In a piece designed for emotional impact The Associated Press reported this week that President Donald Trump has eviscerated the four-decades-old US Refugee Admissions Program.
Cry me a river: the US is no longer the world leader in admitting questionable refugees for American taxpayers to care for!
From AP:
Under Trump, US no longer leads world on refugee protections
For decades, America led the world in humanitarian policies by creating a sanctuary for the oppressed, admitting more refugees annually than all other countries combined.
That reputation eroded during Donald Trump’s presidency as he cut the number of refugees allowed in by more than 80%, and Canada replaced the U.S. as No. 1 for resettling people fleeing war and persecution.
Trump has arguably changed the immigration system more than any U.S. president, thrilling supporters with an “America first” message and infuriating critics who call his signature domestic issue insular, xenophobic and even racist.
Before November’s election, The Associated Press is examining some of Trump’s biggest immigration policy changes, from halting asylum to stepping back from America’s humanitarian role.
The pain from a dismantling of the 40-year-old refugee program reverberates worldwide, coming as a record 80 million people have been displaced by war and famine.
[….]
Stephen Miller, left, with then Senator Jeff Sessions. Miller got his big break when he went to work for the Senate’s leading advocate for immigration restriction, Sessions.
Trump has lowered the cap for refugee admissions each year of his presidency, dropping them to a record low of 15,000 for 2021.
The State Department defended the cuts as protecting American jobs during the coronavirus pandemic. Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, said the administration has sought to have refugees settle closer to their home countries and work on solving the crises that caused them to flee.
When Trump is reelected one of his top priorities must be to cement this concept of keeping refugees close to their homes until whatever conflict or environmental crisis has occurred is rectified.
You are going to hear more and more about “climate refugees.” Remember they are not by definition refugees under existing international treaties.
The AP continues….
As many as 1,000 refugees who were ready to travel now may not be eligible because they don’t fit into one of the categories, said Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, a refugee resettlement group. For example, many Syrians may no longer qualify because no category is for those fleeing war, he said.
[….]
Democrat Joe Biden promises to raise the annual refugee cap to 125,000 if he wins Nov. 3.
If you are wondering what Hetfield is referring to (in red type above), see this year’s report to Congress that accompanies the Presidential Determination. It reiterates the definition of a refugee in the opening paragraphs.
A refugee by definition is someone personally escaping persecution.
Moving around the globe because of a war (or weather) is not, and has never been, a part of that legal definition. Over time, the Open Borders pushers have simply expanded the definition to suit their agenda with the help of their complicit media.
WHO IS A REFUGEE?
Under Section 101(a)(42) of the INA, a refugee is an alien who, generally, has experienced past persecution or has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Individuals who meet the statutory definition may be considered for either refugee status under Section 207 of the INA if they are outside the United States, or asylum status under Section 208 of the INA, if they are already in the United States or present themselves at a U.S. port of entry. Both refugee and asylum status are forms of humanitarian protection offered by the United States.
President Donald Trump honored a deal, he called it dumb, that Barack Obama made with the Australian government just before leaving office in 2016. The deal was that the US would ‘welcome’ illegal aliens that have been held in Australian offshore detention camps.
The APis reporting that the US part of the deal is almost done and by spring 1,100 of the detained, mostly Muslim men, will be settled in unknown towns and cities in the US.
But, a deal implies we get something from it, right?
Supposedly Australia is taking asylum seekers from Honduras and El Salvador who have made their way to Costa Rica. Costa Rica! Why are they our problem???
Here is the rub, I could only find a story or two from 2017 about 30 Central Americans being flown from Costa Rica to Australia. There might be more somewhere, but the media isn’t reporting it.
So we are getting over a thousand, mostly single men, and Australia gets a handful of ‘refugees’ that were already safe in Costa Rica!
Australia: Most of 1,100 refugees in US deal have resettled
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The United States is expected to have resettled more than 1,100 refugees by early next year under a deal President Donald Trump reluctantly honored with Australia, an Australian official said on Monday.
“New Americans” waiting for their ticket to your town!
President Barack Obama’s administration struck a deal in 2016 to accept up to 1,250 refugees from Iran, Bangladesh, Somalia and Myanmar whom Australia had banished to Pacific island camps.
Trump condemned the deal as “dumb” but agreed to honor the U.S. commitment, subject to “extreme vetting” of the refugees.
The United States has resettled 870 refugees since October 2017 and around 250 more have received provisional approval to make new homes in the United States, Home Affairs Department deputy secretary Marc Ablong told an Australian Senate committee.
While resettlement had been disrupted in recent months by the pandemic, Ablong said Australia expected the last of the refugees accepted by the United States to be resettled by March or April.
The resettlement deal “is operating very effectively to date,” Ablong said.
[….]
