Refugee industry unhappy with new hire at State Department

03/09/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Unhappy is probably a mild description of the mood of refugee activists inside and outside the government with the posting of Andrew Veprek, described as an aide to the White House’s resident monster, Stephen Miller, to a post as Deputy Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM).

Politico says that inside the agency, other staff might resign in protest.

(They obviously are convinced Veprek is on the side of slowing the refugee flow to America. And, for the record, I don’t know him, so I couldn’t say.)
Here is Politico reporting the latest discouraging news for the once prosperous refugee industry:

Screenshot (260)_LI — Since I couldn’t find a pic of Stephen Miller’s right hand man Veprek, this is my image of how the refugee industry is viewing the appointment.

A White House aide close to senior policy adviser Stephen Miller who has advocated strict limits on immigration into the U.S. has been selected for a top State Department post overseeing refugee admissions, according to current and former officials.

Andrew Veprek’s appointment as a deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) is alarming pro-immigration activists who fear that President Donald Trump is trying to effectively end the U.S. refugee resettlement program.

Current and former officials also describe Veprek’s appointment as a blow to an already-embattled refugee bureau.

The Deep State blabs to Politico:

Veprek is a Foreign Service officer detailed to the White House, which listed him as an “immigration adviser” in a 2017 staff document. He has worked closely there with Miller and the Domestic Policy Council, according to a current State official and a former one in touch with people still serving in the department. A former U.S. official also confirmed the appointment.

In interagency debates, some administration officials have viewed Veprek as representing Miller’s hard-line views about limiting entry into the U.S. for refugees and other immigrants.

Veprek played an influential role in Trump administration’s December withdrawal from international talks on a nonbinding global pact on migration issues. He also argued in favor of dramatically lowering the nation’s annual cap on refugee admissions, the current and former officials said.

Resignations coming???

Politico continues….

“He was Stephen Miller’s vehicle,” the former State official said. The current official predicted that some PRM officials could resign in protest over Veprek’s appointment.

“My experience is that he strongly believes that fewer refugees should admitted into the United States and that international migration is something to be stopped, not managed,” the former U.S. official said, adding that Veprek’s views about refugees and migrants were impassioned to the point of seeming “vindictive.”

Veprek’s appointment as a deputy assistant secretary is unusual given his relatively low Foreign Service rank, the former and current State officials said, and raises questions about his qualifications. Such a position typically does not require Senate confirmation. [It is significant that Trump has still not chosen an Asst. Secretary for PRM because that job does require Senate confirmation—a hellstorm they are apparently avoiding.—ed]

tillerson foia — Politico tells us that Sec. of State Tillerson has given up on the idea of scrapping PRM. If I understand it, he was considering moving the refugee program to Homeland Security, a proposal that had some merit in my opinion.

[….]

The White House referred questions to the State Department. A State Department spokesperson confirmed Veprek’s new role and, while not describing his rank, stressed that Veprek comes to PRM “with more than 16 years in the Foreign Service and experience working on refugee and migration issues.”

[….]

The PRM bureau, like several other bureaus at the State Department, does not yet have an assistant secretary to lead it. People familiar with the bureau say the morale among its employees has sunk to unusually low levels as top officials have left or been reassigned and amid the anti-refugee messages emanating from the White House. But initial worries that Tillerson would scrap the bureau completely have faded, at least for now, as the secretary has scaled back plans to restructure the department.

More here.
In another report on the “refugee hard-liner”, The Hill says this of Trump’s reduction in the number of refugees to be admitted to the US:

The move signaled that there would no longer be a need for all of the 324 resettlement offices that were operating in 2017.

As we reported extensively in the waning years of the Obama Administration, the State Department was on a high identifying as many as 40 prospective NEW resettlement sites.
Elections have consequences after all.
But the consequences come with a time stamp and if there is no move to reform the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program by Congress, by changing the law, during the Trump Administration, the program will simply pick up where it left off when a new President (without Trump’s guts) comes in, bumps the numbers up, opens those offices and away they will go!
Where is Congress?

Sec. of State Tillerson attempting to clear huge FOIA backlog at State Department

02/03/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The State Department is notorious for either delaying answering ‘Freedom of Information Act’ requests, or never answering them at all.
In fact, although I used FOIA a number of years ago with another federal agency, I never bothered with it on the refugee issue knowing of the State Department’s horrible reputation for stonewalling the public.

