Update April 18th: Biden himself commits to increasing the numberof refugees to be admitted; references the border saying we couldn’t do two things at once, but now we can (oh really! so what changed?).
“This is a breathtaking betrayal of the plan to ‘build back better.’”
(Matthew Soerens World Relief, a refugee contractor)
Don’t get me wrong. I am just fine with it. In fact, I find it hilarious.
However, Biden/Harris have now so screwed-up the US Refugee Admissions Program (which I know a little about) with their ham-handed incompetence that it makes me ask how badly are they screwing-up elsewhere—-like handling the pandemic or dealing with Russia and China?
We know they are creating a catastrophe and angering most Americanswith their policy, or lack of a policy, at the southern border!
And, that is not so funny.
Now, by not going forward with his promise to reset the annual refugee cap to 62,500 for what remains of the 2021 fiscal year, RRW readers know that Biden has been pissing-off his friends in the NO Borders community.
Leading the pack of the pissed-off are the refugee contractors*** whose business it is to place third world clients in your towns and cities while being paid by you, the taxpayer, to do it.
And, see here that the final straw for those who helped Biden steal the White Housewas when a contractor, the International Rescue Committee, published a report saying Biden was ‘welcoming’ fewer refugees than President Trump.
If that wasn’t bad enough, yesterday all hell broke loose when the White House announced it would leave TRUMP’S CAP of 15,000 (or fewer) refugees to be admitted by September 30th in place.
The “faith groups” (aka contractors) were “outraged.”
Nothing Trump did should ever be left in place!
A few hours later Biden/Harris backtracked and said they would set a new higher cap/ceiling in mid-May.
Keep in mind that while running for the presidency Biden promised his 80 million (ha! ha!) voters that he would admit 125,000 annually.
There is a lot of coverage of the “betrayal.” Here is one account at Religion News Service:
Biden reverses course on refugee cap after faith groups express outrage
WASHINGTON (RNS) — President Joe Biden’s administration has reversed a decision to keep in place a historically low cap on refugee admissions left by Donald Trump, saying it will raise the ceiling next month after faith-based groups initially decried the move as an “abandonment of our ideals.”
Matthew Soerens of World Relief
Biden signed a memorandum Friday (April 16) aimed at speeding up refugee admissions this year — but that memorandum does not increase the so-called refugee ceiling, something the president has pledged to do when speaking to religious audiences.
Although the memorandum leaves open the possibility of raising that number should the United States resettle the maximum 15,000 refugees this year, news that the ceiling will at least temporarily remain at that historic low was met with disappointment by many religious communities, including the faith-based groups that partner with the federal government to resettle refugees.
By Friday afternoon, TheAssociated Press and CNN reported the Biden administration has reversed course, announcing plans to lift the Trump-era refugee cap next month in the wake of widespread pushback from allies.
The White House confirmed to Religion News Service on Friday that officials intend to revisit the refugee ceiling sometime in the coming days, saying in a statement, “We expect the President to set a final, increased refugee cap for the remainder of this fiscal year by May 15.”
Keep reading hereto see what the other Christian contractors, in addition to Soerens, had to say about their man Joe yesterday.
In a more tempered response, see what the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society is saying about the flip-flopping from the White House.
‘Relieved but disappointed’: How America’s Jewish refugee aid agency is doing 3 months under Biden
“We’re relieved but disappointed,” said HIAS CEO Mark Hetfield following Friday’s initial announcement that the cap, also known as the refugee ceiling, would not be raised.
Following the second statement, Hetfield added, “There’s no reason to delay raising the refugee ceiling. It’s just a ceiling, it’s not a floor. They should be focused on what’s the goal and how are you going to reach it?”
It is all Trump’s fault!
The fight over the refugee cap encapsulates a dilemma confronting HIAS as the agency moves from Trump to Biden. On one hand, HIAS leaders are glad that the United States no longer has a president who opposes refugees, separates families at the border and fires up his base with anti-immigrant rhetoric.
On the other hand, they say that Trump did so much harm, and made immigration so heated an issue, that it will be a challenge just to bring the immigration and refugee systems back to where they were before Trump.
Returning to a point in which the U.S. allows hundreds of thousands of refugees a year, and passing immigration reform through Congress, these leaders say, feels even more daunting. [HIAS was heavily involved in lobbying for failed Comprehensive Immigration Reform some years ago.–ed]
“It’s just a relief to have that administration in the rearview mirror,” said Melanie Nezer, vice president for public affairs at HIAS. She dubbed the Trump era “the fire swamp.”
