We have admitted almost 240,000 refugees including interpreters and others who supposedly helped us in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2006 and some former military leaders say it isn’t enough and are pushing for more ‘new American’ Muslims for your neighborhoods.
It sure ticks me off!
Recently one of the nine federally-funded refugee contractors—the International Rescue Committee—crowed that former military leaders had sent a letter to the White House telling the Prez that it was imperative to bring in tens of thousands of additional refugees to help them—the military—around the world.
One of the signers of the letter to Trump is Ret. Gen. Wesley Clark who openly supported the Presidency of Barack Obama.
You cansee the letter here. For anyone who knows even a little about the refugee industry you will immediately recognize the language in the letter as boilerplate refugee industry lingo.
You might also notice that the military brass is mixing apples and oranges when discussing refugee admissions.
There are two major flows for legal ‘refugee’ admissions.
As CEO of the International Rescue Committee, the wealthiest of nine federal refugee contractors, Miliband crowed about the military support for more refugee admissions. Does he want to be sure to preserve his partially-federally funded salary of over $900,000 per YEAR?***
One is the original program set up by the Refugee Act of 1980 that is at present admitting around 30,000 refugees from places like the DR Congo, Burma, the Ukraine and some other African countries. Our military isn’t actively engaged in those places. That is the program approaching a critical decision point in the coming days and weeks.
Then there is the newer Special Immigrant Visa Program that admits the supposed military helpers from Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems that those are the primary places of concern to top brass who have made promises of a ticket to America in exchange for their help.
The numbers of Afghan and Iraqi SIVs are separate from the Refugee Act of 1980refugees.
[An aside: I argue that if you bring every last Iraqi and Afghan supporter of America to live in the US, what have you left in those countries—only those that hate us!]
Before I even get to the news—An important meeting is scheduled at the White House on Tuesday to discuss setting the cap for refugee admissions in FY2020—ponder these numbers.
Since October 1, 2006, we admitted 10,917 regular refugees from Afghanistan and 58,371 Special Immigrant Visas through August 26, 2019 for a total of 69,288.
During that same time period we admitted 143,082 Iraqi refugees and 18,508 SIVs from Iraq for a total of 161,590.
Total interpreters for the two hotbed Islamic countries was 76,879!
Really! That many were doing translation services for us? Or did anyone who took out the trash qualify to become your new neighbor?
Isn’t that enough? And, how many of the military brass who are shilling for the refugee contractors (like moneybags Miliband) are inviting Afghans and Iraqis to their homes, or to their neighborhoods?
Sorry this is getting long, but here is the story you need to read. From the New York Times(hat tip: Joanne):
Trump Administration Considers a Drastic Cut in Refugees Allowed to Enter U.S.
WASHINGTON — The White House is considering a plan that would effectively bar refugees from most parts of the world from resettling in the United States by cutting back the decades-old program that admits tens of thousands of people each year who are fleeing war, persecution and famine, according to current and former administration officials.
There is much discussion in the NYT article about Trump aide Stephen Miller and his dastardly deeds (like placing loyal Trump supporters at the State Department) to slow the refugee flow into America.
In meetings over the past several weeks, one top administration official has proposed zeroing out the program altogether, while leaving the president with the ability to admit refugees in an emergency.
Another option that top officials are weighing would cut refugee admissions by half or more, to 10,000 to 15,000 people, but reserve most of those spots for refugees from a few handpicked countries or groups with special status, such as Iraqis and Afghans who work alongside American troops, diplomats and intelligence operatives abroad.
Both options would all but end the United States’ status as a leader in accepting refugees from around the world.
The issue is expected to come to a head on Tuesday, when the White House plans to convene a high-level meeting in the Situation Room to discuss at what number Mr. Trump should set the annual, presidentially determined ceiling on refugee admissions for the coming year.
[….]
Advocates of the nearly 40-year-old refugee program inside and outside the administration fear that approach would effectively starve the program, making it impossible to resettle even those narrow populations. The advocacy groups say the fate of the program increasingly hinges on an unlikely figure: Mark T. Esper, the secretary of defense.
