Tag: Refugee Admissions Program

Based on Recent Polling, Biden’s Planned Hike in Refugee Numbers Will Not Go Over Well!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Uh-oh!

Remember dear readers that Biden has already said he plans to boost the refugee admissions ceiling for FY2022, which begins in less than three months, to a high not seen in decades—125,000!

Biden said he was aiming for 62,500 this year, but will likely only hit around 10,000.

Remember also that President Trump reduced the ceiling dramatically (to much wailing and moaning by the refugee pushers) and admitted 22,555, 30,000, and 11,814 respectively from FY18-FY20.

Decades ago, following 9/11, we saw low refugee admission numbers, but 11,814 is the lowest in 40 years.

FY02 was 27,000 and FY03 was 28,000 (rounded numbers).  Otherwise, in the last few decades the number ranged from roughly 40,000 to 85,000 annually.

Here is the story I found intriguing.  Sure looks like the Progs are searching desperately to get their messaging right so as to convince the general public that Trump had it wrong and we now must open the gates to the third worlders from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The poll analyzed below sought to determine if the public was more willing to support large numbers of refugees if they were told they were women and children.

Surprise!  It didn’t make a big difference.  In fact they suggest that the images at the border of women and children given a free pass may have turned people off!

From International Policy Digest:

By the way, the authors seem to get a little mixed up in the opening paragraphs, confusing the border issue with the refugee program, so I skipped their opening….

Does Framing of Refugee Question Change Public Opinion?

According to research by Mariano Sana covering public opinion on refugees from 1938-2019, Americans tend to view the number of refugees in the U.S. as “about right.” Yet, despite the growing global refugee crisis, the annual refugee ceilings under the Trump administration were the lowest in 40 years and have not returned to pre-Trump levels under the Biden administration.

Presidential administrations have chosen to keep relatively low refugee ceilings partly because of the public backlash. When examining the Syrian refugee crisis, it is easy to see a clear change in U.S. public opinion of refugees. Before the San Bernardino and Paris terrorist attacks, only 19% of U.S. survey respondents believed that the U.S. should stop admitting refugees and 44% of respondents felt like the U.S. should be doing more to aid refugees. However, after the terrorist attacks, there was a shift in the perception of Syrian refugees as threats. Another survey showed that after the San Bernardino and Paris attacks, a slight majority of 53% of Americans said that the U.S. should stop receiving refugees altogether. While these events occurred during the Obama years, this anti-immigrant sentiment carried through the 2016 election and allowed the Trump administration to easily lower the refugee ceiling with little public backlash.

[….]

Past research has found that Americans tend to prefer non-Muslim refugees and women and children. If women and children are seen by the public as more sympathetic and deserving of refugee status, this should increase support for refugee policies overall. However, considering the increase of unaccompanied minors arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border and broader anti-immigration sentiment, such support for women and children has declined.

As you look at the questions the pollsters asked, be aware that the numbers they used (they rounded the numbers I gave you above) are the LOWEST in the history of the US Refugee Admissions Program.

V1: In fiscal years 2018, 2019, and 2020, the U.S. admitted approximately 23,000, 30,000, and 12,000 refugees respectively. Should the number of refugees entering the U.S. decrease, stay about the same, or increase?

V2: In fiscal years 2018, 2019, and 2020, the U.S. admitted approximately 23,000, 30,000, and 12,000 refugees respectively, including many women and children. Should the number of refugees entering the U.S. decrease, stay about the same, or increase?

Below is one chart of their initial data.

It is stunning to see that only a small percentage of respondents want to see those (Trump!) numbers increased, even as they are the lowest three consecutive years ever!

Less than 20% want to see an INCREASE from the lowest numbers, and when asked about women and children the number went down!

 

There is more.  Most notably more Republicans (grrrr!) than Democrats wanted to see the numbers increased!

International Policy Digest wraps with this:

The results suggest difficulties in gaining broader sympathy for refugees, which will likely complicate efforts at raising the ceilings on refugees accepted each year.