New Zealand’s offer to take 150 refugees a year has been refused while the United States continues to accept them.
[….]
Some see the U.S. resettlement deal as repayment for Australia agreeing to accept Honduran and Salvadoran refugees under a U.S.-led resettlement program from a camp in Costa Rica.
Other than an article or so in 2017, I have never seen the media report exactly how many Central Americans were sent to Australia from Costa Rica to ‘honor’ our part of the deal.
But, I repeat, why are Central Americans who are safe in a safe country, Costa Rica, our problem in the first place?
The man who beheaded a school teacher on Friday because the teacher dared to use the Mohamed cartoons as a prop in a class on free speech was a refugee welcomed to France.
Yesterday Socialists (including Antifa) staged a pro-immigrant rally in Paris demanding that the undocumented be given legal status.
You may have noticed that we have been free of large demonstrations promoting Open Borders and relatively free of any Islamic supremacist agitation in the last year or so. That is not an accident.
Our extremists know they must lay low in the lead-up to the presidential election only two weeks away now. But, know that if Biden is elected they will turn on the heat so that a Biden Administration gets the ‘nudge’ to do what it has promised.
Here is Breitbart reporting on the Paris demonstration that took place on Saturday:
Protesters Demand Migrant Amnesty in Paris Day After Migrant Terror Attack
Thousands of pro-migration protesters took to the streets of Paris, demanding that the French government give amnesty to the “undocumented” migrant population just one day after a Chechen migrant is believed to have beheaded a teacher in Paris.
On Saturday, several thousand protesters were seen marching in the French capital — defying the country’s China virus lockdown measures — as a part of the ‘March of Solidarity’ for migrants “without papers” — a left-wing euphemism for illegal aliens.
The organisers of the protest, which included the Federation of Associations of Solidarity with All Immigrants (FASTI), also called on the government to close migrant detention centres and provide “housing for all”, according to Le Figaro.
European Parliament member Leïla Chaibi, of the democratic socialist La France Insoumise party, joined the protest, writing on social media:
“This afternoon, I was alongside the undocumented migrants, who marched in numbers in the streets of Paris for equality and dignity.”
Video footage shared on social media showed thousands of closely packed demonstrators marching through the streets of Paris, and HuffPost France reporter Pierre Tremblay described the scenes as “excited”.
“Thousands of people have come to Paris to support this movement of undocumented migrants for their regularization,” Tremblay reported.
[….]
The protest in Paris took place one day after a teacher was beheaded by, according to local reports, a Chechen migrant.
French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed on Friday that the beheading was “an Islamist terrorist attack” perpetrated against an educator “teaching his students about the freedom of expression”.
The teacher, Samuel Paty, had reportedly shown his students caricatures of the Islamic prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which sparked a terror attack in 2015.
He showed the cartoon during a class on freedom of speech. This is said to have caused an uproar amongst Muslim parents, despite Paty asking Muslim students to leave if they might feel uncomfortable prior to the lesson.
[….]
The 18-year-old Chechen, named as, Abdullakh Anzorov, was shot dead by police following the beheading. He was granted a residency card in March of this year after coming to the country as a refugee.
Biden, who helped design the Refugee Act of 1980 with Ted Kennedy, has promised 125,000 refugeeswill be admitted to the US in his first year in office. He says he will top his old boss’s record.
And, btw, the US State Department has removed the data basewhich allows you to know where the refugees are coming from and where they are placed.
Europe is done! If Biden and the socialists are elected here, we will soon follow Europe’s lead on the path to obliterating Western Civilization.
The Open Borders Lobby with its lawyers is not happy with Trump’s “extreme vetting” and with the help of Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollenare prepping their friends in the media and in Congress for the day when they expect Harris/Biden will fling open America’s gates to tens of thousands of new refugees from countries like Somalia, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
Biden has already signaled that 125,000 is not out of the question beginning in January 2021. Any enhanced security screening would necessarily have to be discarded to facilitate numbers like that.
This report was made possible by the efforts of many people outside of IRAP, particularly our clients and co-counsel in JFS [Jewish Family Service of Seattle] v. Trump and Doe v. Wolf. In litigating JFS v. Trump, we worked with the National Immigration Law Center, HIAS, Perkins Coie LLP, and pro bono attorneys Lauren Aguiar, Mollie M. Kornreich, and Abigail Sheehan Davis.
In addition, we are grateful to the office of Senator Chris Van Hollen for his advocacy on behalf of refugees and for sharing the reports to Congress on refugee admissions and vetting that informed this report.
It really doesn’t matter what the report says, this is about setting the tone for the anticipated return of mass migration to make up for what they will call the ‘lost Trump years.’
Should we have expected any other reaction from the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors*** that have been changing America by changing the people for four decades while we pay them to do it!