Barely two months into his job as Pentagon chief, Mr. Esper, a former lobbyist and defense contracting executive, is the newest voice at the table in the annual debate over how many refugees to admit. But while Mr. Esper’s predecessor, Jim Mattis, had taken up the refugee cause with an almost missionary zeal, repeatedly declining to embrace large cuts because of the potential effect he said they would have on American military interests around the world, Mr. Esper’s position on the issue is unknown.
The senior military leadership at the Defense Department has been urgently pressing Mr. Esper to follow his predecessor’s example and be an advocate for the refugee program, according to people familiar with the conversations in the Pentagon.
[….]
A senior Defense Department official said that Mr. Esper had not decided what his recommendation would be for the refugee program this year. As a result, an intense effort is underway by a powerful group of retired generals and humanitarian aid groups to persuade Mr. Esper to pick up where Mr. Mattis left off.
A reminder to all! Even if the number of refugees drops to nearly zero (it won’t!), the program will still be in place for a future President to simply put it on steroids to make up for what they will call the “lost Trump years.”
There must be a complete overhaul of the program while Trump is in the White House!
*** I hadn’t checked British national David Miliband’s salary for awhile so imagine my shock to see this from the most recent Form 990 for the IRC.
The IRC received over $500 MILLION from the US Treasury (from you!) in this one year!
Look at these salaries!
You shouldcontact the White Houseover this weekend and on Monday and tell the President what you think he should do!
President Donald Trump has many avenues to slow the immigration steam roller that is changing America by changing the people.
Making it harder for wannabe future ‘new Americans’ to stay, is to require that they won’t suck off the federal teat in the process of advancing toward a green card and future citizenship.
Stephen Miller is at it again says Politico
But before you get excited, know that refugees and asylees (and a whole bunch of other categories of legal immigration) are exempt from a proposed rule change.
When the bill that became the Refugee Act of 1980was debated in Congress, ol’ Teddy Kennedy promised that we weren’t simply bringing more impoverished people to America to place on welfare. He lied!
I want to know why the supposed humanitarian NGOs (the contractors) presently being paid by us, the taxpayers, to take care of refugees can’t use their own money to feed and house the refugees they say they love. After all, they claim that the refugees quickly find work and become self-sufficient!
Here is Politico which obviously is sending a message for Dems and Leftwingers to strongly oppose (protest!) the proposed rules they claim are straight from the evil brain of White House aide Stephen Miller. Never mind that controlling immigration was the primary reason Donald Trump was elected to sit in the Oval Office and Miller is one of the few who remember the promise!
The Leftwing media focus on Miller is a classic Saul Alinsky tactic. I suspect he finds the attacks amusing.
Immigrants may be denied green cards if they’ve received benefits
The Trump administration proposed expanding its pre-election crackdown on immigration by denying green cards to legal immigrants if they have received government assistance.
Under the new rule, which the Department of Homeland Security posted online Saturday, immigrants can be denied so-called “lawful permanent residency” if they’ve received certain government benefits — or if the government anticipates that they may do so in the future.
The measure represents the latest move by White House aide Stephen Miller to reduce drastically all immigration to the U.S., both legal and illegal, and reflects his strong conviction that doing so will improve congressional Republicans’ chances in the midterm elections. The benefit programs targeted include the the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (welfare), Medicaid, and Medicare Part D (prescription drug subsidies).
The regulation could force millions of low-income families to choose between government assistance and permanent settlement in the United States.
Advocates fear it could ultimately restrict children’s access to food and health care.
The move will affect mainly legal immigrants and their families, since undocumented immigrants are not eligible for most federal benefits.
[….]
The proposed regulation would provide a more robust enforcement mechanism for longstanding statutory boilerplate that bars immigrants “likely to become a public charge.”
[….]
Trump’s fatal error in the end could be his failure to put people like Von Spakovsky in his administration so loyal aides like Miller would not be virtually alone in fighting the deep state.