It is pretty clear what you should do!  Tell everyone, even Dems, that you know at every opportunity that Joe is boosting refugee admissions from approximately 12,000 to 125,000 in one year beginning in October!

Meatpackers, CAIR, Episcopal Church All Cheer Biden’s Reversal on Refugee Admissions

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They are all happy, happy, happy that the Biden/Harris (Harris/Biden?) Administration has flip-flopped and flipped itself back to its original goal of moving 62,500 refugees to Anytown, USA by September 30th, the end of the present fiscal year.

On October first they plan to up that number to 125,000 for fiscal year 2022.

And, just to remind you again, these migrants will be chosen by the United Nations and placed in your towns by nine federal contractors*** in addition to the tens/hundreds of thousands flowing in illegally across our borders.

So who is praising Biden this week besides the nine contractors?

First up is Big Meat!

I have dozens and dozens of posts here at RRW from over a decade of writing about how the meatpacking industry (Big Poultry too) has changed the heartland by its greedy desire for a cheap and plentiful supply of immigrant labor.

I drove around the West and Midwest in 2016 to see for myself how towns like Ft. Morgan, Colorado have been changed forever by the refugee workers, like these Somalis who were demanding additional time in their work day to practice their Islamic faith, who were imported for the meat industry.

If you are interested in writing a book, I have done a lot of research for you!

See my tag for ‘Meatpackers.’

From The Fence Post:

Meatpackers praise Biden decision to increase refugee allotment

The North American Meat Institute today praised President Biden’s decision Monday to increase the number of refugees admitted to the United States – 62,500, up from the Trump administration’s limit of 15,000.

In an email to The Hagstrom Report, the Meat Institute said, “President Biden’s decision to increase the number of refugees is positive news for the meat and poultry industry. Meat packers and processors have employed those in the refugee community because they are hardworking and dependable. Finding a stable workforce is always a challenge….

[….]

In 2020, the Los Angeles Times noted that the meatpacking industry is dependent on refugees as employees.

You will see in my ‘Meatpacker’ archive that the refugee contractors (below) work closely with Big Meat to help them acquire a steady supply of workers.

Additionally, Africans are happy because they will see the biggest increase in their numbers in that batch of 62,500.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is happy!

Apparently happy to help Big Meat find workers too!

CAIR Welcomes President Biden’s Increase of Refugee Cap from Historic Low, Pledge to Next Year Expand to 125,000

In a statement, CAIR Director of Government Affairs Department Robert S. McCaw said:

“CAIR welcomes President Biden’s decision to raise the nation’s 2021 refugee cap to 62,500 and his pledge to increase the cap to 125,000 in 2022. Raising the nation’s refugee cap from its historic low was the morally correct decision and a first step to undoing the prior administration’s xenophobic policy of punitively targeting those seeking refuge in our nation as part of an effort to maintain systemic anti-Black racism and white supremacy.  

“The American Muslim community is determined to ensure the rights of every immigrant are upheld and our nation remains a place of safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers.”    

LOL! And then CAIR can happily use the imported workers to demand Islamic accommodation in the workplace!

The Episcopal Church is cheering Biden!

More refugees means more money for them!

Here is the press release from the Episcopal Church.  It is one of nine federal contractors that will now be getting a new traunch of federal bucks, your tax dollars, to place refugees throughout the country.

I’m posting their whole gobbledygook press statement here and suggesting they need a new writer in their Government Relations Office:

Rev. Dr. C.K. Robertson, canon to the Presiding Bishop, happy that Biden will be sending them more money so they can help serve “vulnerable” refugees.

Today President Biden followed through on his promise to raise the Fiscal Year 2021 refugee cap from 15,000 to 62,500. The Episcopal Church commends President Biden for recognizing the United States’ obligation to protecting some of the most vulnerable individuals in our world. The Episcopal Church has called on the United States and other wealthy nations to “contribute to resettlement, establish and maintain safe and orderly humanitarian protection for refugees, internally displaced persons, and other migrants seeking long-term solutions and safety.” Given that the Episcopal Church has put these words into practice through its refugee resettlement work with Episcopal Migration Ministries and the welcoming work of its parishes, we appreciate the White House has done the same with its campaign promises to expand refugee resettlement and strengthen the refugee program.

