Justice Clarence Thomas: “compromise will invite a flood of litigation….” Oh, wasJustice Clarence Thomas right—what a hash has been made in the courts as the fight goes on to define “bona fide relationship.”
Are you as sick of this as I am? Go here to read my previous post on the judge in Hawaii (the state that only “welcomes” a tiny number of refugees) who thinks he has the legal right to write refugee law (just as the Supreme Court did as well!).
This just an hour ago from Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court has asked the State of Hawaii to respond by Tuesday at noon to President Donald Trump’s motionto block a judge’s ruling that prevented his travel ban from being applied to grandparents of U.S. citizens and refugees already being processed by resettlement agencies, the court’s public information office said on Saturday.
In a court filing on Friday, the administration asked the justices to overturn Thursday’s decision by a U.S. district judge in Hawaii, which limited the scope of the administration’s temporary ban on refugees and travelers from six Muslim-majority countries.
Don’t get too hung up on the grandparents part of this, the important point for followers of RRW is the question of whether a federal refugee contractor*** is a “bona fide entity.”
See all of my previous posts on the really really dumb thing the Supreme Court did in the first place in my category: Supreme Court. ***Federal contractors/middlemen/lobbyists/community organizerspaid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities. Because their income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, the only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove the contractors from the process.
This latest was predicted and reportedhere by Michael Leahy at Breitbart two days ago. Update: Here is Leahy’s (Breitbart) take on this latest legal mess the Supreme Court is responsible for creating! Judge Derrick Watson
Judge Derrick Watson took advantage of the mess the Supreme Court made in its recent ruling (as Justice Thomas predicted) to once again attempt to stop President Trump from carrying out a simple 120-day moratorium on refugee resettlement in order to analyze the program and determine whether security screening is sufficient.
The Supreme Court literally unconstitutionallylegislated when it created a way to go around a Presidentially-determined ceiling as defined by over 3 decades of refugee law and said refugees with a “bona fide relationship” to a family member or to an “entity” could come in over the 50,000 ceiling reached yesterday (here). BTW, today we have now exceeded the 50,000 ceiling by 168. We are at 50,168 this morning.
Before I give you Politico’s version of the judge’s decision in Hawaii yesterday, let me be clear!
The US State Department under Sec. of State Rex Tillerson must ignore this decision!
(They should have ignored this rogue judge’s earlier decision as well! You should write to the White Houseand tell Trump to stand against this runaway judiciary!)
One Hawaiian judge deciding for one Imam (and the refugee-rejecting state of Hawaii!) should not be the one to define “bona fide” a wholly new legal term and a new construct for resettlement thanks to the overzealous SCOTUS. Where the hell is Congress, btw? Writing law is their job! Here is Politico:
A federal judge in Hawaii ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to allow grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles and other relatives of people in the U.S. to circumvent the travel ban policy, dealing a temporary blow to one of the president’s signature initiatives.
In an order issued Thursday evening local time in Honolulu, Judge Derrick Watson also prohibited the administration from blocking refugees with a commitment from a resettlement agency in the U.S., a move that could revive the flow of refugee admissions this year.
Along with the State of Hawaii, Imam Ismail Elshikh is a plaintiff in the case (again). In case you missed it, Hawaii is at the bottom of the list of states resettling refugees having only ‘welcomed’ 3 this entire fiscal year so far.
The decision was a victory for opponents of the travel ban, who hoped to broaden the universe of people who could bypass the president’s policy, which temporarily bars travelers from six majority-Muslim nations and suspends the refugee resettlement program.
The Supreme Court issued an order on June 26 that allowed the embattled measure to go into effect, but included the caveat that affected travelers with “bona fide” ties to a person or entity in the U.S. should not be subject to the ban.
[….]
In the realm of refugee resettlement, the administration stood by the contention that a connection to a resettlement agency alone would not meet the criteria to avoid the ban.
[….]
The federal judge added that a refugee with a commitment from a resettlement agency met the standard for a “bona fide” relationship spelled out in the Supreme Court order.
[….]
“It is formal, it is a documented contract, it is binding, it triggers responsibilities and obligations, including compensation, it is issued specific to an individual refugee only when that refugee has been approved for entry by the Department of Homeland Security, and it is issued in the ordinary course, and historically has been for decades,” he wrote. [Don’t let the refugee contractors*** fool you, here we have it, this is about their compensation by you, the American taxpayer!–ed]
“Bona fide does not get any more bona fide than that.”
[….]
On Twitter, an attorney for the plaintiffs, the state of Hawaii and a local imam, celebrated the momentary legal win, which could be met with appeals by the federal government.
Appeals! The Administration better simply ignore this single judge and the Imam!
This post is filed in my ‘Supreme Court’ category,click herefor other stories on the hash the Supreme Court has made of refugee law.
***Federal contractors/middlemen/lobbyists/community organizerspaid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities. Because their income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, the only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove the contractors from the process.
Frankly this is really getting in to the legal weeds as the Open Borders Left/refugee pushers try one more time to stop the Trump State Department’s (DOS) interpretation of the Supreme Court decision on the ‘travel ban’ and 120-day refugee moratorium.
Of course the ‘pushers’ want every possible relative and they want any and all non-profits and refugee contractors to be considered “bona fide entities” so they can continue to haul in as many paying clients to the US as possible. Hawaii is begging for more diversity, so how about if all refugees admitted for the remainder of FY17 be sent to Hawaii! Artwork from Hawaii.edu https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/erl/CULTURAL%20DIV%20PAGE/cultural_diversity.htm
And, they don’t want any disruption to other of their pet programs at the DOS.
