Well, I should say he is claiming credit for creating the present-day US Refugee Admissions Program in 1979.
Editor:By the way, I’ve been away at a conference to talk about how RRW was “deplatformed” by WordPressdotcom and am now back at my computer with news about why the US Refugee Admissions Program Mr. Purcell says he created must be dumped (and reformed if there is a will for some sort of program).
I know this might be getting too wonky, but it’s important to know how the program began and how it has gone wrong (or was wrong all along!)—something the speech police have been trying to stop me from telling you!
James N. Purcell, in anopinion piecein the Dallas News, says the refugee program was designed to leave out local and state government approval of refugee placement claiming it was “fairer” to leave them out of what he says is a federal decision.
I set up the U.S. refugee resettlement program that Trump is attacking
At a campaign rally last week in Minneapolis, the president trumpeted a recently issued executive order that would prohibit refugee resettlements unless states and cities expressly consented to them. He went on to say, “no other president would be doing that.”
There is a better way for state and local officials to make their views known that’s worked in the past.
This issue was a concern when I set up the U.S. refugee resettlement program in 1980 under President Jimmy Carter and when I was later named the official director of the program by President Ronald Reagan. We went out of our way to avoid the Damocles sword that President Donald Trump is now swinging.
Rather than force national decisions on state and local governments (which they were unable to make and has the effect of politicizing these decisions), we came up with a fairer and more humane approach that respected their unique roles. [So whatever happened to the Tenth Amendment?—ed]
The Refugee Act of 1980 recognized the essential contributions expected of state and local governments and made achievement of them possible.
What is he talking about! Were the “essential contributions expected” of the state and local governments the enormous costs associated with welfare, education, health care, housing and so forth—costs now borne by state and local taxpayers with little financial help from Washington?
And, get this, the role of state coordinator was created to help identify and resolve problems. How many of you reading this even knew you had state coordinators***?
The act required the federal government to coordinate and consult regularly with state refugee coordinators about proposed resettlements. Many potential problems were identified and resolved through monitoring and oversight, and record resettlement was achieved without serious incidents.
Now, without apparently knowing what he has revealed he tells us how the NGOs (the federally-funded refugee contractors, Leftwing phony ‘religious’ groups) really run the show he claims they tried not to “politicize.”
Perhaps that was why I was so perplexed in 1986 to receive a scathing letter from one of Minnesota’s leading politicians demanding that I cease resettlement of Hmong in Minnesota forthwith. This demand was so out of character for Minnesota that I immediately informed NGOs working on Hmong resettlement. By the end of the next week, Minnesotans were so outraged that I received letters reversing earlier criticisms and asking for more Hmong refugees.
Unbelievable! He was the US State Department’s director of the Refugee Admissions Program and he tipped off his contractors that an elected official in Minnesota was having a problem with the refugee program and they in turn ginned-up letters from their flocks (Catholics and Lutherans mostly) to send him asking for more Hmong refugees. (This was of course a few years before the major influx of Somalis to Minnesota began.)
So why wasn’t this all handled as he said they designed the program, through the State Refugee Coordinator? Why? Because the program is run by the contractors who are paid out of the US Treasury to place refugees wherever they choose! (See my recent post with a list of the present-day contractors, here.)
There will be no real reform of the US Refugee Program as long as the contractors are paid by us while acting as Leftwing political agitation groups.
*** Go here to see who your state refugee coordinator is. If you know anything about the program in your state you will notice that many of them are affiliated with a federal contractor.
Got a problem in your state, or just want to know more about the program there? Call your coordinator. You can start by asking for your state’s most recent Refugee Plan on file with the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. Be polite and you will get some information (maybe not much!) but something.
Don’t miss my post on the major drug bust of Hmong in Wisconsin recently.
On Tuesday while representatives of the Refugee Industry did their “civil disobedience” stunt and got arrested, see here, a legally required consultation occurred with Secretary of State Pompeo and Acting USCIS Director Cuccinelli meeting with the leadership (or at least one leader) of the Senate Judiciary Committee to formally tell Congress that refugee admissions for FY2020 will be capped at 18,000.
Not from any media publication, but only from a press release from Senator Dick Durbin’s office where he chastises the Trump team for being late with their consultation.