This story at CNN from several days ago, got my attention because a former bigwig in the Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration was recently assigned to Tillerson’s admirable project of clearing the backlog of FOIA requests —-Laurence Bartlett (here).
CNN says disgruntled State Dept. employees sent to the FOIA office are hiring lawyers because they feel such work is beneath them. (The article does not list Bartlett as one of those seeking a legal remedy to what is described as a demotion.)
Frankly, it makes enormous sense to me to place experienced people in that office because how would someone with no history with certain departments at the State Department know where to find the information requested.
Here is CNN’s “exclusive” story from nearly a week ago:

Washington (CNN) A growing number of State Department employees are charging they are being put in career purgatory because of their previous work on policy priorities associated with President Barack Obama and in offices the Trump administration is interested in closing.

The situation has got so serious that several officials tell CNN they have retained attorneys after repeatedly trying unsuccessfully to raise concerns about being assigned to low-level jobs in Foggy Bottom such as answering Freedom of Information Act requests.

The issue has also come to the attention of senior Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has made clearing a backlog of FOIA requests a priority and reassigned staff to what State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert has called “an all-hands on deck” effort to clear the backlog. Significant progress has been made, and the number of outstanding requests — which stood at 22,000 in January 2017 — has been reduced to about 13,000, Tillerson said in November, adding that he hopes the backlog will be cleared by the end of 2018.

The backlog grew over the last several years in part due to numerous requests from journalists and conservative groups, including Judicial Watch and Citizens United, for records relating to Hillary Clinton’s emails. [LOL! Leave it to CNN to blame the backlog on rightwingers!—ed]

bartlett at Heritage — When Lawrence Bartlett was the lead panelist at a Heritage Foundation event last fall, along with other inside the beltway types, I knew Heritage had no clue about what was really happening with refugees in your towns and cities. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/09/14/is-the-heritage-foundation-selling-you-out-on-unus-refugee-admissions-policy/

“Those helping with FOIA requests have a range of skills and backgrounds, from interns to deputy assistant secretaries,” Nauert told CNN. “The assignments are temporary — some staffing the office are simply between assignments as they determine their next step.”

But many of those assigned to the “FOIA Surge” effort resemble a band of misfit toys, including several ambassadors returning from overseas and senior career and civil service members who were detailed to other agencies. Others worked in offices created by Obama as policy priorities, which the Trump administration has announced it intends to close.

[….]

Nauert said that employees are being asked to serve in the FOIA office due to need, “without regard to politics.”

“There is a job that needs to be done,” Nauert said. “It may not be a glamorous job, but it’s an important one.”

Lawrence Bartlett, the head of refugee admissions in the State Department’s bureau of Population Refugees and Migration was recently benched and assigned as a “senior adviser” to the FOIA office. His case was first reported by Reuters.

The State Department said Bartlett’s assignment was temporary but has not said whether he would return to the post or whether someone would cover his position in his absence.

Several current and former officials fear the decision to reassign Bartlett, a leading advocate for refugees in the State Department, is part of the Trump administration’s wider effort to limit refugee resettlement in the US.

Much more here.

Tillerson wants further investigation before jumping on the Buddhists are bad, Rohingya are victims bandwagon

11/19/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Good for Secretary of State Tillerson! My estimation of him has just risen enormously!

He hasn’t fallen for the propaganda campaign that the Muslim Rohingya have no blame and that the Buddhist government of Burma (aka Myanmar) is made up of evil killer Islamophobes.

Tillerson with Suu Kyi — Secretary of State Tillerson is greeted by famous human rights activist and leader Aung San Suu Kyi. CNN parrots the Rohingya are victims meme here too! http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/15/asia/tillerson-myanmar-rohingya/index.html

Unlike VP Pence who immediately jumped to the international ‘humanitarians’ tune here in September, Tillerson wants more facts!

From the LA Times:

When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made his first official trip to Myanmar on Wednesday, he did not describe the country’s brutal military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims as ethnic cleansing, as other diplomats have done.

Now read this next paragraph, so typical of the Leftwing media. NO mention of how some atrocities were perpetrated by Rohingya against their Buddhist neighbors!