“Today’s decision was a very important moment to mark a return to form for the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and the United States’ commitment to refugees,” said the Rev. Dr. C.K. Robertson, canon to the Presiding Bishop, “for decades we’ve seen Republican and Democratic administrations make robust refugee resettlement an important part of their immigration and foreign policy and appreciate that the Biden administration will follow in their footsteps to serve these populations. The Episcopal Church also commends the work of its members and staff who have been instrumental in advocating for the refugee program and refugees in recent weeks. “The Episcopal Church has a long history of welcoming the stranger and we’re incredibly proud that our members met with and contacted their members of Congress to encourage the Biden Administration to meet its 62,500 pledge,” said Demetrio Alvero.“We stand ready to work with the administration to implement this new goal and its future efforts to expand refugee resettlement in Fiscal Year 2022.”

Alvero is not identified in that release, but here he is as Director of Operations of their Migration department.  That means he is the church’s lobbyist.

The Episcopal Church has obviously determined that we have run out of poor Americans to care for. 

Or, is it that there are lucrative government grants and contracts available to them for moving the third world to America and helping supply Big Meat and other global corporations with their worker pawns?

And, Catholics, like these in Arlington, Virginia are happy too because it is so much more satisfyingly to do charitable work for immigrants than for vulnerable Americans.

I could go on and on with woke ‘religious’ charities singing the praises of the Biden decision to put Foreigners First, but this is getting too long already.

Unhappy are American taxpayers who must pay for the importation of cheap migrant labor and new Democrat voters all the while watching their towns and cities changed forever.

 

***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.

They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris and lobby for open borders.  As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.

Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are also paid to find locations for the Unaccompanied Alien Children.

Americans Last! is their motto!

Not a Peep on Refugees in Biden’s Big Socialist Dream Speech

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

 

Oh he mentioned immigration—“our war over immigration,” he called it—-but the word “refugee” does not appear in the text of his simplistic speech seemingly geared to a middle school reading level, given to a mostly empty House chamber, before a largely odd-looking bunch of masked (vaccinated!) so-called American leaders.

It must have been a hilarious spectacle for our enemies around the world.  I tried to watch it, I really did, but just couldn’t stand it for more than a half an hour.

Formerly Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society

Yesterday, refugee contractor HIAS, in an e-mail to supporters, indicated that they had high hopes that there would be a renewed enthusiasm by Mr. Biden to expand the number of refugees to be admitted and that he would reaffirm that desire to the nation last night.

Nope! He didn’t.

Dear friend,

Tonight at 9 p.m. ET, President Biden will make his first joint address to Congress since taking office.

HIAS will be watching his remarks closely.

You probably followed the news last week, when the Biden administration announced plans to keep the number of refugees resettled in the U.S. at its all-time low level. Advocates like you immediately and fiercely called upon the administration to reverse the decision, and within hours, the administration committed to raising the refugee admissions ceiling by May 15.

The new deadline is less than three weeks away.

The e-mail goes on to urge supporters to keep the pressure on the White House.

Signed: The HIAS Team

 

Here is the text of Biden’s ‘government-is-here-to-take-care-of-you’ speech in which he mentions immigration.  The ‘R-word’ is missing.

As you read this, think about the fact that the Obama/Biden administration had EIGHT YEARS to lead an effort to fix “our war over immigration” and it failed to do so.

Now Biden is tossing this hot potato to Nancy and (LOL! ) to Kamala…

Read it all, but here is the section on immigration.

Let’s end our exhausting war over immigration.

For more than 30 years, politicians have talked about immigration reform and done nothing about it.  [Joe forgets that he was there for those 30 years and more!—-ed]

It’s time to fix it.

Biden: I am leaving it to the giddy girls to fix it!  Wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on the wall at Xi Jinping’s house as he watched this performance.

On Day One of my presidency, I kept my commitment and I sent a comprehensive immigration bill to Congress [Hot potato toss to Nancy—ed].