But Nezer is cognizant as well of “the sheer amount of time, effort and creativity it’s going to take for the new administration and those of us who work on these issues to unravel and fix it.”
“The prior administration really decimated our infrastructure, our systems, our staffing,” she said. “It’s stunning to think about the damage that was done.”
[….]
Trump’s actions on immigration, beginning with the travel ban, spurred a flood of donations to HIAS.Since Trump’s term, the agency more than doubled its annual budget to $90 million. But resettling refugees — how the organization had once spent the majority of donations — became unprecedentedly controversial and difficult.
With its windfall, HIAS sued the Trump administration over its travel ban, increased its advocacy work and shifted its weight outside the U.S.
For refugee resettlement nerds there is a lot of useful information in this article, sokeep reading.
Here is the data from the State Department showing the paltry number of refugees admitted in the first half of the fiscal year.
This is what has the contractors hopping mad.
Notice (sorry the screenshot isn’t clear, but take it from me) that although we are admitting hundreds of thousands of illegal border jumpers from Central America, more are being admitted as refugees through this legal avenue.
2050 total for six months. They will have a hard time getting to even 15,000 at this rate.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the unhappy contractors.
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.
“Biden’s delay on welcoming refugees has been a huge disappointment for refugee advocates.”
(Boston Globe columnist, Marcela García)
The refugee news from the last week primarily revolves around two main themes—the ‘children’ surging across the US border and where to put them before releasing them into the country; and why Biden has yet to sign the document to start the flow of third world refugees from Asia, Africa and the Middle East to Anytown, USA.
The ‘children’ as we have been reporting in recent weeks are not refugees even as the open-borders-promoting mainstream media wants you to believe they are.
The mostly teenagers are illegal aliens hoping to claim asylum, or so they say.
The vast majority will never achieve refugee status because most will never appear in any asylum adjudication process, and even if they did show up few could prove that they were persecuted in their home country.
Also, as I have been saying, the largest number of those getting in are older teens who will soon age-out of the system altogether. In one story this week a weak attempt was made to answer the question—what happens when they age-out?
What happens to unaccompanied migrant children when they turn 18?
They must find a sponsor—-what a joke!
Moving on to the other major theme of the week, the mystery deepens—so why hasn’t Biden signed the annual determination document that would lift Trump’s low number from 15,000 refugees to 62,500 for the fiscal year?
Refugee contractors heads are exploding as their man Chairman Joe isn’t removing Trump’s refugee ceiling.
His State Department already told Congress that the Administration wants 62,500, an absolutely unattainable number as the fiscal year ends in a little over 5 and a half months.
But, no Biden signature yet!
What surprises me most is that the refugee contractors*** who have a pipeline into the State Department, a pipeline that was functioning during the Trump years, don’t appear to know what the hold-up is.
However, a theory is developing—Biden doesn’t want to look TOO PRO-IMMIGRANT!
WTH!
The crisis on the border alone tells us it is a little late for that!
Everyone with eyes can see that the Biden/Harris administration is the most PRO-immigrant and most Americans-last administration of all time.
Is Biden afraid of appearing too soft on immigration?
The official name of the malady is xenophobia. Donald Trump did everything he could to spread the condition, and it still infects us. [LOL! They can’t resist whacking Trump!—ed]
Unlike Trump, President Biden doesn’t fear displaced foreigners who fled their homes due to civil conflict, natural disasters, persecution, or systemic violence. Nor does he blatantly use them as handy political props. Still, he may be afraid of appearing soft on immigration, just as some were labeled soft on crime a generation ago.
That could be one explanation for why Biden hasn’t reversed Trump’s historically low refugee admissions cap of 15,000 annually, leaving many in the resettlement world baffled. It could also be that the administration is consumed with managing the influx of migrant children at the US-Mexico border.
Regardless of the reason, Biden’s delay on welcoming refugees has been a huge disappointment for refugee advocates.
The Globe opinion piece directs us to an exchange that happened at a White House press briefing with Jen Psaki on Thursday. The reporter is not identified:
Q Gotcha. And then, a quick follow-up. Why haven’t refugee flights continued at this point? Last month, the President did announce that he intended to raise the refugee cap before the typical, you know, end of the fiscal year —
MS. PSAKI: Yeah.
Q — where it traditionally happens. That hasn’t seemed to happen yet. Why haven’t those flights continued?
MS. PSAKI: He remains committed, but I don’t have an update on the timing of the flights.
