Reminder: Over the next few days I will be traveling, so don’t look for new posts here at RRW (after today) until early next week.
Thanks to reader Cathy for alerting me to this White House Press Release (here in its entirety):
Today, President Donald J. Trump signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum to establish a National Vetting Center (NVC) to coordinate the efforts of departments and agencies to better identify individuals seeking to enter the country who present a threat to national security, border security, homeland security, or public safety.
The NVC, which will be led by the Department of Homeland Security, will help fulfill the President’s requirement that departments and agencies improve their coordination and use of intelligence and other information in the vetting process.
The Federal Government’s current vetting efforts are ad hoc, which impedes our ability to keep up with today’s threats.The NVC will better coordinate these activities in a central location, enabling officials to further leverage critical intelligence and law enforcement information to identify terrorists, criminals, and other nefarious actors trying to enter and remain within our country. The NVC’s operations will adhere to America’s strong protections for individuals’ privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. The Administration’s top priority is the safety and security of the public, and the NVC will empower our frontline defenders to better fulfill that obligation.
A good first step, but much more needs to be done!
Come on RCUSA, make my day and oppose coordination of vetting that could keep us safer!
The IOM is the International Organization for Migration.
Until not too long ago it was a non-profit group just like the other federal resettlement contractors that depended mostly on taxpayer funding (like they do) and was (still is) involved with processing refugees in to the US (and elsewhere). It is now an agency of the United Nationsand you might see evidence of them (their bags visible in airports worldwide) as they shepherd migrants around the globe.
You saw those bags in this photo (below) of the Australian rejected ‘refugees’ as they were leaving detention on their way to Anytown, USA. (BTW, some reports said that the IOM bought the detainees some really nice clothes and shoes.)
IOM bags! Story here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/01/23/australian-rejected-refugees-on-the-way-to-us-this-week/
Trump nominee for U.N. migration post called Muslims violent, Christians top priority
(I didn’t know that the US gets to nominate the chairman, but I guess that makes sense because we supply the IOM with most of its money!)
Emphasis below is mine: Ken Isaacs (right) with Franklin Graham before Samaritan’s Purse relief flight to Ecuador in 2016
The Trump administration’s nominee to coordinate billions of dollars in assistance to migrants around the world has suggested in social-media posts that Islam is an inherently violent religion and has said Christians in some cases should receive preferential treatment when resettling from hostile areas.
In tweets, social media posts and radio appearances reviewed by The Washington Post, Ken Isaacs, a vice president of the Christian relief organization Samaritan’s Purse, made disparaging remarks about Muslims and denied climate change — a driving force behind migration, according to the agency the State Department has nominated him to lead.
In June, after a terrorist attack in London, Isaac reposted and commented on a CNN International story that quoted a Catholic bishop saying “This isn’t in the name of God, this isn’t what the Muslim faith asks people to do.”
Now (drum roll please) here is what Isaacs said that the Washington Post and critics of Isaacs say disqualifies him from this job!
The WaPo continues…..
Isaacs responded: “CNN, Bishop if you read the Quran you will know ‘this’ is exactly what the Muslim faith instructs the faithful to do.”
Isaacs was announced Thursday as the Trump administration’s pick to become director general of the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration, or IOM.The 169-member organization has a nearly $1 billion annual operating budget and for decades has deferred to the United States, one of its top benefactors, to lead the organization.
So look who the WaPo quotes as the expert on the Isaacs choice. Eric Schwartz, a hard Left one-worlder who ran the refugee program in the early years of the Obama Admin, and is a George Soros protege.
Trump’s pick could be at risk of being the first U.S. nominee since the late 1960s to lose an election by the group’s voting members, according to several people involved in international relief coordination.
“I don’t know the nominee, but I’ve seen some of his statements and they reflect a troubling prejudice that is really incompatible with a position of leadership for the world’s most important international migration agency,” said Eric Schwartz, president of Refugees International and a former assistant secretary of state under President Barack Obama.
“The person who leads this needs to be a symbol of the international community’s support for humanity. And that means that dark-skin people and Muslim people have the same inherent worth as any other people.”
We urge the President to not withdraw this nomination.