Security forces have conducted or allowed what critics call systematic rape and murder against the Rohingya minority, leading more than half a million to flee to squalid camps in neighboring Bangladesh since August.

But speaking in Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital, Tillerson declined to call for sanctions or other censure, saying more investigation is needed.

“If we have credible information that we believe to be very reliable that certain individuals were responsible for certain acts that we find unacceptable,” Tillerson said, “then targeted sanctions on individuals very well may be appropriate.”

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have already documented atrocities against the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in the Buddhist-majority country. In September, the United Nations’ top human rights official accused Myanmar of carrying out “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Whether Tillerson was ill-informed or following administration policy wasn’t clear. [It is almost laughable how they write the ‘news’!—ed]

obama and aung san — Obama failed to sufficiently charm Suu Kyi!

This is what really has the Human Rights Industrial Complex (HRIC) steamed. Their hero won’t come to an unqualified defense of the Rohingya:

In Myanmar, human rights groups have been dismayed at the failure of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to speak out on the plight of the Rohingya, especially now that she is state counselor, a position akin to prime minister.

“What people mean is what I say is not interesting enough,” she said of her critics during Tillerson’s visit. “What I say is not meant to be exciting. It’s meant to be accurate, not set people against each other.”

John Sifton, who is following the conflict in Myanmar for Human Rights Watch, said it was “naive” for Tillerson to call for another investigation.

Continue reading here where the reporter gives another opportunity for Republican Senators Corker and McCain to badmouth Trump and the changes being made at the US State Department.

You should know that, in my opinion, Trump and Tillerson are making a huge mistake with this staff cut-back by leaving in place career bureaucrats to run the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), the agency within the State Department that hires the contractors that place refugees in your towns.

But, for the moment, I am thrilled that Tillerson has enough sense to not buy the HRIC line that will soon be followed by demands that we admit even more Rohingya to your towns and cities than we have already (nearly 20,000 in the last decade).

See my Rohingya Reports category here where for nearly ten years I’ve reported on the build-up of this propaganda campaign—that the Rohingya are the sole victims here.

WaPo: Stirring the pot, highlighting controversy between White House and DOS on refugees, etc.

07/10/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We told you about the discussions (supposedly) on-going in the administration to possibly shift the refugee program and consular affairs from the Dept. of State to the Dept. of Homeland Security, here.
The Washington Post describes the battle lines as Tillerson/Democrat (the ‘good guys’ in the Senate) vs. Stephen Miller (leader of the “Nativist strain”) in the White House. Who knows what is really going on! I don’t.

Stephen Miller, we are told, crafted that historic Warsaw speech last week (the save Western Civilization speech!). Here he is during the campaign with his former boss and now Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The Left (including the WaPo) would like nothing better than to put the two on the President’s wrong side. See WND here when Trump tapped Miller: http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/trump-snags-top-aide-to-jeff-sessions/

However, Washington Post opinion writer Josh Rogin has got it all figured out and it all goes back to that Poland speech the left is having hissy-fits over—the LOL! Nationalist speech and its boogeyman author.
Here is what Rogin says in his closing paragraphs after trying to make a case that bureaucratically the refugee program should stay at the State Department.

That nativist strain in the White House is represented by Miller, who was the principal author of Trump’s travel ban, which targeted six Muslim-majority countries, as well as of Trump’s speech last week in Poland, which cast the mission of U.S. foreign policy as one based on threats, not relationships.

“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive,” Trump said. “Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”

I would like to think that there is a great battle of ideals happening around the subject of moving one bureaucratic function from one federal agency to another, but it is more likely that the little fiefdoms and power structures built around certain federal agencies (and their friends in Congress) are simply protecting turf and their MONEY!
Earlier Rogin tells us this which I think is closer to the truth about what the concern is—there are little fiefdoms to protect at Foggy Bottom and the bureaucrats/Senate lackeys are trying to not have their little world rocked or any power removed from the State Department, a bastion of liberalism in Washington.

Although the State Department’s internal reorganization plans are still under review, spokeswoman Heather Nauert told me that Tillerson believes the two bureaus should remain where they are and he views consular and refugee work “as essential to the Department’s mission to secure our borders and protect the American people.”

State stands to lose not only the 12,000-plus personnel billets associated with the work but also the more than $3 billion annually that consular fees bring in.