I know this is likely boring as heck for most of you, but there is a process required by the Refugee Act of 1980 that has been given short shrift for decades.
For years there was only a perfunctory consultation, often in the closing days of September, where members of Congress never suggested any changes— indeed why bother when both Democrat and Republican presidents were proposing hefty refugee admission numbers.
The House and Senate Judiciary Committees are required to hold hearings as well. However, only Senator Jeff Sessions ever held any type of real substantive hearing on the program in the last decade.
So it is rich that here (press release) Durbin is so obsessed with a process that few on the Hill ever cared a wit about (before Trump!):
In Consultation After Legally-Required Deadline, Durbin Presses Trump Administration On Dismal Refugee Resettlement Goal
In A Meeting With Secretary Pompeo And Acting USCIS Director Cuccinelli, Durbin Called Out Trump Admin’s Decision To Further Erode U.S. Role As Worldwide Leader On Refugees
U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, today met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ken Cuccinelli to press the Trump Administration on its dismal refugee resettlement goal of merely 18,000 to the U.S. in the coming year.
Prior to any presidential determination on the number of refugees to be admitted in the upcoming fiscal year, the law requires that Cabinet-level officials representing the President engage in an in-person consultation with Senate and House Judiciary Committee leaders.
The law is clear that the consultation must occur before the start of the fiscal year. This consultation, on October 15, is after the start of the new fiscal year and in violation of the statute. For the third year in a row, the Trump Administration willfully disregarded the law regarding their obligation to consult with Congress prior to the end of the fiscal year.
Any day now, the Administration will send a delegation to the Hill to consult with the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on the President’s plan to admit a maximum number of 18,000 refugees to the US in FY2020 (the fiscal year began on October 1).
A reminder: Trump set the level for FY19 at 30,000 and reached that ceiling on September 30th. An 18,000 ceiling for FY20 would be the lowest in the program’s history.
Over the last couple of weeks there have been dozens and dozens of stories planted throughout America each one showcasing some poor refugee family that would not be reunited if the ceiling is that low. And, without fail, the articles tell us which of the resettlement contractors had to close subcontractor offices.
Frankly I have read so many of these whiny stories I want to barf. That said, I would like you to have a look at this one from Twin Falls, Idaho where the local resettlement subcontractor is expected to continue in operation for another year at least and my guess is that is in order to keep a refugee worker flow going to Chobani Yogurt. See my Twin Falls archive here.
However, when quoting the director of the program there, the reporter, Megan Taros, says something that is not factually correct and I want to mention that to you:
A new executive order issued by President Trump last month that cuts the number of refugees the U.S. will accept from 30,000 to 18,000 this fiscal year threatens the center’s funding. The center receives federal money based on the number of people it takes in. With the new order its approved intake, which is now 140, may drop. Congress will meet on Tuesday to decide what the final nationwide cap on refugees will be.
Maybe the consultation will happen today as the reporter suggests, but Congress will NOT DECIDE ON THE FINAL NATIONWIDE CAP. Congress’ only role under the Refugee Act of 1980 is a consultation role when it comes to setting the upcoming ceiling/cap (but of course they do appropriate the funding for the President’s plan).
That said, it will be interesting to see if over the last few weeks, the massive media PR campaign (like the one here in Twin Falls) by the refugee industry has succeeded in getting the administration to up its original number of 18,000!
The article also reminded me to direct you to the Refugee Council USA‘s (lobbyists for the refugee industry) report which lists the subcontractor offices that have been closed since the Trump Administration began reducing the number of refugees being admitted.
Please take a minute andgo hereto see if an office has closed in your city.
Scroll down to page 23 to see the list. Here is a screenshot of the first page:
Trump can’t do this alone!
If you want to see the Refugee Program dumped or reformed, you must get involved now where you live. This is no time to sit back and assume the President is taking care of this. The refugee industry is extremely well funded and has a massive media network.
As soon as the Trump Administration ends—it will sooner or later—they will be back full steam ahead and they have been laying the ground work with the sob-story news reports spread throughout small city newspapers everywhere.
One thing you can do right now is to send letters or opinion pieces to papers like this one to express the theme I think is most powerful—why aren’t we taking care of our own vulnerable people first? After all, we the taxpayers are paying for all of this! Use some statistics or sad stories about your community.
