.

The measure represents the latest move by White House aide Stephen Miller to reduce drastically all immigration to the U.S., both legal and illegal, and reflects his strong conviction that doing so will improve congressional Republicans’ chances in the midterm elections. The benefit programs targeted include the the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (welfare), Medicaid, and Medicare Part D (prescription drug subsidies).

The regulation could force millions of low-income families to choose between government assistance and permanent settlement in the United States.

Advocates fear it could ultimately restrict children’s access to food and health care.
The move will affect mainly legal immigrants and their families, since undocumented immigrants are not eligible for most federal benefits.

[….]

The proposed regulation would provide a more robust enforcement mechanism for longstanding statutory boilerplate that bars immigrants “likely to become a public charge.”

[….]

Roughly one million people become lawful permanent residents each year — a generous allotment, according to Hans von Spakovsky, a senior fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation.

“We can be choosy about who we allow into the country,” he said. “One of the primary factors ought to be ensuring that the legal immigrants who come in are people who can financially support themselves.”

Approximately one-third of the federal budget goes to health insurance subsidies and social safety net programs, according to the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — an expenditure the Trump administration and Republicans seek to reduce.

[….]

A range of activists spent months preparing for the rollout of the proposed regulation and plan to wage an opposition campaign. The proposal will now be subject to a public comment period, an opportunity for opponents to mount an assault on the plan.

A coalition led by the National Immigration Law Center and the D.C.-based anti-poverty Center for Law and Social Policy will push for a wide range of businesses, organizations and government officials to submit comments.

Refugees, Asylees, Cuban/Haitians, Special Immigrant Visa holders, those here through the ridiculous ‘temporary protected status’ program, more! are all exempt!

The prospective regulation wouldn’t apply to all immigrants. Refugees and asylees are exempt, as are certain victims of domestic violence and children who qualify for “special immigrant juvenile status,” which is available to minors who were abused, neglected or abandoned by a parent.

Foreigners who apply for “temporary protected status” to remain in the U.S. after a natural disaster or armed conflict in their home countries will also be exempt, so long as they received a blanket waiver to absolve them of any public charge considerations.

See Jim Simpson’s chart on how many refugees and others have been approved as ‘new Americans’ in the last ten years and know that all of these will be exempt!***

simpson-table-1 — It isn’t clear if the UAC ‘children’ will continue to receive welfare but I suspect they will.

Continue here if you wish. Politico, through its long report, is helping the Left figure out who opposes the draft measure and offering a blueprint on how best to fight it including stalling it by overwhelming the system with thousands and thousands of comments.

***If you need more proof than what Politico says, here is a screenshot of a portion of the draft regulations exempting refugees and asylees. This is from page 85 but more exemptions are on page 86,87,88, and 89!

Screenshot (1454)_LI — The list of exemptions goes on for four more pages!

State Department: 30,000 refugee cap for FY19 may not be final number!

09/23/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We too were surprised when Secretary of State Pompeo announced a cap of 30,000 refugees to be admitted to the US in FY19 which begins in nine days.

Although as we have chronicled over the years, the State Department and Congress have played loosey-goosey with the required “consultation” between the branches over the refugee numbers for the coming year, Pompeo’s surprise announcement did seem premature.

(See my post of last year about what the process is supposed to entail, here.)

Goodlatte and Trump — Judiciary Chairman Goodlatte to the Prez: We want to “consult” on refugee cap. So Bob, where is the hearing also required by law!

Now we see there is some waffling after a sanctimonious Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte has called out the Administration for not “consulting” with them first.

Many legally-required consultations over the last ten years have been nothing-burgers where a few staffers from the State Department went to the Hill to meet with staffers there to discuss the coming refugee year.

I don’t know if any Members even show up. I asked my Congressman if I might be permitted to go to the consultation one year and he reported that, no the public was not permitted to attend.

Although, in most years the consultations were perfunctory, there was one exception recently and that was the big show that Secretary of State John Kerry put on for FY2016 about Obama’s inflated 110,000 determination in the fall of 2016. (They thought Hillary was going to win and they were flexing muscles and getting ready for the big year ahead!)

Otherwise there has been only scant attention paid to the law requiring that the President consult with Congress over the numbers.

Now here we see that the outgoing Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, wants his consultation.

Heck, maybe the Administration can give him a consultation next month, or in November, and hold up the whole darn thing with zero coming in in the interim!

From The Hill:

Goodlatte: Administration undercut law, Congress by setting refugee cap

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) on Thursday accused the State Department of defying the law by proposing a sharp reduction in refugees to the United States.

The charge marks a rare rebuke of the administration from Goodlatte, who wants officials to consult “immediately” with Congress before establishing a final cap on refugees to be accepted into the country next year.

“The law is clear: the Administration must consult with Congress prior to the President’s determination of the annual refugee ceiling,” Goodlatte said in a statement. “But this did not happen this year, and the Trump Administration has no excuse for not complying with their obligation under the law.”

[….]

