Tag: Obama

Daily Beast: Trump refugee admission reduction results in collateral damage to government contractors

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No kidding!

I have to steel myself to write AGAIN about the issue of the President’s legal right to set the annual CAP (aka ceiling) for the number of refugees to be invited to the US to become your new neighbors.  But, I know how important repetition (to the point of wanting to barf) is!

scott bixby
Bixby at twitter:   @scottbix

In fact, as I read the Daily Beast story by Scott Bixby, I was heartened to see that maybe after all these years the facts about the program are beginning to be reported and understood.

Progress is being made!

Reporter Bixby actually did some good reporting when he said that many of the contractors are 97% federally funded on a refugee per capita basis.  (You know that, but believe me the average voting American doesn’t!).

Most reports by the Leftwing lapdog media about these federal contractors, aka VOLAGs, leave readers and viewers with a wrong assumption that they are paying for all of their ‘humanitarian good works’ from their own charitable pockets.  It ain’t so!

Before I get into the latest whinefest by the contractors*** consider one of my primary fundamental concerns:

Taxpayers should not be required to pay large (any!) salaries and supply non-profits with cushy office space only to have those same non-profits act as political community organizers and agitators for not just more refugees, but for more migrants, legal and illegal, trying to get to the US.

The story is entitled:

The New Collateral Damage in Trump’s War on Refugees

The Trump administration has cut the number of refugees they let into the country by a third. That decision could gravely harm organizations that assist those already here.

(Emphasis is mine)

When the Trump administration announced its intention to slash the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States to the lowest level in nearly four decades, the decision sparked worry among thousands of displaced persons who feared that the nation’s doors were now closed to them. But in addition to the record number of global refugees seeking safety from unrest in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the admissions cap will likely also harm organizations designed to help the thousands of displaced people who do make it safely to the United States.

As the U.S. government slows the number of legal refugees who can enter the country to a trickle, the nine private voluntary agencies with cooperative agreements with the State Department to help settle those refugees must now contend with a potentially devastating budget crunch.

miliband-in-manhattan
Reporter Bixby picked the wrong contractor to quote. The International Rescue Committee headquartered in Manhattan is headed by David Miliband, a British national, sucking down a nearly $700,000 annual salary as the NON-PROFIT organization fires lower level staff. The IRC received $846 million from the US Treasury since 2008.

“It’ll have a tremendous impact on the number of people who are able to access these life-saving services,” Nazanin Ash [working for Miliband—ed]  vice president of policy and advocacy at the International Rescue Committee, told The Daily Beast. “There’ve been over 150 office closures over the last two years, and that shutters a vital resource in many communities across the country.”

[….]

Government grants, provided on a per capita basis tied to the number of refugees assisted, account for as much as 97 percent of the resettlement grants for these organizations. Lower resettlement admissions therefore mean fewer federal dollars—and program funding is now set to plummet as precipitously as the number of admitted refugees.

That loss in grant money threatens a funding shortfall that could endanger community-based resettlement offices nationwide, as well as programs intended to help those who have fled their homes to establish a life in the United States, from housing placement and food support to professional support, English classes and community integration.

[….]

Under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the president has the sole authority, following consultation with Congress, to determine the maximum number of refugees who can be resettled in the United States, called the Presidential Determination. Under President Donald Trump, the Presidential Determination was decreased from 110,000 in 2017 to 45,000 refugees in 2018, one-seventh of its peak. Even then, the cap is a limit, not a requirement—so far, only 20,918 refugees have actually been admitted to the United States this year.

Don’t miss my post on the myth of Obama’s 110,000 ceiling, here where I said this:

Never once in his previous 7 years did he propose a ceiling (a cap!) that high and he came no where near that number of refugees admitted.

LOL! Now they are really stretching.

Below Melanie Nezer of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (which received $186 million from the US Treasury since 2008) says, because of that meany Trump, you are being deprived of the joy, of not getting to know refugees who might have been placed in your towns.

new-site-development-guide
If it was going to be such a positive thing to open more communities for refugee placement, then why did the Obama State Department keep those sites under consideration secret from us?

Do not forget that these nine contractors were working closely with the US State Department in the Obama years to locate as many as 40 new resettlement sites and it was all being kept secret from you—the citizens of the 40 or so new targets.