And, heck, if the IOM board votes him down, consider cutting IOM funding (after all, now that the number of refugees being admitted to the US is slowing, you won’t need their services so much!).
See my archive on Eric Schwartz here.
Let’s be clear right off the bat. Indonesia is a Muslim country and most of those attempting to pass through Indonesia (arriving there illegally), with a goal of being resettled in the US, Australia, Canada, or Europe, are Muslims. What happened to the supposedly humanitarianism of Islam and governments ruled by it? Why are these people our problem in the first place?
The truth is that Indonesia doesn’t want them either!
For years the UN has been processing illegal aliens arriving in Indonesia from Somalia etc. in to your US towns via the US State Department. Frankly it needs to stop and it looks like it is slowing.
I just checked Wrapsnetfor processing through Indonesia to the US and found that we admitted 18 cases (21 individuals indicating most are single (men?) people, hmmm) in the first three months of FY18 (beginning Oct. 1, 2017). Waiting in Indonesia for a ticket to America, Australia, Canada, Europe…..
Here is Gulf News (NY Times story):
(Journalism 101 requires that every refugee story begins with a sob story!)
JAKARTA: Ebrahim Adam fled armed conflict in his home region of Darfur, Sudan, in 2011, and ended up seeking asylum in Indonesia, hoping to be eventually resettled in Australia or another Western country so he could resume his dream of being an economist. [Usually they want to be doctors, so they say!—ed]
But after languishing for nearly seven years in Indonesia — where he cannot legally work, access public services or obtain citizenship — Ebrahim recently received bad news: His resettlement is unlikely to ever happen. The UN Refugee Agency’s office in Indonesia has begun informing the nearly 14,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Indonesia that they should not expect to be welcomed by another country. Instead, they should prepare to assimilate into Indonesian society as best they can, or consider returning to their strife-torn countries.
[….]
Analysts said Ebrahim faces additional obstacles: He is single, Muslim and of military age, which could make countries worried about terrorism less likely to take him in.
[….]
Globally, there are more than 24 million certified refugees and asylum seekers, the highest levels since the Second World War, according to the United Nations.
Historically, the chances of refugees ever being resettled are only around 1 per cent.
Those refugees residing in Indonesia face the additional obstacle that the United States and Australia, the two main resettlement destinations for refugees here, have put in place more stringent immigration policies, further decreasing their already long odds.
“Mark Getchell, the IOM’s chief of mission in Indonesia, said the policy changes in Australia and the United States, combined with a reluctance by Canada, New Zealand and European nations to take in additional refugees, means the number of resettlements are only about 400 people a year now in Indonesia.” (IOM is a branch of the UN)
[….]
The situation of refugees hoping for resettlement in the West became more dire after President Donald Trump took office last January. His administration’s travel ban blocks people from eight countries from entering the US, including Somalia, the country with the second-highest number of refugees and asylum seekers stuck in Indonesia.
400 too many!
Last year, only about 400 refugees living in Indonesia were resettled in the United States, according to the United Nations. Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 UN refugee convention, which prohibits governments from returning people fleeing persecution to areas where they face serious threats, but the country has allowed certified refugees to remain here as they await resettlement in a third country.
[….]
For years, asylum-seekers from the Middle East and South Asia have used Indonesia as a transit point to reach Australia, boarding rickety wooden boats run by human smugglers for the perilous voyage across the Indian Ocean.
In 2013, however, the Australian government adopted strict new measures to discourage future arrivals by immediately transferring those who made it to its shores to spartan detention centers in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, and refusing to ever consider them for resettlement.
But, golly gee, now we get the booby prize! We admit to America those same lawbreakers who attempted to get to Australia and were detained. And, we pay for it thanks to the Obama “dumb” deal that Trump agreed to!
More from Gulf Newshere.
It would make enormous sense if the UN spent more time persuading Indonesia to keep their coreligionists, and promote a PR campaign through Africa and the Middle East that there is no ticket to the West through Indonesia!