If you believe we need a secure border – pass it.

If you believe in a pathway to citizenship – pass it.

If you actually want to solve the problem – I have sent you a bill, now pass it.

We also have to get at the root of the problem of why people are fleeing to our southern border from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador.

The violence. The corruption. The gangs. The political instability. Hunger. Hurricanes. Earthquakes.

When I was Vice President, I focused on providing the help needed to address these root causes of migration.

It helped keep people in their own countries instead of being forced to leave.  [What the heck is he talking about.  They came throughout the Obama/Biden eight years!—ed]

Our plan worked.

But the last administration shut it down.

I’m restoring the program and asked Vice President Harris to lead our diplomatic efforts. [Hot potato toss to Kamala, but didn’t he do that about a month ago?–ed]

I have absolute confidence she will get the job done.

Now, if Congress won’t pass my plan – let’s at least pass what we agree on.

Congress needs to pass legislation this year to finally secure protection for the Dreamers – the young people who have only known America as their home.

HIAS must be disappointed and further confused.

Frankly, I too am puzzled by Biden’s flip-flop-flipping-flop on his handling of the Refugee Admissions Program.

After all, he is the grandpappy of the forty-year (so far) plan to change America by changing the people known as the Refugee Act of 1980.

Illuminating Skullduggery Podcast on Biden Refugee Admissions Flip-Flop

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here I go again, another post on the incredibly amusing muddle the Biden Administration has gotten itself into in regards to the flip-flop-flipping on his decision to aim to admit a certain number of refugees into the US this fiscal year.

Since I last wrote here on Wednesday, I posted a piece at Frauds and Crooks on the topic, because I am so fascinated by how the Biden White House has made such an enormous political blunder and that the corporate media has reported on the blowback Biden has received from the liberal wing of his party.

The Frauds and Crooks post focused on how quickly the refugee lobby went into action to slap Biden around on his unforgiveable waffling and announcement that he would leave the refugee ceiling/cap at the Trump level for the remainder of the fiscal year sending HIAS and other refugee pushers ballistic as heads exploded throughout the refugee industry.

See it here:

America First Has No Effective Opposition to Recreating the Third World on American Soil

There are so many things I could have written about today, but instead, I just spent part of an hour listening to a podcast at something called Skullduggery where HIAS (formerly Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) CEO Mark Hetfield gives Michael Isikoff some inside skinny on what went down last week in the White House implosion over the refugee cap for the year.

Additionally Hetfield reveals a few other nuggets of information that you may find illuminating.  I did.

Hey, and if you think that somehow I pick on Mark Hetfield and HIAS, I don’t.

Mark Hetfield protesting President Donald Trump’s refugee policy decisions.

It just happens that Hetfield appears to be the most political of the refugee contractor CEOs and is out and about talking to the media and organizing protests. (See all contractors*** below.)

He also was the leader of the pack suing the Trump administration every time Trump attempted to reform the Refugee Admissions Program.

Calling all refugee policy wonks! This podcast is worth listening to as Hetfield describes the situation with the White House as “bizarre.”

Here are a few takeaways (some nuggets we already know, but confirmed by Hetfield):

~ The refugee admissions controversy was the first blowback Biden received from the liberal wing of the party.  By May 15th a new refugee ceiling will be announced by the capitulating  White House.

~ We learn that Secretary of State Blinken wants the increase, but some unknown players in the White House are politically “spooked on immigration.”  That tells us that we must, for all its worth, keep talking about immigration and the southern border as a “crisis.”

~ With the refugee program it is the Muslim refugees that most scare the public. There was a few minutes of discussion about the 2015 governors’ revolt when 31 governors told Obama they refused to admit Syrian refugees to their states. Even presidential candidates such as moderates on immigration, Bush and Rubio, became “xenophobic” in their rhetoric.  That really freaked-out Hetfield.

~Hetfield claims the public is mostly positive about bringing in more refugees, but apparently some unnamed advisors in the White House are looking at polling that does not confirm Hetfield’s optimistic view.