If you were to benefit so much from being ‘chosen’ then why were they keeping those sites secret?

See Judicial Watch sues State Department for new sites under consideration!

The Daily Beast continues:

Nezer cautioned that the grant reduction won’t just negatively affect the refugees they’re intended to serve, but may foster a sense of isolation and complacency among native-born Americans.

“Fewer resettlement offices means fewer opportunities for people to volunteer and work with refugees,” Nezer explained. “If fewer refugees come, and fewer Americans get to engage directly with refugees, that kind of starts a cycle where there’s less direct connection” with refugee populations.

“As fewer comes and fewer Americans get to have that relationship, then there’s less support for letting refugees in at all.”

There is much more in this story, but its getting way too long.

Read it all here, see that reporter Bixby, trying to make a case for bipartisan support for the program, tells us how angry REPUBLICANS in the House and Senate are at the President for not consulting them as the law stipulates.  See my post here on that.

These R’s are just a bunch of phony-baloneys who cared not one whit about past consultation requirements when numbers were large!

Many only care about one thing—cheap labor for their pals at global corporations and at the Chamber of Commerce!

 

***Here below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.

You might be sick of seeing this list almost every day, but a friend once told me that people need to see something seven times before it completely sinks in, so it seems to me that 70, or even 700 isn’t too much!

And, besides I have new readers every day.

The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!

And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’

The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)!  And, get them registered to vote eventually!

From my most recent accounting, here.  However, please see that Nayla Rush at the Center for Immigration Studies has done an update of their income, as has James Simpson at the Capital Research Center!

Refugee industry advocates pinning a tiny bit of hope on Pompeo to save refugee program

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….but they know the odds are not good that the Secretary of State will buck the White House on the number of refugees to be admitted to the US in the coming fiscal year.

Trump and Pompeo
Will Secretary of State Pompeo go with the White House or with the embedded refugee advocates employed at the State Department?

However, as the deep-staters (and their contractor buddies***) feed news to Politico, indications are that Pompeo could at least keep the shrinking Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration at the State Department.

Here is Politico which appears to have a direct pipeline in to the refugee industry both inside and outside of government.

Continue reading “Refugee industry advocates pinning a tiny bit of hope on Pompeo to save refugee program” →

Australia "dumb" deal update: Aussie Libs want US to take families

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Let me say at the outset that the Australia deal struck by the Obama Administration in its waning months is dumber than dumb and Donald Trump should have followed his first instincts and cancelled the whole thing (as even the Australians suspected he would) and been done with it in February of 2017.
Here we see that Australian immigration official Peter Dutton is being blamed for not allowing an Afghan family (who attempted to break in to Australia illegally) that have been split between the mainland and offshore detention to apply to come to the US.

peter-dutton1
Dutton’s call to rethink the 1951 UN Refugee Convention has to make the No Borders agitators crazy!  Out to get him now for sure!*

Not one word in The Guardian story about whether the US has any say in this! 

I believe the US State Department has already said that we aren’t taking extended families of the detainees (so far 220 of Australia’s rejects, mostly Muslim men, have been airlifted to Your Town, USA!).
For new readers, Australia had such an awful problem with boat people attempting to break in to their country that they made a new policy.  Anyone breaking in would be detained in offshore detention facilities and would never be admitted to the mainland.  That was about 5 years ago and they are sticking to the policy.  However! Lefties in Australia have been beating up the government ever since, so they found a way to wiggle out—thanks to Obama—by sending those they won’t grant refugee status to to America!
The Guardian:

Dutton urged to allow refugee families in Australia to apply for US resettlement

Split up refugee families stuck in limbo because of Australian government policy could be reunited if Peter Dutton let them apply for US resettlement from Australia, the opposition has said.

The comment follows revelations by Guardian Australia that a family of four had been split between Nauru and Australia since 2014.

Shayne Neumann
Leftwing “shadow minister” Shayne Neumann blames Dutton for not allowing sick Shiite Muslim family to reunite and apply for US resettlement.  Hey! Neumann, why should the US take on Australia’s migration problems!

Australian Border Force has told the 27-year-old daughter on Nauru that they could be reunited but only if her mother and sister returned to the island. The mother is in Australia confined to a wheelchair and awaiting surgery, and doctors have said she cannot go back.