Q Does it have anything to do with the fact that resources are going towards the border at this time? Or —
Incidentally, the Biden team has put the Temporary Protected Status program on steroidsdemonstrating that their pro-immigration policies are moving full steam ahead, except (strangely) for the Refugee Admissions Program.
Here we see the not wanting to look too PRO-immigrant theme continued at the Buffalo News:
Refugee numbers drop in Buffalo – and Biden isn’t boosting them
Privately, some refugee advocates speculate that Biden is delaying opening up refugee resettlement so long as undocumented immigrants continue crossing the border with Mexico in record numbers, perhaps fearing political blowback from any move that might be seen as pro-immigrant.
Why is Buffalo so eager for more refugees?
Dear readers, this is a major reason why Democrats want refugees!
Democrat-run cities are dying and they see that moving the third world to their cities will be their ticket to saving them and their own political power. Nevermind that you pay for it both financially and culturally.
The Buffalo News continues….
Biden’s inaction has prompted a growing sense of frustration among those long have backed refugee resettlement as a key cog in stabilizing or even growing Buffalo’s population, such as Rep. Brian Higgins.
“Buffalo is among the most successful refugee resettlement cities in America,” said Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat. “President Biden should immediately lift the previous administration’s arbitrary and cruel refugee resettlement limits.”
By the way, besides the fact that dying cities need bodies to keep Dems in power, it isn’t just the Democrats. The globalists (including Republicans!) push for cheap labor, as outlined in a lengthy, but well worth reading treatise at the Last Refuge, explains more.
Update: Here is the Executive Order, no mention of the number yet, just laying the groundwork. Focuses on climate refugees and getting rid of Trump’s extra vetting of refugees among a bunch of other stuff. More later as I have a better look at it.
If you have been following RRW for the last many weeks (and months!), this is no surprise. Chairman Biden and his gang are more interested in swamping America with more mouths to feed than they are in caring for struggling citizens.
Americans Last is their mantra!
Watch the video. Biden says he is raising the number “back up” to 125,000 leaving the uniformed to think that it was just a few years ago, during Saint Obama’s administration, that the number was that high.
It hasn’t been that high for 29 years, not since 1992!
He and Barack never even got near 100,000. (But, lazy biased reporters will never tell you that!).
And, one more thing. Note that at about the 1:00 minute mark he says he will raise it to 125,000 “in the first full fiscal year” of his administration. His first full fiscal year doesn’t begin until October 1 of this year.
So, does that mean that he is leaving Trump’s 15,000 ceiling in place for the remaining months of this fiscal year?
As the refugees recently settled are still struggling to survive, the refugee resettlement contractors, who worked to place Joe and Kamala in the White House, have been pushing Biden to admit tens of thousands more.
Tomorrow we should expect to hear from those refugee industry contractorsand I’ll let you know what they say.
For new readers here they are, the America Lasters who want more refugees as the ones they previously resettled are struggling in the Chinese virus lockdown.
“It is important to hold accountable those who would seek to defraud such programs, particularly when the crimes compromise our national security and public safety, when they impose such high costs on taxpayers…”
(Acting U.S. Attorney Michael R. Sherwin for the District of Columbia)
Three foreign nationals from Russia, Iraq and Jordan have been charged in stealing information about refugees from the US State Department’s WRAPs data base.
And, this case might explain why the flow of Iraqis to your American towns had slowed dramatically late in the Trump administration.
As we have been saying for over a decade, the US Refugee Admissions Program is filled with fraud and corruption. These three are likely small fish in the overall scheme of things.
Three Foreign Nationals Charged with Conspiracy to Steal U.S. Government Records and Defraud U.S. Refugee Program
WASHINGTON – An indictment charging three defendants was unsealed in the District of Columbia today.
The indictment charges Aws Muwafaq Abduljabbar, 42; Haitham Isa Saado Sad, 42; and Olesya Leonidovna Krasilova, 43, with conspiracy to steal U.S. government records and to defraud the United States, theft of U.S. government records, and conspiracy to launder money, all related to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).
[….]
According to the indictment, Sad was employed in Amman, Jordan from 2007 to 2016 by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Krasilova held a similar position at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Russia. Part of their duties included processing applications for refugee resettlement in the United States through the USRAP.
The indictment charges that, from approximately February 2016 until at least April 2019, the three defendants, led by Abduljabbar, conspired to steal U.S. government records related to hundreds of USRAP applications.The records contained sensitive, non-public information about refugee applicants, their family members, their employment and military history, their accounts of persecution or fear of persecution, the results of security checks, and internal assessments by U.S. officials regarding applications.