~Hetfield is “infuriated” by all of the focus on vetting refugees that delays their arrival in America.  He says that no refugee has committed a lethal terror attack on US soil, but doesn’t mention that many have been stopped and apprehended before they could carry out a planned attack!  And, he doesn’t mention the killers and rapists who have gotten past the screening.

~Isikoff finds Tucker Carlson’s great “replacement” theory “vile.”  And then asks if Hetfield watches Carlson. This is the funny part: Hetfield says he “made the mistake” of going on Tucker’s show a few years ago.

By the way, that did not go well for Hetfield.  If you missed it, here it is:

 

~ Hetfield called the replacement concept “beyond offensive.” He and the podcasters are concerned about whether this “strain of thinking” by the likes of Carlson, Donald Trump and Stephen Miller is “ascendant.”  Hint to you:  Keep it going.

~Hetfield called the administration’s border crisis a “lose-lose” situation for the President.

~As for the ceiling/cap, he wonders how the Biden team got so muddled over it as he said “set the damn cap” and set it higher than Trump’s cap.  It doesn’t matter exactly what it is because it is a cap, a ceiling.  He just wants to get the program moving and then Biden should fulfil his promise for FY2022 which begins on October 1, 2021 to admit 125,000 refugees from the Middle East, Africa, South America and Asia.

For those of you new to the Refugee program there was some useful basic information about how the program works.

Listen to the whole interview entitled ‘Biden’s Refugee Problem.’

 

***If you are new to RRW, here are all of the federal refugee resettlement contractors.

The border crisis is damaging refugee resettlement!

The contractors worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris and they lobby for open borders.

From the earliest days of writing this blog it has perplexed me because if they truly cared about the refugees they legally help, they would not encourage leniency toward lawbreakers at our borders because the general public makes no distinctions.

To the average American it is all the same—too many people having too many needs for Americans to pay for.

Americans Last! is their motto!

 

NYT: Biden Himself Blocked Increased Refugee Admissions for the Year

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Holy cow!  This story at the New York Times yesterday was revealing and that was because, first and foremost, it says to me that there is discord, and there are leakers willing to leak about that discord, inside the Biden/Harris administration!

The entire issue of refugee resettlement had gone into sleep-mode in recent months, so I’m surprised that the topic is now front and center, not so much because of refugee numbers per se, but because it is giving us a window into an extremely dysfunctional (back stabbing) administration.

Is Biden a racist?

Don’t get me wrong.  I am happy with the foot-dragging and flip-flopping, and I am happy to see so many Open borders pushers with their undies in a wad, but it is disquieting to see such an erratic decision-making process.

Not to mention, if Biden’s rationale is that he doesn’t want to piss-off more voters (or members of Congress) on immigration issues before the mid-term elections, that ship has sailed.

Everyone already knows he has unleashed the invasion.

We are being overrun by illegal aliens and the average American isn’t sitting out there saying, well, we can cut him some slack because at least he isn’t bringing in tens of thousands of legal refugees from across the entire globe.

See my post yesterday about how the border and the refugee admissions program have long ago been “conflated” in peoples’ minds.

Psaki Clears Up Refugee Admissions Confusion (NOT!)

 

Here is a bit of what the New York Times is saying in what is likely the first, hopefully not the last, reporting on the bloom-off-the-rose for Biden.  It is long, and likely only the wonkiest of refugee wonks will read it all.

Forgive me for my fixation on this, but I have never seen anything quite like this mess in all the years I’ve been writing about the US Refugee Program, and I especially love to see the Lefties at each others’ throats!

 

An Early Promise Broken: Inside Biden’s Reversal on Refugees

What had been an easy promise on the campaign trail — to reverse what Democrats called President Donald J. Trump’s “racist” limits on accepting refugees — has become a test of what is truly important to President Biden.

(If Biden brings in fewer refugees than Trump did in a year, will they call Biden a “racist?”  Just wondering!)

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in the Oval Office, pleading with President Biden.

Ha! Is it Blinken’s team doing the leaking?