While the mother and one daughter are in Australia they cannot apply for resettlement in the US, offered under a deal struck between the Australian government and the Obama administration. More than 220 have been resettled, out of a promise of “up to 1,200”.

By the way, something must have slowed the flow to the US.  Last report was over a month ago. Wonder what that is all about!

“Labor strongly supports the US refugee resettlement agreement and wants all eligible refugees – including those in Australia for medical treatment – to have the opportunity to apply for resettlement in the US,” the shadow minister for immigration, Shayne Neumann, said.

“The long-term issue of asylum seekers from Manus Island and Nauru in Australia could have been avoided entirely if Peter Dutton simply allowed eligible refugees in Australia the opportunity to apply to resettle in the United States.”

Nuts!  No offense to Dutton, but the US gets some say in this!
More here.
Asylum shopping!
Follow links back and see that this family with its health issues (including mental health issues) would be a huge burden on US taxpayers!  Legitimate refugees are to ask for asylum in the first safe country they enter, however, the whole system has been perverted and that is why the 1951 UN Refugee Convention should be trashed.
I have dozens of posts on the Australia “dumb” deal, click here to learn more.
*Don’t miss Dutton calls for reconsideration of outdated 1951 UN Refugee Convention, here.
Contact the White House!  Tell the President to cut it off now.  220 is too many already! 

Why is it our job to clean out UN refugee camps?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, why is the Trump Administration continuing refugee resettlement started for no other reason (by George Bush and Barack Obama) than to please the UN?

anne-richard-and-unhcr
Obama Secretary of State for PRM, Anne Richard with then UNHCR, now Secretary General of the UN Guterres, decided that the US should take 50,000 from the DR Congo.

Previous presidents jumped to the UN piper’s tune and said sure, the US will step up to take the Bhutanese and the DR Congolese because the UN asked us to.
These people were not our responsibility, no one could say we caused the problems that resulted in their care by the UN.
We have no strategic interest or reason other than to make the UN happy (and some big employers who want the cheap labor, the Dems who want voters and the contractors who want the payola!).
(By the way, there are other examples of cleaning out camps and of course the largest over the years have been the UN camps in Kenya, but the numbers have dramatically slowed in the last year, not so for the two I’m writing about now.  And, of course the UN has no interest in cleaning out the Palestinian camps and sending those people to other Arab countries.)
 

DR Congo express to America….

map DR Congo
The largest ethnic group of refugees coming to the US right now are DR Congolese. In the first 6 months of this fiscal year (’18) we admitted 2,569.
In 2013 the Obama State Department told the UN High Commissioner for Refugees that we would take 50,000 from the DR Congo over five years.
Checking Wrapsnet just now, I see that we have taken 40,899 since that promise was made, however going back to FY10, I see we are now at 49,476.  
Will the flow ever stop?
Based on the Bush Bhutanese deal, the answer is likely NO!

Nearly 100,000 Bhutanese scattered across America…

In 2006 we told the UN we would take 60,000 Bhutanese off their hands over five years.
These displaced people are really Nepali people that were kicked out of Bhutan and Nepal wouldn’t take them back.
map nepal and bhutan
Other western countries promised to take another 30,000.
Here in 2015 the UN reported on its “success” at that point in time:

A core group of eight countries came together in 2007 to create this opportunity for Bhutanese refugees to begin new lives: Australia (5,554), Canada (6,500), Denmark (874), New Zealand (1002), the Netherlands (327), Norway (566), the United Kingdom (358) and the United States of America (84,819).

Now 10 years after Bush Asst. Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey said we would take 60,000, we are at 95,841 (as of today). 

In the last 6 months, an additional 1,925 ‘refugees’ of Nepali origin that we call Bhutanese were resettled across the country.  I have to laugh because the total number in 2006 was 108,000 and between the US and other countries we have far surpassed that number now, so it begs the question—have more people arrived at the camps looking for resettlement in recent years?  (See one of my many posts on fuzzy math!)
Here is where 95,481 have been place in the US in just 10 years!
 
Screenshot (372)
 

Screenshot (368)
The numbers are difficult to read even in the original.  The top five ‘welcoming’ states are Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, New York and Georgia.  And, can you believe it, Hawaii, the state that is hankering for more diversity got zip!