Tillerson’s position runs counter to the “Listening Report” he commissioned to review the State Department’s organizational structure, which actually recommended handing over all consular functions to DHS. The report, compiled by the private firm Insigniam, claimed such a move “would elevate security at our borders and remove a source of dissatisfaction and frustration.”

Read it all here.
As for those fiefdoms! Such a move could upset the little fiefdoms developed between the State Dept. Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration and its nine federal contractors that monopolize all refugee placement in America.
Someone once told me that one must repeat the same message seven times before people listen. I’m probably up to at least that many on this subject!
There can never be real reform of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program as long as these nine fake non-profit groups, functioning as contractors, lobbyists, and community organizers, are being paid with taxpayer dollars to seed refugees in to unsuspecting towns and cities.
A move of the program from one federal agency to another won’t be enough, but it might be a good start.

Politico: Sec. of State Tillerson arguing with White House's Miller over refugees?

07/03/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A word of caution! All of these reports being leaked out about conversations between the White House and the State Department must be viewed with a skeptical eye.
That said, this story sounds plausible because we know that Stephen Miller, a longtime Trump aide and expert on immigration and refugees, is a key White House strategist on the subject.

The 31-year-old Miller has been at Trump’s side since the earliest days of the Trump campaign.

We also have gotten previous suggestions that Tillerson aide Brian Hook (a Bushie) is soft on the refugee program, see here. Could Hook be the source for the discord story?
Now that the Supreme Court has added a new wrinkle by doing away with the whole concept of a Presidentially-designated CEILING that is a cornerstone of the Refugee Act of 1980, we can imagine that disagreements are surfacing between the White House immigration hardliners and the DOS which is largely being run by career bureaucrats who loved Obama and Hillary.
I suspect it is the ‘careers’ who put together the bragging graphic, here. Ten Pittsburghs is going to sell the USRAP? Did the Secretary’s office ever eyeball it before it was posted?
Here is what Politico is reporting:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson argued with senior White House aide Stephen Miller over immigration issues last week in a second recent clash with the White House.

Miller pushed Tillerson and the State Department to be tougher on immigration and make changes to the programs they control, according to four people familiar with the conversation in the West Wing. John Kelly, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, was also present.

It is pretty outrageous to attribute the news of discord to “four people familiar with the conversation.” One person might have leaked it back to the DOS and three career bureaucrats are then “familiar with the conversation” and presto! Politico has a story with four sources!

The lead Politico reporter, Josh Dawsey, quoting “four people familiar with the conversation” says on his twitter page that he is a “cigar & bourbon” kind of guy (what is that on his shirt?). Politico welcomed him in December with this comment: “We are very excited to welcome Josh to the newsroom on December 12, and to turn him loose on Washington and the incoming Trump administration.” http://talkingbiznews.com/1/wsj-reporter-dawsey-hired-by-politico-to-cover-white-house/

[….]

Miller has been holding meetings to address how to further curb the entry of refugees into the United States, per two administration officials, and has closely worked with senators on legislative proposals to sharply cut other forms of legal immigration. [ I sure hope to learn that reform of the US Refugee Admissions Program is on the Administration’s list of legislative proposals! If it isn’t than we will never see any real reform!–ed]

[….]

This week, CNN reported that the White House has proposed moving the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs to the Department of Homeland Security, along with its bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. [See my post here.—ed]

Those are among the State Department’s biggest functions and are among the government’s largest immigration arms. They control refugee vetting and releasing passports, among other issues.

[….]

Tillerson has grown increasingly frustrated at the White House and chafed at taking direction from younger Trump aides and not being able to implement State Department policies and offices like he would like, people familiar with his thinking say. [Who the heck are “people familiar with his thinking?” Dawsey could be making up this whole story!—ed]

Tillerson has grown especially agitated that less experienced figures like Miller – who previously worked on the Hill for attorney general and former Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions – have been giving him commands.

The former ExxonMobil CEO was promised autonomy by Trump and is fond of reminding others of that.

More here.
Politico reporter Dawsey has a lot of nerve reporting that Miller is somehow less experienced than Tillerson about immigration and immigration law!
Endnote: I think it’s time for all of us in the blogosphere to start highlighting especially young reporters (Dawsey is only 5 years out of Journalism school!) who act like kingmakers (or destroyers) and report stories based on ‘sources familiar with someone’s thinking!’