In the meeting, on March 3, Mr. Blinken implored the president to end Trump-era restrictions on immigration and to allow tens of thousands of desperate refugees fleeing war, poverty and natural disasters into the United States, according to several people familiar with the exchange.

But Mr. Biden, already under intense political pressure because of the surge of migrant children at the border with Mexico, was unmoved. The attitude of the president during the meeting, according to one person to whom the conversation was later described, was, essentially: Why are you bothering me with this?

What had been an easy promise on the campaign trail — to reverse what Democrats called President Donald J. Trump’s “racist” limits on accepting refugees — has become a test of what is truly important to the new occupant of the White House, according to an account of his decision making from more than a dozen Biden administration officials, refugee resettlement officials and others.

Mr. Biden was eager for the praise that would come from vastly increasing Mr. Trump’s record-low limit, people familiar with his thinking said, and he decided to increase the cap even earlier than the usual start of the fiscal year, Oct. 1.

If Chief of Staff Ron Klain thinks holding refugee numbers down will bring some bipartisanship in Congress and brownie points for the midterm elections, he has very seriously miscalculated.

But only weeks into Mr. Biden’s presidency, immigration and the border had already become major distractions from his efforts to defeat the coronavirus pandemic and to persuade Congress to invest trillions of dollars into the economy — issues championed by aides like Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, as more central to his presidency.

[….]

The exchange on March 3 took place shortly after Mr. Biden had dispatched Mr. Blinken and two other cabinet secretaries to formally tell Congress that he would increase refugee admissions during the next six months to 62,500 people from the annual 15,000-person limit set by Mr. Trump.

Instead, the president undercut his emissaries and left hundreds of refugees in limbo for weeks.

For the next month and a half, Mr. Biden’s aides stalled, repeatedly telling reporters and refugee advocacy groups that the president still intended to follow through.

[….]

On Feb. 12, the president delivered on the specific commitment to Congress, pledging to resettle 62,500 refugees fleeing war and persecution at home. Mr. Blinken delivered the message to lawmakers along with Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, and Norris Cochran, the acting health secretary at the time.

Hetfield is surely the leader of the pack as he stirs the political pot and I’m guessing the ringleader in guiding the NYT reporters with the help of his sources in the State Department.

“They went there and presented a really thoughtful plan, and we were so thrilled,” said Mark J. Hetfield, the chief executive of Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a resettlement agency.

“And then,” Mr. Hetfield said, “it just evaporated overnight.”

[….]

As the weeks stretched into months, it became clear that Mr. Biden’s presidency would not be the panacea some had thought.

 

The biggest knife-cut of all!  Biden wanted to stick with Stephen Miller‘s cap!

Instead of making good on his promise to significantly expand refugee entry into the United States, Mr. Biden was sticking to the cap engineered by Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies.

“This reflects Team Biden’s awareness that the border flood will cause record midterm losses,” Mr. Miller tweeted, adding that if it were still up to him, “Refugee cap should be reduced to ZERO.”

The idea that Mr. Miller and Mr. Biden were in agreement about anything was anathema to most of the president’s supporters, many of whom flew into a rage.

[….]

By Friday evening, the White House was in full damage-control mode.

Jon Finer, the deputy national security adviser, held an emergency conference call with refugee advocates at 7:30 p.m., emphasizing that the administration would work to welcome in the refugees with haste.

That is enough to show you what a hash the administration has made of the refugee admissions program and immigration in general!

Continue reading here.

Is Biden a closet racist? 

I’ve wondered for over a decade why Biden’s Delaware never welcomed refugees in any numbers. 

Only a handful have ever been placed there and no one seems to know why.  It isn’t because it is a small state, because Rhode Island is smaller and has welcomed thousands more than Biden’s home state.

See my post from January 2020.

According to the US State Department data base at the Refugee Processing Center, Delaware has only ‘welcomed’ 171 refugees since the beginning of fiscal year 2003. (Data before 2003 is not easy to access.)

Well it is a small state you say!

It is twice the size of Rhode Island which took in 3,122 poor third worlders in the same time period.