Michael Leahy at Breitbart can lead you through the legal weeds better than I can,see here.
But don’t miss Leahy’s closing lines:
Of the 49,803 refugees who have been resettled in the United States during the first nine months and seven days of FY 2017, only three–all from Burma–have been resettled in Hawaii, according to the State Department interactive website.
In FY 2016, the last full year of the Obama administration, not a single refugee was resettled in Hawaii out of the total of 84,995 that were resettled in the entire country.
In the fifteen plus fiscal years since FY 2002, a total of 127 refugees have been resettled in Hawaii.
What you can do (if you have the talent)!
Someone should come up with a bumper sticker idea or poster that we could send out widely along the lines of: “Hawaii lacks diversity, send them refugees!” (or something more clever)
If you don’t have the talent for creating a poster or bumper sticker, then write to the White House today and tell the President: all refugees entering the US in the coming months (year!) should be sent to Hawaii!
All of my posts on this issue, the Supreme Court ruling, are filed in my ‘Supreme Court’ category.
It was supposed to have been yesterday that the US State Department expected the President’s FY17 50,000 cap to be reached.
When the number is reached (a ceiling set for decades by the President under refugee law), as we know, the US Supreme Court owns it because they stepped in to rewrite lawand the battle for the bona fidesbegins.
As of today we have admitted 49,793 refugees this fiscal year according to the State Department’s own Refugee Processing Center (aka Wrapsnet).
Here is theLA Times reporting that the deadline is extended because the 50,000 cap was not reached yesterday as expected. Hetfield’s name turns up in most mainstream media stories about the US Refugee Program and Pres. Trump. The media must see him as the go-to guy for quotes! Did you know that he pulls down a salary of over $300,000—doing well by doing good? Learn more about him and HIAS’s finances here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/11/13/hebrew-immigrant-aid-society-lectures-trump-never-mentions-its-pecuniary-interest-in-refugees/
Refugee resettlement agencies say the State Department has given them updated instructions on President Trump’s travel ban that extends the cutoff date for refugee admissions.
When the ban was put into place last week, the administration said refugees who had booked travel would be admitted through Thursday. After that, immigration officials would block all refugees, except those who could prove they had U.S. connections, such as close relatives.
The July 6 date was a government estimate of when the country would reach a 50,000-person cap on refugee admissions this fiscal year. Federal officials now estimate that the cap will be hit a week later, according to refugee groups.
[….]
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration at the State Department would not confirm the change and said more information would come out Thursday.
“The cap could be hit earlier, so it could be earlier than July 12,” said Mark Hetfield, chief executive of the resettlement group HIAS, formerly known as Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
HIAS is among several refugee resettlement groups that have challenged the ban, which blocks travel from six Muslim-majority countries for 90 days and suspends refugee admissions from everywhere for 120 days.
TheLA Timesgoes on to say that the Hawaii Open Borders advocates filed suit (again) looking for clarification about whether the contractors*** are bona fide entities for the purpose of bringing even more than 50,000 refugees in over the remaining roughly 2 months and 3 weeks remaining in this fiscal year.
Justices wrote that people with “bona fide” connections to the U.S. such as jobs, university admission and family could bypass the ban but left it up to the Trump administration to define which family members counted.
The administration has said that people with “close family” in the U.S. — such as a parent, spouse, fiance or fiancee, child or sibling — could go around the ban. But it blocked others, including grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles and cousins.
Immigrant and refugee groups are challenging the definitions in a Honolulu federal district court, saying the administration is violating the Supreme Court’s orders. A federal judge there who previously ruled against the ban in one of the cases being considered by the high court could issue a decision on the matter this week.
Refugee advocates argue that their relationship to refugees should be enough for them to gain admission to the country despite the ban. The government disagrees.
Request denied!
See it here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3890325-Hawaii-v-Trump-Clarify-Order.html
Just as I am writing this post, I see that the same Hawaii judge has denied their request for clarification. See here! Let the Supremes decide.
By the way, the other plaintiff in the case joining with the State of Hawaii is an Imam who wants more Muslims admitted to the US, here. But, Hawaii is normally at the bottom of the list of states taking any refugees!
Hey, maybe the State Dept. could put all those they bring in above the cap (it could be thousands!) in Hawaii!
Why not tell the President that when you write to him today! Give Hawaii its dearest wish—more third world diversity. Go here.
All of my posts on this topic are filed in my new ‘Supreme Court’ category.
***Federal contractors/middlemen/lobbyists/community organizers paid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities. Because their income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, the only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove the contractors from the process.
That made me laugh and I said I would have a look at the numbers!
If you are new to the issue, the joke is that when Hawaiian judge, and Obama pal, Derrick Watson put a halt to Trump’s last Executive Order one month ago, we pointed out rightly that Hawaii has only taken a handful of refugees for decades,see here and here. Judge Derrick Watson wants diversity—send him some!
I checked Wrapsnet just now. As of today Trump is at 40,671 refugees for this fiscal year which is way ahead of either George W. Bush or Barack Obama for this point in the fiscal year (see chart below).
2,565 refugees have been admitted to the US in the past 4 weeks when there was supposed to be a ‘moratorium’ on resettlement.
Hawaii? (Drum roll!)
Hawaii has taken ZERO refugees in those 4 weeks and only 3 Burmese in the whole of this fiscal year (out of the 40,671).
We should launch a campaign and call it ‘Send them all to Hawaii!’
Trump presiding over largest number of refugees admitted by mid-April in last ten years!
Check my math, have we admitted a number over 40,000 refugees by mid-April in the last ten years? I don’t think so!
Endnote: Remember it is Hawaii that was sending its homeless people to the mainland! So much for loving diversity!