The contractors are working overtime to get Joe Biden elected President since he has promised to admit 125,000 refugees in his first year in office.
As I reported here the other day, the President has set the ceiling for FY2021 at the lowest level since the program was launched by Senators Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Here come the reactions….
Catholics are up first since the US Conference of Catholic Bishopsleads the bunch in terms of numbers of refugees they have placed in hundreds of US towns and cities since the program began.
The big news in this story is that the President hasn’t signed the determination and there is a pause in the program until October 26th.
Bishops and advocates denounce Trump administration’s historic low refugee cap
WASHINGTON (CNS) — The steep slope, appearing almost as a vertical line, is a stunning mark by the Trump administration on what was once a refugee program recognized around the world as a model to welcome the tyrannized and persecuted masses.
Late on the night of Sept. 30 as the annual deadline for setting a figure for refugee admittances approached, the administration announced it would bring the refugee cap—the maximum number of displaced people the country decides to resettle in a federal fiscal year—to a historic low: 15,000.
The average during presidencies of both Republicans and Democrats had been around 95,000. [See how they got this 95,000—ed] But the announcement on the new cap doesn’t mean the bad news for refugees, or organizations that help them, ended there.
“It’s not official, the president still has to sign it,” so no refugees can enter the country until that happens, said Ashley Feasley, the director of policy for Migration and Refugee Services at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “I have no idea when he’ll sign it.”
Feasley said there’s a “pause” until Oct. 26, which means nothing will happen until then.
Dorsonville was born in Columbia. Gomez was born in Mexico.
Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, U.S.C.C.B. president, and Bishop Mario E. Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington and chairman of the U.S.C.C.B.’s Committee on Migration, called the low number on admissions, “heartbreaking,” given “the global need and the capacity and wealth of the United States.”
Then we have the International Rescue Committee weighing in….
Ash worked for both the Bush and Obama State Departments.
Nazanin Ash, the vice president of public policy at the International Rescue Committee, also deplored the decision:“The number of refugees worldwide has grown by over 14 million over the last four years, while the Trump Administration has lowered refugee admissions levels by over 80 percent, vastly reduced access to the program for Muslim and Black refugees, severely reduced the number of persecuted religious allowed into the country, and ignored the world’s largest refugee crises.”
She added, “The administration has reneged on U.S. humanitarian obligations, trampled on long-held values, undermined U.S. interests and its own stated policy goals—including by failing to provide safety to thousands in need of refuge because of their assistance to U.S. troops or because of religious or political persecution.”
Mark Hetfield, President and CEO of HIAS, at February 2017 rally against the President. A featured speaker that day was then Rep. Keith Ellison
In response, HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield said: “It is a sad moment when our country shows such weakness when it should be leading. The administration’s decision to set a record low number of refugees at a time of record high needs — and without even consulting with Congress, as required by law — shows how far we have fallen. Not only will refugees who have fled violence and persecution suffer, but so will our country, as refugees who become new Americans have contributed so much to this country.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PROPOSES LOWEST REFUGEE ADMISSIONS CEILING IN AMERICAN HISTORY
“In just four years, this Administration has cut the refugee resettlement program from 110,000 to a historic low of fifteen thousand. At a time of unprecedented global need, today’s decision to further cut the refugee admissions ceiling is a complete abdication of our humanitarian and moral duty.” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
“The Trump Administration’s failure to comply with the Refugee Act and their subsequent delays and cuts to the refugee program are moral failures and a disgrace to the American legacy of welcome.
Refugee resettlement is not a partisan issue. Each day that resettlement is paused is a matter of life and death for the thousands of refugees waiting to rebuild their lives. Congress must not overlook this blatant disregard for human life and our legal process. They must demand that they be consulted as soon as possible and that the refugee program be restored.”
“The proposed refugee resettlement number of 15,000, a more than 80% cut over historic norms, is unacceptable. Our values as a nation and as people of faith demand that we take action when people’s lives are in danger. But for the past three years, President Trump and his administration have strayed so far from these basic principles in the name of their cruel, racist and partisan goals that the life-saving refugee resettlement program is a shadow of what it once was.I urge all Americans to insist that Congress hold the White House accountable to operating the refugee program as required by U.S. law.”
I’ll have more as I am sure this isn’t the last of what we will hear from the contractors.
***For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that operate as a huge conveyor belt monopolizing all refugee placement in America.
Your ‘religious’ Left at work! I wonder if some of our tax dollars paid for her Church World Service shirt?
And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.
The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?
I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.
“In just four years, this Administration has cut the refugee resettlement program from 110,000 to a historic low of fifteen thousand. At a time of unprecedented global need, today’s decision to further cut the refugee admissions ceiling is a complete abdication of our humanitarian and moral duty.” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