Roughly one million people become lawful permanent residents each year — a generous allotment, according to Hans von Spakovsky, a senior fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“We can be choosy about who we allow into the country,” he said. “One of the primary factors ought to be ensuring that the legal immigrants who come in are people who can financially support themselves.”
Approximately one-third of the federal budget goes to health insurance subsidies and social safety net programs, according to the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — an expenditure the Trump administration and Republicans seek to reduce.
[….]
A range of activists spent months preparing for the rollout of the proposed regulation and plan to wage an opposition campaign.The proposal will now be subject to a public comment period, an opportunity for opponents to mount an assault on the plan.
A coalition led by the National Immigration Law Center and the D.C.-based anti-poverty Center for Law and Social Policy will push for a wide range of businesses, organizations and government officials to submit comments.
Refugees, Asylees, Cuban/Haitians, Special Immigrant Visa holders, those here through the ridiculous ‘temporary protected status’ program, more! are all exempt!
The prospective regulation wouldn’t apply to all immigrants. Refugees and asylees are exempt, as are certain victims of domestic violence and children who qualify for “special immigrant juvenile status,” which is available to minors who were abused, neglected or abandoned by a parent.
Foreigners who apply for “temporary protected status” to remain in the U.S. after a natural disaster or armed conflict in their home countries will also be exempt, so long as they received a blanket waiver to absolve them of any public charge considerations.
See Jim Simpson’s charton how many refugees and others have been approved as ‘new Americans’ in the last ten years and know that all of these will be exempt!***
It isn’t clear if the UAC ‘children’ will continue to receive welfare but I suspect they will.
Continue here if you wish. Politico, through its long report, is helping the Left figure out who opposes the draft measure and offering a blueprint on how best to fight it including stalling it by overwhelming the system with thousands and thousands of comments.
***If you need more proof than what Politico says, here is a screenshot of a portion of the draft regulationsexempting refugees and asylees. This is from page 85 but more exemptions are on page 86,87,88, and 89!
The list of exemptions goes on for four more pages!
It is driving the Open Borders Left nuts (and the globalist RINOs) that Stephen Miller is still in the White House and still pushing what they call a hardline immigration agenda.
If you are new to all of this, you should know that before he devoted himself to the Trump campaign and presidency, Miller was a staffer for then Senator Jeff Sessions, chairman of the refugee/immigration subcommittee in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Sessions consistently fought for you—the “deplorables” as Hillary called you—the America worker and average American taxpayers footing the bill for ever-increasing numbers of immigrants (illegal and legal).
We are told by NBC News that Ambassador Haley and Sec. of State Pompeo both wanted more refugees than the 30,000 cap announced and that they “got rolled” by a kid.
I wish I had time to say more, but here (below) is the headline atNBC News. We are told that US Ambassador Nikki Haley wanted more refugees than the 30,000 cap announced a few days ago.
(By the way, I wrote herethat the cap should have been zerountil the program was thoroughly reviewed and either dumped or reformed.)
Stephen Miller wins again: Haley, other foes excluded from immigration meeting
A planned cut in the number of refugees the U.S. admits is the latest win for hardliner Stephen Miller, who keeps beating the Trump admin’s pragmatists.
WASHINGTON — Days before the Trump administration announced plans to slash the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. to its lowest level in 40 years, Trump senior adviser and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller made his case for fewer refugees to a room of senior officials at the White House.
Stephen Miller with his earlier boss Senator Jeff Sessions
His sales job was made easier by the absence of top officials who disagree with his stance. They weren’t there because they weren’t invited, according to two people briefed on the discussions. Missing from the room last Friday were U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Mark Green, both of whom have promoted a more generous policy toward refugees fleeing poverty, famine and persecution, the two sources said.
The planned cut in the refugee cap, now just 30,000 for the coming fiscal year, is the latest win for Miller, who has outmaneuvered opponents in and outside the administration to push through a crackdown on all forms of immigration.
[….]