[….]
As outlined in the indictment, the theft of USRAP records creates a number of risks to public safety and national security while imposing significant costs on the U.S. government, its taxpayers, and otherwise legitimate refugee applicants negatively impacted by the scheme. Defendants Abduljabbar and Sad were previously arrested and remain held without bond. Defendant Krasilova remains at large.
[….]
“Individuals like Ms. Krasilova and Mr. Sad are entrusted to protect the integrity of the U.S. immigration system and sensitive information vital to our national security interests,” said Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Dr. Joseph V. Cuffari. “The Office of Inspector General remains committed to aggressively investigating DHS employees who abuse their positions, betray the public trust, and conspire with persons such as Mr. Abduljabbar to defraud the United States.”
We will have more to say, but just wanted to get a preliminary story out.
For those with inquiring minds, here is the indictment itself. (If this doesn’t open, send me a comment to this post and I’ll send it to you directly.)
We expect the Biden administration to be doing a better job of hiring people for this work than Obama did… Ha!
And, I just came across this cutesy video created as Obama was leaving office explaining to potential refugees the process for admission to the US. Thought you might find it interesting.
Editor: To my dedicated readers here at RRW (some of you have been with me since 2007) I have been distracted by the nightmare unfolding in Washington and have been busy posting at my other blog Frauds and Crooks in the wake of the great Election Steal of 2020.
You might like to see some of my posts there tagged January 6th 2021to see what I’ve been saying.
But, alas, it is time to direct my attention, or at least some of my attention, to the US Refugee Admissions Program which Biden has said will now be on steroids to admit 125,000 refugees in his first year.
From Fortunewhere the writer is employed by one of nine refugee contractors*** working for the federal government.
Many of these contractors are supposedly religious non-profit groups, but they are largely funded by you—the US taxpayer!
How refugees could help the U.S. become unified again
Last year was largely characterized by separation and survival. Whether it was social distancing and COVID-19, violence in America’s cities, or attempting to sort out one of the most contentious and confusing elections in modern memory, America struggled in 2020, and needs to view 2021 with an eye toward unity and healing.
Perhaps the best way to do that is to unify and heal by returning to our American roots, and welcoming refugees into our country.
President-elect Joe Biden has stated his intention to raise the ceiling for refugee admissions to 125,000 for fiscal year 2021. Unifying around this goal, and welcoming those who have fled persecution and are desperate to find safety and freedom in America, could help the U.S. to again find unity.
[….]
More importantly, this move would be a big step toward reunifying our nation by reinvigorating our historical practice of welcoming refugees. Aiming for that 125,000 goal is the perfect way to come together and recommit our nation to the best of our national ideals. This will be a challenge that revives a tired nation, but it will take work and commitment from all of our citizens.
[….]
So how do we use this as an opportunity to heal?
First, people—both individually and in charitable, religious, or civic-minded organizations—should focus on learning about who refugees are and how the U.S. refugee resettlement process works….
The problem is that the process doesn’t work in the way they claim, and is one of the most secretive programs the federal government has been undertaking for four decades.
Second, Americans should continue to advocate for refugee resettlement. It’s vital that Americans hold Biden accountable for his dedication commitment to refugee resettlement. [This sentence needs an edit, but you get the gist—ed]
Oh, very interesting, they already think that Biden is going to wiggle out of his promise! When our border is overrun by wannabe asylum seekers in the coming weeks, Biden is going to have a hell of a time telling America we need more poor sick people!
Third, Americans should reach out to the refugee resettlement agencies in their region and ask how they can help.
Do those things and PRESTO! America will be healed!
America Lasters!
***For new readers these are the Progressive groups, some claim they are ‘religious’ charities, that put the wellbeing of refugees and illegal migrants ahead of struggling Americans.
Again, these resettlement agencies (aka contractors) are largely paid by you the US taxpayer, they are not passing the plate at Sunday services. This is NOT Christian charity!
“We’re relieved but disappointed,” said HIAS CEO Mark Hetfield following Friday’s initial announcement that the cap, also known as the refugee ceiling, would not be raised.
Returning to a point in which the U.S. allows hundreds of thousands of refugees a year, and passing immigration reform through Congress, these leaders say, feels even more daunting. [HIAS was heavily involved in lobbying for failed Comprehensive Immigration Reform some years ago.–ed]
Here is the data from the State Department showing the paltry number of refugees admitted in the first half of the fiscal year.
WASHINGTON – An indictment charging three defendants was unsealed in the District of Columbia today.