Democrats have pounced on the cutbacks, warning that the administration is undermining the country’s historic role and international credibility as the world’s safe-harbor for threatened populations and a champion of human rights.

Republican critics have focused less on the figures than on the legality of the administration’s move to establish a cap without first seeking input from Congress. Earlier this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) condemned the administration’s unilateral move.

[….]

Goodlatte took that criticism a step further, suggesting no refugee cap can be legally established without Congress weighing in first.

“There is a real question as to whether the President can even set a number of refugees that carries the weight of law unless it is done after an appropriate consultation with Congress,” Goodlatte said.

He’s also calling for reforms that would empower Congress, not the administration, to have the ultimate say in determining that annual number.

By the way, Goodlatte has been responsible for this committee and the refugee program for years and never really pushed for serious reform of the Refugee Act of 1980. Oh yeh, he proposed some legislation, but never made it a priority.

Now we see that in response, the State Department is saying there is wiggle room in that 30,000 cap. The Hill story continues….

On Tuesday, the day after Pompeo’s announcement, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the administration plans to consult with Congress before finalizing its refugee ceiling. The cap “may” change, she said, based on those talks.

Hey folks, don’t think this means the number could go down!

Remember I said it should be zero, which would be the only leverage the White House would have to push a complete overhaul of an ill-conceived US Refugee Admissions Program.

Where is Goodlatte’s hearing?

Before the President makes his final ‘determination’ a hearing “shall be held” in the House and Senate Judiciary Committees!

So let’s have the full legal requirements carried out which includes a public hearing by Goodlatte’s committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee centered around a report the State Department is supposed to send to Congress as part of the consultation process.

Let’s begin following the law now and maybe the whole decision can be dragged out for months.

Hundreds of refugees being removed from “squalid” housing in Omaha, Nebraska

09/22/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is one more reason that the Trump Administration should be pushing for a complete review of the US Refugee Admissions Program with an eye to up-ending—dumping entirely or re-writing—the foolish system put into motion by the Refugee Act of 1980.

We simply can’t bring in so many refugees that they then live in squalor, placed there by some supposedly ‘religious’ charities paid by US taxpayers with virtually no oversight of what they are doing and no accounting of where our money goes.

And, not to mention, having an economic, cultural, and health impact on Americans kept in the dark about the arrival of poor third worlders to their neighborhoods.

Omaha apartment inspections — Inspectors entering housing complex where hundreds of Burmese refugees were placed by a resettlement contractor working for the US State Department.

Maybe not ‘humanitarian’ at all!

Some might say we are actually promoting slave labor for the meatpacking industry and other giant globalist companies.

It is a long story, and you should read it all at the Omaha World-Herald (hat tip: Joanne):

Squalid Omaha apartments housing refugees targeted by city operation in ‘humanitarian effort’

City of Omaha housing inspectors descended Thursday morning on a north Omaha apartment complex to inspect units and potentially remove and relocate up to 500 refugees from Myanmar living among bedbugs, lice, rodents, gas leaks, mold and other squalid living conditions.

Officials described the operation at the Yale Park Apartments, near 34th Avenue and Lake Streets, as a “humanitarian effort” involving code enforcement, police and fire personnel, as well as members of the philanthropic community and social service agencies who could be tasked with finding temporary housing for hundreds of people.

[….]

Tenants, which include an estimated 175 children, may be forced to live out of community centers equipped with cots in coming days as the scramble begins to find places for them to stay. City officials said they’re trying to respect the tenants’ cultural wishes, too, which likely includes being placed together as much as possible.

[….]

Three men entered the courtyard Thursday morning wearing white hazmat suits and orange rubber boots. People wearing Omaha Public Schools, Heartland Family Services and Lutheran Family Services gear were standing by.

More here.

The reporter wants us to believe that the problem is entirely the landlords fault, but doesn’t tell us that it was Lutheran Family Services, a federal resettlement contractor, that was likely responsible for placing refugees in questionable housing in the first place.

Meatpacking laborers!

The article tells us that many of the Burmese work in meatpacking at nearby Cargill. (Yes, the same Cargill company we mentioned here yesterday with the E.Coli recall).

In 2017 Cargill in Nebraska expanded the size of a plant that then required more laborers. See here.

Learn more about Cargill at wikipedia, it might change some of your buying habits.

If these meapackers want the refugee laborers maybe they should subsidize better housing for them! Or, better still, go back to paying good wages so Americans will be happy to do the job!

You knew it all along! Illegal alien population is twice as high as the oft reported 11 million

09/22/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Leftwing media and talking heads have been using a number of 11 million illegals in the US for at least a decade, but commonsense told you it was higher.

immigration protest dc — In June thousands turned out in Washington DC in support of those crossing our borders illegally thus encouraging even more illegal crossings.

Now some ‘smart people’ at Yale and MIT actually crunched a few numbers and much to their chagrin (because they went in to the study assuming the number was lower than 11 million) are reporting it is a whopping 22 million!

(By the way, refugees that we bring to the US are legal aliens, but the hundreds of thousands coming across borders as asylum seekers—wannabe refugees—were, we presume, included in the 22 million because they are not legally here until they have been granted asylum!)