In the administration’s internal discussions, Defense Secretary James Mattis — who was also absent from the Friday meeting — and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had consistently opposed reducing the ceiling for how many refugees could be allowed into the country next fiscal year, former officials, humanitarian experts and Congressional staffers from both parties told NBC News.
But after the meeting of top officials at the White House, Pompeo unveiled plans Monday to scale back the cap for refugees in 2019 to its lowest level since 1980. The secretary gave no explanation as to why he had changed his position, or how that number was arrived at during the closed door “principals” meeting.
[….]
“Pompeo got rolled,” said one former official familiar with the deliberations who served under Republican and Democratic administrations. The secretary “got manhandled by a kid who knows nothing about foreign policy,” said the source, referring to the 33-year-old Miller.
What is this foreign policy crap—this is about domestic policy and what out-of-control immigration is doing to American citizens in American towns!
You must read it all!
Go hereand see that Miller, who is carrying out the agenda the President campaigned on, is up against seasoned ‘moderates’ who frankly are working against key immigration restriction policies that we elected Trump to carry out.
I have said it many times to many people lately—you will know when the Trump presidency ends (when we go back to uncontrolled immigration) and that is when Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller are gone from Trump’s team. And, you can bet there are many on both sides of the political aisle working toward that end.
Several people have asked me about the statement made by Secretary of State Pompeo when he announced the Administration’s intentions of capping refugee admissions at 30,000.
According to the New York Times, Pompeo mentioned a backlog of 800,000 asylum cases piled up in immigration courts and the NYT is quick to point out that the number is too high.
It is ONLY 320,000!
(And, remember readers that those waiting for their asylum hearing are mostly free to roam the USA, relatively few are in detention!)
“This year’s refugee ceiling reflects the substantial increase in the number of individuals seeking asylum in our country, leading to a massive backlog of outstanding asylum cases and greater public expense,” he added.
Nazanin Ash (left) speaking for refugee contractor the International Rescue Committee: “In justifying its policy intention, the administration has pitted those seeking asylum against refugees.”
Mr. Pompeo said refugees had to be weighed against a backlog of 800,000 asylum seekers who are awaiting a decision by immigration authorities about whether they qualify as in need of protection under United States law and will be granted status to remain.
But he vastly overstated the numbers, while making a linkage between two groups of immigrants that are not the same and are processed differently.
As of the end of June, the Department of Homeland Security reported just under 320,000 people who had claimed asylum— meaning they had passed an interview conducted to verify that they met the “credible fear” threshold to be considered — and were awaiting a decision from the department about whether they could stay.
About 730,000 additional immigrants were waiting for their cases to be resolved by immigration courts, according to the Justice Department…
In other words Pompeo is saying that the Trump Administration is going to focus first on a huge backlog of asylum claims.
So what is this asylum issue?
Perhaps we haven’t talked about it enough over the years, but asylum is the other side of a two-sided coin for ‘refugee’ admissions to the US.
The cap we are talking about refers to the refugees who are found abroad, are accepted for admission and are flown here at taxpayers’ expense and turned over to one of the nine refugee resettlement contractors for care.
Asylum seekers are people who got to the US on their own dime and upon entering the country across a border illegally (or sometimes with a legal visa) they request asylum claiming they would be persecuted if returned home. They then go through a legal process to determine if their claims are legitimate or not. (Another can of worms involves the question of how many of those whose claims of asylum were rejected actually leave the country!)
If granted asylum they are called Asylees and are eligible for all of the social service goodies we give to the refugees we fly in. Therefore, US taxpayers’ generosity is not only to the smaller number of refugees we flew in, but potentially to tens of thousands more each year!
The asylum system here and in Europe has been massively scammed where worldwide millions are claiming asylum when in fact most are economic migrants or just plain crooks.
There are so many that they are overwhelming our legal system and that is why Sec. of State Pompeo says we are prioritizing—getting those hundreds of thousands processed.
(See Jim Simpson’schart in this post to see how many had successful asylum claims for each of the last 10+ years. Total is over 266,000 since 2008!)
Refugee Industry thrilled with Asylum avenue to America!
