“This is a disaster for the bureau. She is really a good ally.”
(Anonymous State Department official)
That quote above is all you need to know! If the Deep-staters at the US State Department consider her an ally, then she needed to go.
She reportedly butted heads with Stephen Millier
As I’ve been mentioning, this is the time of the year when Administration wrangling over refugees really begins to heat up. That is because the President submits his determination to Congress in September in which he tells them how many refugees and from where they will come when the feds begin to admit the next batch of refugees for the next fiscal year (FY19 begins October 1).
Itold you herethat State Department resettlement contractors want 75,000 in the coming year. It looks like this year will barely break the 20,000 mark setting a record for the least number of refugees entering the US since the Refugee Act of 1980 was signed in to law by Jimmy Carter.***
For new readers, the contractors are paid on a per refugee head basis, so there is never any incentive for them to take a breather and agree to slow the flow.
The article at Foreign Policy says that the ousted staffer was a Trumper since the campaign days. But, then I wonder why she was so cozy with the career professional resettlers in the State Department who are working to undermine (through leaks to contractors and the media) the President’s policy on refugees.
Who is Ronald Mortensen?
I had never heard of him, but CNN and other outlets call him an immigration hardliner, a “fellow” at the Center for Immigration Studies. Clearly a Trump supporter in Romney country, Mortensen said in August of 2016 that Trump is our only hope against corrupt elites. http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=4276026&itype=CMSID
Doing a quick scan of the Utah native’s writing at CIS, we see that he has mostly written about DACA and illegal alien issues, so his experience with the refugee program is apparently limited.
The most recent op-ed I found from him is from 6 months ago at The Hillabout how to structure an amnesty for the DACA ‘children’ entitled:
Want to pass the DREAM Act? Let’s combine mercy with justice
Hmmmm?
As a retired Foreign Service officer, he surely has a good feel for the countries and cultures that feed in to the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, and if approved by the Senate (a very long shot!), he might be able to find some experienced people to surround himself with who know where the problems are with the USRAP. Continue reading “Trump nominates Ronald Mortensen to head State Department refugee program”→
The stated reason to consider moving the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) to the independent USAID is to save money by bringing our admissions program and humanitarian foreign aid together under one roof. What will new Secretary of State Pompeo do? (outgoing Rex Tillerson appeared to have been hands-off when it came to refugees). I’m in no position to judge the wisest place to move it, but I am eager to see the little fiefdoms fall and cozy relationships broken between resettlement contractors and DOS bureaucrats. And, I have long maintained that refugee admission decisions should not be used as part of our foreign policy wheeling and dealing!
As early as 2012 (when the State Department did formerly invite comment on the program), I gave 10 reasons for a moratorium and this is my number seven:
7) Congress needs to specifically disallow the use of the refugee program for other purposes of the US Government, especially using certain refugee populations to address unrelated foreign policy objectives—Uzbeks, Kosovars, Meshketians and Bhutanese (Nepalese) people come to mind.
If I were to write that today, I would be adding those Australian detainees we are magically transforming in to legitimate refugees for your American towns!
Either people are legitimate refugees deserving a shot at a better life and have no other options, or not. The program shouldn’t be used in any carrot/stick foreign policy wrangling.
But, that is exactly what a spokeswoman for the International Rescue Committee is arguing at Foreign Policyin a story entitled:
White House Weighs Taking Refugee Programs Away From State Department
Mike Pompeo’s first test could be a plan to remove refugee aid from Foggy Bottom
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 Politicoreporting the latest discouraging news for the once prosperous refugee industry: 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]
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 Hillsays 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?
What’s his fault you ask? Everything to do with immigration and why Graham/Schumer can’t get a deal!
“As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating on immigration, we are going nowhere.”
(South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham)
Senator Graham of course is an advocate for amnesty and was one of the Gang of Eight in 2013 that managed to get their huge amnesty through the Senate that ultimately died when it went no where in the House.
Trump adviser Stephen Miller was then Senator Jeff Sessions’ chief staff person on the issue and as such was Graham’s nemesis.
Hey, Mr. President! A new nickname for you—Grumpy Graham! Photo from Politico which was also overjoyed to report Graham’s comments about Miller. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/21/government-shutdown-immigration-graham-miller-354747
Graham, who was an outspoken advocate for Syrian refugees here in 2015, blasted Miller over the weekend and of course the Leftwing media (like Newsweek, here) was delighted to report:
During the second day of the United States federal government shutdown, a GOP senator said that President Donald Trump’s Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller was holding back Republicans and Democrats from striking a deal on immigration.
“Every time we have a proposal, it is only yanked back by staff members,” Senator Lindsey Graham (SC-R) told reporters on Capitol Hill Sunday.
Miller with then Senator Jeff Sessions
“As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating on immigration, we are going nowhere.”
The senator blamed Miller and the White House staff for continued disagreement over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) and immigration issues that were at the heart of the spending bill’s failure to pass in the Senate on Friday. “The Stephen Miller approach to immigration has no viability,” Graham told MSNBC on Friday.
[….]
Miller was a staffer for then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions in 2013 when Sessions voted down a bipartisan bill for immigration reform that would have helped 11 million undocumented American immigrants get citizenship. “It’s no secret that he’s an obstacle to getting anything done on immigration,” an unnamed House Republican told McClatchy earlier this month.
More here.
Here is my bellwether on how the President is doing on immigration issues, including the refugee issue. If Senator Graham is happy with the White House then that is bad news for us.
And, if for some reason, Miller leaves the Administration, it will be a sign that we are done!
As long time readers know, immigration/demographic change is, in my view, the only issue that matters for the future of our great country!