 
I don’t believe there is a law that says we must take refugees that the UN wants us to take!
And, thus, I think it is time that the Trump Administration distanced itself from the dictates of the United Nations.  In fact, maybe it is time to do more than that! Let’s take the lead in rethinking the entire 1951 UN Refugee Convention.
Surely, if we are going to offer ‘welcome’ to legitimate refugees, we have smart people who would know how to pick the most worthy candidates and not just take in ethnic groups wholesale because the UN tells us we must!
See Nayla Rush writing at the Center for Immigration Studies about the haphazard choices being made (even under Donald Trump!).
See my archive on the Bhutanese by clicking here.  The thing that has brought them to the media’s attention over the years is the fact that they have a high suicide rate in America.  In fact, for years leading up to 2006, they steadfastly maintained that they did not want to be “scattered to the four winds.”
Contact the White House, tell the President:  As your Administration prepares refugee plans for the coming fiscal year, stop asking how high, when the UN says jump!  We will pick our own refugees, thank you very much!

Hillary’s legacy in Libya could affect you!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

UN short-circuiting the flow from Libya to Europe by sending migrants to the good ol’ welcoming USA?

Hillary, along with her gal pals Susan Rice and Samantha Power, are the leading culprits in the Obama Administration’s disastrous involvement in the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and the creation of a failed state that has become a primary route for the migrant invasion of Europe.

hillary and gal pals
Susan Rice, Samantha Power and Hillary. Photo is from a blog called The Political Girl that asks: Are women leading the way in Libya?

 

Now we learn that the UN, partially in hopes of saving the present Italian government (Italians are pretty angry about the Libya to Italy express), is planning to open up a refugee holding facility in Tripoli where migrants will be detained until they can be moved to transit centers.

But, guess what! Most in the transit centers will go to Canada, Norway, and drum roll—the United States.

Hillary gloats about knocking off Gaddafi turning Libya into a completely unstable hell hole, and America gets more refugees!

From Reuters  (emphasis is mine):

ROME (Reuters) – The U.N. refugee agency is seeking to open a refugee transit center in Tripoli early next year to resettle or evacuate as many as 5,000 of the most vulnerable refugees out of Libya each year, a senior U.N. official said on Friday.

It is a small fraction of the total number of Libya’s migrant population, estimated at as many as 1 million, but would be a welcome outlet for the 43,000 refugees that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates are now trapped in Libya.

“We hope to have the (written) authorization soon,” Roberto Mignone, the UNHCR’s representative in Libya, told Reuters in Rome. The U.N.-backed Tripoli government has already approved the project verbally, he said.

[….]

Italy has become the main migrant route to Europe since an agreement between the EU and Turkey shut down smuggling through Greece last year, but arrivals have fallen sharply since July, when an armed group clamped down on departures.

With the backing of the European Union, Italy has financed, trained and equipped by the Tripoli-based coast guard. With a national election due early next year, Italy is also promising tens of millions of euros to Prime Minister Fayez al-Seraj and municipal governments to put a stop to smuggling.

[.…]

Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti has said he is depending on the U.N. refugee and migration agencies to improve conditions for refugees and migrants now trapped in Libya.

“We can’t be the only solution,” Mignone said, also because Libya remains very dangerous and international staff still have very limited access to the country.

[….]

While the UNHCR hopes to resettle many of them, it is a lengthy process. Many countries do not have a permanent diplomatic presence in Tripoli, further complicating matters.

So the agency will seek to evacuate most of them, Mignone said, to emergency transit centers in Romania, Slovakia or even Costa Rica, where they will have more time to apply for resettlement. The agency is currently working to open another emergency transit center in Niger, he said.

More at Reuters, here.

Here is one article I found telling us that ‘refugees’ in a transit center in Slovakia are destined for Canada, Norway and the US.  And, I had previously written a post on the Costa Rica transit center with our old friend HIAS being paid by the US State Department to work there.  I better start paying more attention to these transit centers!

So, if the scheme goes through, illegal aliens in Libya will be moved to a transit center and ultimately Anytown, USA instead of pushing on to Europe.

Yippee! They could be part of Donald’s FY18 45,000!

(Fiscal Year 18 begins tomorrow!)

See all my posts, going back years, on the ‘Invasion of Europe’ by clicking here.