In 2010 I attended the 30th anniversary celebration for the Refugee Act of 1980at Georgetown University in Washington, DC and was struck by the focus speakers were placing on the asylum process.
At the Georgetown anniversary event, it was Doris Meissner (who apparently had a role in crafting the Refugee Act of 1980) who said with obvious pleasure: We only expected the odd Russian ballet dancer to use the asylum process, but now (yippee!) large numbers of migrants are using it!
They were downright giddy that so many migrants were now showing up at our borders seeking asylum. In fact, they seemed to be conscious of the fact that there were limits to the numbers they could get in to the US in the normal refugee admissions process even before Trump ever appeared on their radar screens.
In 2011, after seeing more stories about asylum seekers arriving at our borders from far flung places like Somalia, I wrote this post:
Is there a conspiracy by NGO’s to bring asylum seekers to US borders?
I said this at the time about the Georgetown shindig after calling for a Congressional investigation.
I was also struck at the conference by how much emphasis the pro-refugee, pro-open borders activists and speakers were placing on our asylum program. They wanted to educate more asylum lawyers and hire more asylum judges (apparently the refugee program itself wasn’t bringing immigrants in fast enough!). One speaker even said that the original idea behind the program was to rescue the odd ballet dancer seeking asylum from some repressive regime, but had now expanded to thousands every year.
You can read the whole post here, but the gist of it was that I believe the international open borders Leftists are actively involved in pushing migrants to first world countries’ borders (maybe even paying their way!) where, having been previously coached, they know how to ask for asylum. Of course that is exactly what we are seeing now here and in Europe.
By the way, check out thewhole NYT story. The reporter says that Secretary of State Pompeo wanted to keep the CAP where it was at 45,000, but Stephen Miller in the White House pushed for an even lower ceiling.
See my post yesterdaywhere I say it should have been ZERO!
I reported this morning that the Refugee Council USA (RCUSA), the lobbying arm of the refugee industry, was sounding pretty cocky about going for their 75,000 refugee cap for Fiscal Year 2019 which begins less than two weeks from now in spite of the President’s proposed 30,000 cap.
Will Secretary of State Pompeo’s legal team find and extract a sleeper amendment in the State Department Appropriations Act?
It is abundantly clear that the President has the power to set the cap (aka ceiling) under the Refugee Act of 1980.
(Indeed, it is also the case that there is no requirement in the law to admit any refugees.)
So what might make the contractors and their lobbyists make what sounds like a threatening statement:
We still have the desire, capacity, and resources to welcome at least 75,000 refugees to the United States in the coming year. And we will spend every waking moment looking for ways to do just that…
Admittedly they are desperate because they stand to lose millions of federal dollars if fewer refugees are admitted.
Yikes! Appropriations???
Could they be planning to get a friendly Senator or Congressman to use the upcoming Appropriations process and plant language in the State Department funding bill that would direct the President to bring in 75,000 refugees?
The strategy may be to use that upcoming State Department Appropriations Act to override the President’s determination under the Refugee Act. For this to occur properly, Congress would likely have to include in the Appropriations Act a specific line item of funding for 75,000 refugees accompanied by a statement that the funding was being provided despite the provisions of the Refugee Act. In other words, the Appropriations language would supersede existing law!
For more on the legal principles involved, take a look at page 2-67 ofPrinciples of Federal Appropriations Law published by the Government Accountability Office.
When you have a look at the legal principles, based on a Supreme Court decision, note that if they think they can do it with simple report language they are mistaken. It must be actually language in the bill itself.
Hopefully, Mike Pompeo’s legal team will be on the look-out for any attempt by the contractors and their lobbyists to use the appropriations process to usurp the President’s authority!
(But can we trust a legal team that might be comprised of Obama leftovers to find the sleeper provision in time?)
We will be watching!
If the contractors, who have millions of dollars at stake, and their Democrat pals pull off a dirty trick like this, it is just one more example of why American citizens are so sick of Washington and why we elected Donald Trump.
