This post might be going into the deep state weeds for many readers, but since beltway news hounds read RRW too, this is worth posting.
Larry Bartlett, prior to being assigned to the Freedom of Information Office at the State Department, was the main career guru (under the Asst. Sec. of State level) responsible for refugee admissions during the Obama years and, as we witnessed in his performance in Idaho, here, a few years back, is a true believer in the program.
At that event he was completely dismissive of local citizens’ concerns about their safety, about the cost of the program, and about the lack of transparency citizens’ see in the resettlement process.
You can see my Lawrence Bartlett archive by clicking here.
Complaining that the State Department under Trump is partisan, two Dems in Congress show their colors by campaigning to get Bartlett back to work advocating for more refugees within the deep state.
Continue reading “Far Left Dems trying to rescue Larry Bartlett from purgatory at State Department”
Tag: US State Department
Trump White House (again) thinking about moving refugee admissions OUT of State Department
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.
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 Policy in 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
Does America have a moral obligation to resettle refugees?
That is the question a young opinion writer asks and answers (in the affirmative of course!) in the wake of Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing on the President’s travel ban.
The long opinion piece in Deseret News by writer Gillian Friedman evoked a largely negative response by readers. I especially got a chuckle out of this comment:
Continue reading “Does America have a moral obligation to resettle refugees?”
Refugee contractor: 100 refugee offices have closed
If this is true, then nearly 1/3 of all refugee resettlement offices have closed around the country. Really?
And, if this is true, why has the Refugee Processing Center (Wrapsnet) not deleted any of the contact information for those now supposedly non-existent agencies from its database, or updated their resettlement site map? What are we paying them for?
Continue reading “Refugee contractor: 100 refugee offices have closed”
Best hope for reforming US Refugee Program is now, during the Presidency of Donald Trump, says expert
“I saw first-hand the flagrant abuses and scams that permeate the refugee program.”
(Mary Doetsch, retired Foreign Service Officer)
Mary Doetsch is a retired US State Department Foreign Service officer who spent eight years (of a 25-year career) as a Refugee Coordinator serving on four continents.
As someone who has worked on the inside, her op-ed at the Washington Examiner today carries more weight than anything I could ever write as an outsider looking in!
Entitled:
US refugee program needs a complete overhaul
Ms. Doetsch opines (emphasis is mine):
During my career in the State Department, I became a refugee coordinator in the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, or USRAP, because I wanted to help and support persecuted persons in legitimate need of international protection. But the pervasive fraud I saw during my eight years in the field was alarming.
It cries out for a fix, and President Trump might just be the person to do it.
Undoubtedly, many individuals who work within the refugee field have humanitarian aims. But refugee resettlement has morphed into a numbers-driven, financially motivated business, growing blindly at the expense of the American public and our national security.
There once was a time when private charities, civic groups and faith-based organizations provided the bulk of funds and volunteers to resettle and help assimilate refugees in the United States. Today’s deeply flawed system relies almost exclusively on nine federal contractors (paradoxically referred to as “Voluntary Agencies” or VOLAGS) to resettle refugees.
[….]
The contractors have a vested interest in processing ever-larger numbers of applicants, since they make money on every refugee settled. And as non-governmental organizations they can and do lobby for advantageous changes to law, something they could not do if they were government agencies. Their lobbying umbrella wields enormous influence over refugee admissions policy, pressuring Congress and the bureaucracy to increase admissions and provide ever greater funding. They stage political rallies, file lawsuits against unfavorable policies, and lobby for causes that coincidentally help their bottom lines, yet this linkage is rarely, if ever, mentioned.
This isn’t just important from the oft-discussed security perspective, but also because of the rampant fraud and abuse that has permeated this program for generations.
[….]
As a former Refugee Coordinator who served throughout the Middle East, Africa, Russia and Cuba, I saw first-hand the flagrant abuses and scams that permeate the refugee program. I witnessed widespread exploitation and misuse, from identity fraud to marriage and family relation scams, and from private individuals profiting from their involvement in USRAP to distortion of the actual refugee definition to ensure greater numbers of people who should really just be migrants are admitted as refugees.
[….]
While refugee admissions have been declining under the Trump administration, without structural reform in the USRAP these numbers could again skyrocket under a new administration more favorable to the refugee industry.
Midway into fiscal year 2018, fewer than a quarter of the 45,000 individuals proposed in the FY18 refugee ceiling have entered the country. This slow-down in admissions may reduce the problem of fraud, but it cannot be eliminated without a complete overhaul of the program.
I’ve only snipped a portion of Doetsch’s op-ed, click here to read it all.
What you can do….
Contact the White House and tell the President it is now or never to overhaul the US Refugee Admissions Program, or once out of office the program will go back in to high gear. Reducing numbers for a few years is not enough!