And, it goes without saying, you absolutely must attempt to elect people to local offices that represent your views on the subject of mass migration! Start now by dogging candidates for the 2020 Elections and press them on their views on immigration!
As you know at this very moment, the Trump Administration is wrestling with the decision about how many refugees to admit to the US for FY2020 that begins on October first.
Reps. Nadler and Lofgren never blasted Obama for being late with his refugee consultation that always came in the closing days of September!
You would think Mr. Impeach-him-now Nadler would have enough to keep him busy but he has taken time, along with Rep. Zoe Lofgren, to pen a letter to the President demanding his administration consult with Congress about the number and ethnic makeup of refugees the US will ‘welcome’ this coming year.
I know this is an in-the-weeds discussion, but it is worth mentioning because once again we see the fake outrage from the Dems who claim that Trump is not following the law about the process of refugee admissions.
I’ve been yelling about the lawlessness of the process for years. The Obama Administration didn’t follow the law nor has Congress, both on the Democrat and Republican side, but now Nadler’s letter represents one more bit of hypocrisy we see regularly in Washington! No wonder voters are cynical!
The nerve of Nadler!
“We write to express our alarm that the Administration appears to be taking a cavalier approach to the statutory requirements and historic norms for the presidential determination for refugee admissions.”
“Statutory requirements” have been ignored for decades!
If going into the weeds interests you,go hereto just one of many posts I’ve written on the subject. You will see that no one has been following the law for decades, so that is the “historic norm.”
This is just more fake outrage from the kings and queens of fake outrage!
House Democrats demand administration consult with Congress before determining refugee admissions
(By the way, the President has full statutory authority to set the level, a ceiling, and then the State Department “consults” with Congress, but Congress has no authority to change the number.—ed)
Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the respective chairs of the House Judiciary Committee and Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee demanded that the Trump Administration administration consult with Congress before determining the number of refugee admissions to the country for the coming fiscal year.
In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Nadler and Lofgren pointed to a law mandating the administration discuss the refugee admissions with Congress, noting that fiscal year 2020 is 17 days away.
“We write to express our alarm that the Administration appears to be taking a cavalier approach to the statutory requirements and historic norms for the presidential determination for refugee admissions. For the past two fiscal years, the Administration has set historically low levels of refugee admissions while side-stepping or only nominally complying with critical legal requirements for consultation,” they wrote.
The movie ‘Chappaquiddick’ opens in theaters this week and it got me thinking, what if…
What if justice had been served and Kennedy was not in the Senate to spearhead the bill that would become the Refugee Act of 1980.
Senator Ted Kennedy is responsible for most of the problems we have today with immigration, by 1969 he had already done some very real damage to this country. But he didn’t drive through the bill that became the Refugee Act of 1980 until ten years later, in 1979.
That bill was signed in to law in March 1980 (the 17th, St. Patrick’s Day, exactly) in Jimmy Carter’s final year. (I don’t recall if by March ol’ Carter knew, or suspected, he was a one-termer or not.)
The Refugee Act of 1980, which only a few weeks ago passed its 38th anniversary, had set up the flawed system we see today where nine major contractors (using taxpayer dollars) monopolize the program, and, up until President Trump came along, pretty much called the shots on how the USRAP was managed.
I attended the 30th anniversary shindig of the signing of the Act at Georgetown Univ. and wrote about it herea few years ago. I asked this in 2011 after listening to speakers at the Georgetown celebration:
Is there a conspiracy by NGO’s to bring asylum seekers to US borders?
The Caravan! Kennedy’s legacy! These Central Americans will arrive at the US border where they will ask for asylum under Kennedy’s law.
The major take-away of the day for me was the obvious push toward greater use of the asylum portion of the law.
The Open Borders crew knew then that there were limits to how many refugees they could get in through the normal process and were beginning to hang their hats on migrants coming to the border (where an immigration lawyer awaits them) and asking for asylum.
So that “Caravan,” on its way to our southern border at this very moment, is a direct legacy of Ted Kennedy who should have been driven out of the Senate in that fateful year—1969—and sent to prison!
Would there eventually have been a Refugee Act, maybe, but then again maybe not!