The refugee arrival numbers would have to really take off in the next few months for the Trump Administration to get anywhere near the CEILING they proposed last September of 45,000 for FY18 which ends on September 30th. So far, in 4 months, 6,704 refugees have been placed with almost every state seeing a few at least. Only Hawaii, Delaware, Mississippi and Wyoming have seen none. However, as regular readers know, Wyoming is the only state that has never had a program. Which will hold the record?
Will Trump break George Bush’s record?
At this rate, we could see around 20,000 admitted for the whole year which would give President Trump the distinction of the Prez admitting the lowest numbers in the history of the Refugee Act of 1980. (Kennedy, Biden, Jimmy Carter) George W. Bush holds the present record of two years in the 20,000’s. In the immediate wake of 9/11, Bush admitted 27,070 in 2002 and 28,117 in 2003.
Here is where the 6,704 for FY18 have been distributed so far:
From WRAPSNET, the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center. I know numbers are hard to read. http://www.wrapsnet.org/admissions-and-arrivals/
Top Ten ‘welcoming’ states so far this year are:
Ohio
Texas
Washington
New York
California
Pennsylvania
North Carolina
Illinois
Georgia
Michigan
Broken record alert! Reducing numbers for a few years is good because it gives some overloaded communities a reprieve, however, unless the law is reformed nothing will be permanent and the post-Trump era could see a huge push to make up for what the Open Borders Left would see as lost time.
This post is archived in my ‘refugee statistics’ category, here.
Clearly! the Christian, Jewish and secular federal resettlement agencies do not want extra vetting for Muslims from terror-producing countries. Oh no!
The Homeland Security Department announced Monday that it was lifting the outright ban on refugees from these eleven countries, but certain individuals would undergo greater scrutiny before they would be admitted to the US for you to take care of with your tax dollars.
Here is Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will resume admissions for refugees from 11 countries identified as presenting a high security risk, but with extra vetting for these mostly Middle Eastern and African nations, senior U.S. officials said on Monday.
Dutchman Hans Van de Weerd wants your towns to have more Muslims. Bio here: http://www.phocuswrightconference.com/Whos-Coming/Speakers/2016/Hans-Van-de-Weerd
The changes came after a 90-day review of refugee admissions from Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen by the State Department, Department of Homeland Security and intelligence agencies. [Note that Muslims from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Burma never were slowed in their flow to your towns.—-ed]
The new rules are the latest changes to the U.S. refugee program made by the administration of President Donald Trump to address what it sees as national security issues.
Some of the administration’s actions, including an executive order to temporarily ban all refugees, have sparked lengthy court battles. Refugee advocates*** have said they see the administration’s actions as intended to reduce the number of refugees, particularly those from Muslim countries.
Reuters reporter Yeganeh Torbati didn’t quote her go-to guy, Van de Weerd, this time, but the NYT did.
Here the New York Times quotes Hans Van de Weerdof the International Rescue Committee (see moneybags Miliband) and the Refugee Council USA (that is lobbying arm of the refugee industry which has been protesting along with CAIR and hired the Podesta Group to lobby Republicans for them in the Senate).
“This administration disproportionally targets Muslims,” said Hans Van de Weerd, a senior official at the International Rescue Committee. “Today’s announcement does not change this for the better.”
And, Hans (is he a US citizen?) is working against the President to be sure that American towns ‘welcome’ more Muslims. What else can you conclude? Dear readers, Extra vetting is something to cheer about, but remember it is not permanent. When Donald Trump leaves the White House in three or seven years, everything can revert back to the free-for-all we witnessed in the Obama years—unless Congress makes changes to the law!
***These are the primary “refugee advocates.” They are also the federally funded resettlement agencies you pay to act as community political activists secretively placing refugees in your towns and cities.
The number in parenthesis is the portion of their budget that you involuntarily pay! The Washington Post, Reuters, LA Timesand the New York Times will never tell you about their conflicts of interest!
Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see some big media outfit actually take a serious look at the structure/finances of the refugee industry (heck! I could retire!). Hey! Yeganeh! How about you?
One last thing, a wise fellow once told me that you must repeat information at least seven times before people will hear it. So if, as a regular student of the US Refugee Admissions Program, you are sick of hearing this about the contractors, know that rather than seven times, I’m working on 700 times!