Here is Neil Munro writing at Breitbart:

The population of illegal migrants is roughly 22 million, or twice the establishment estimate of 11 million, say three professors from Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The shocking estimate will force establishment politicians and pro-migration advocates to recalculate the estimated impact of the huge illegal population on wages and salaries, on crime rates, welfare consumption, rental and real-estate prices, productivity rates, and the distribution of job-creating investment funds to coastal vs. heartland states.

The higher illegal population estimate helps explain why Americans’ wages and salaries have risen so little amid apparently record-low unemployment rates, and it also undercuts companies’ loud demands for yet more immigration of foreign workers, consumers, and renters.

The population estimate also raises the political and economic stakes of any amnesty legislation. In 2014, public opposition blocked the bipartisan, establishment, media-boosted Gang of Eight bill, which claimed to offer an amnesty to just 11 million migrants. Currently, advocates for a ‘Dream Act’ amnesty claim it will provide green cards to roughly 3 million sons and daughters of illegal immigrants.

The new estimate also bolsters President Donald Trump’s demand that reluctant GOP and hostile Democratic legislators fund a border wall.

[….]

The academics expected their techniques to show the population is smaller than the consensus estimate of 11.3 million. “Our original idea was just to do a sanity check on the existing number,” said Edward Kaplan, operations research professor at Yale. “Instead of a number which was smaller, we got a number that was 50 percent higher. That caused us to scratch our heads.”

These are the math geniuses, but isn’t it 100% more if 11 million is now 22 million? (I’m math impaired, so let me know!).

Continue reading here.

Next we need to figure out how many are in each state!

Stephen Miller wins again trumpets NBC News, outmaneuvered his elders in setting refugee cap

09/21/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is driving the Open Borders Left nuts (and the globalist RINOs) that Stephen Miller is still in the White House and still pushing what they call a hardline immigration agenda.

If you are new to all of this, you should know that before he devoted himself to the Trump campaign and presidency, Miller was a staffer for then Senator Jeff Sessions, chairman of the refugee/immigration subcommittee in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Sessions consistently fought for you—the “deplorables” as Hillary called you—the America worker and average American taxpayers footing the bill for ever-increasing numbers of immigrants (illegal and legal).

niki haley and pompeo — We are told by NBC News that Ambassador Haley and Sec. of State Pompeo both wanted more refugees than the 30,000 cap announced and that they “got rolled” by a kid.

I wish I had time to say more, but here (below) is the headline at NBC News. We are told that US Ambassador Nikki Haley wanted more refugees than the 30,000 cap announced a few days ago.

(By the way, I wrote here that the cap should have been zero until the program was thoroughly reviewed and either dumped or reformed.)

Stephen Miller wins again: Haley, other foes excluded from immigration meeting

A planned cut in the number of refugees the U.S. admits is the latest win for hardliner Stephen Miller, who keeps beating the Trump admin’s pragmatists.

WASHINGTON — Days before the Trump administration announced plans to slash the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. to its lowest level in 40 years, Trump senior adviser and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller made his case for fewer refugees to a room of senior officials at the White House.

Stephen-Miller-with-Jeff-Sessions — Stephen Miller with his earlier boss Senator Jeff Sessions

His sales job was made easier by the absence of top officials who disagree with his stance. They weren’t there because they weren’t invited, according to two people briefed on the discussions. Missing from the room last Friday were U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Mark Green, both of whom have promoted a more generous policy toward refugees fleeing poverty, famine and persecution, the two sources said.

The planned cut in the refugee cap, now just 30,000 for the coming fiscal year, is the latest win for Miller, who has outmaneuvered opponents in and outside the administration to push through a crackdown on all forms of immigration.

[….]

In the administration’s internal discussions, Defense Secretary James Mattis — who was also absent from the Friday meeting — and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had consistently opposed reducing the ceiling for how many refugees could be allowed into the country next fiscal year, former officials, humanitarian experts and Congressional staffers from both parties told NBC News.

But after the meeting of top officials at the White House, Pompeo unveiled plans Monday to scale back the cap for refugees in 2019 to its lowest level since 1980. The secretary gave no explanation as to why he had changed his position, or how that number was arrived at during the closed door “principals” meeting.

[….]

“Pompeo got rolled,” said one former official familiar with the deliberations who served under Republican and Democratic administrations. The secretary “got manhandled by a kid who knows nothing about foreign policy,” said the source, referring to the 33-year-old Miller.

What is this foreign policy crap—this is about domestic policy and what out-of-control immigration is doing to American citizens in American towns!

You must read it all!

Go here and see that Miller, who is carrying out the agenda the President campaigned on, is up against seasoned ‘moderates’ who frankly are working against key immigration restriction policies that we elected Trump to carry out.

I have said it many times to many people lately—you will know when the Trump presidency ends (when we go back to uncontrolled immigration) and that is when Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller are gone from Trump’s team. And, you can bet there are many on both sides of the political aisle working toward that end.