Tag: US State Department

State Department: refugee free-for-all until July 6th!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Everyone wants to know what it all means… there is the 90-day travel ban (everyone, not just refugees) from six majority Muslim countries and then the 120-day moratorium for all refugees from all countries, but only for those refugees who don’t have certain relationships with those who got here before them.
And, so far it looks like resettlement agencies may not count as having “bona fide” relationships as ‘entities,’ but all of that could change next month, next week or the next minute!  Therefore I am not going to wander in to the weeds of all this or lose sleep over it.  We will just see how things evolve because there is nothing we can do to influence it all anyway.

By legislating from the bench, the Supremes have made it likely that even fewer persecuted Syrian Christians will be admitted to the US before late fall.

Just so you know we are at 49,248 refugees for this fiscal year when I checked Wrapsnet earlier this morning.  We will hit 50,000 probably by July 6th, then what?
And, just to give you some comparison, that 49,248 is the highest number of refugees (excluding FY16) that we have admitted by the end of June in the last ten fiscal years, so the contractors*** shouldn’t be whining about a lack of paying ‘clients’ this year.

Syrian Christians now have an even smaller chance of getting to the US.

While I was at Wrapsnet, I checked the Syrian numbers.  We have seeded 6,397 Syrians in to your towns and cities this fiscal year (which ends on Sept. 30th).  Of the 6,397, 6,258 were Muslims of some variety. That puts the rate at 98% Muslim for the year (so far) for Syrians.
That same rate (Muslims to others) applies for the 1,809 Syrians Donald Trump’s State Department admitted since inauguration day.
As I continue to mention, because we have admitted so few Christian Syrians, any applying now likely will  not have relatives here while the Muslims will, so expect the Syrian Muslim relatives to continue to be admitted (thanks to the Supreme Court writing refugee law!) because we all know that if they are relatives of someone here already, they couldn’t possibly be terrorists, right?
Here are a couple paragraphs from Vox.  They and other leftwing media are trying very hard to figure out what it all means for their friends who make a living in the refugee industry and for those wanting more new Democrat voters that refugees represent. And, of course, so that they can further vilify Donald Trump.

What the ban means for refugees who don’t have “bona fide” family members in the US according to the categories laid out by the State Department. Many advocates have argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling should permit nearly all refugees to enter the US, because refugees have to be placed with a resettlement agency before entering the country, and that should count as a “bona fide” relationship. But the Supreme Court didn’t specify that, and the administration doesn’t seem to be taking it that way.

In a press call on Thursday, a senior administration official said that “the fact that a resettlement agency in the United States has provided a formal assurance for refugees seeking admission is not sufficient, in and of itself, to establish a bona fide relationship under the ruling.” It’s not yet clear whether this means refugees will only be admitted if they already have close family in the US, or whether some stage in the resettlement process will count as a “bona fide” relationship. And all refugees who are scheduled to arrive in the US through July 6th will be able to come without incident. But after that, tens of thousands of refugees, and the resettlement agencies in the US that employ people to help them, remain under a cloud of uncertainty — and it’s not looking good.

State Department Press Briefing with unidentified speakers!

 

Trump senior administration officials speaking to the media: From the Department of Justice we have [Senior Administration Official Five]. From DHS we have [Senior Administration Official Four]. From State we have [Senior Administration Official Two] and [Senior Administration Official Three]. [Senior Administration Official One] is from the White House. Whoever it was that opened the press briefing we have no clue.
 
 
Thanks to Vox for alerting us to the State Department press briefing to selected media here yesterday.  You can read it inbetween your Independence day festivities.
Wouldn’t you think that the Trump Administration would at least try to be more open and transparent than the previous administration. I’ve noticed over the years that at these briefings, no one is permitted to know by whom they are being briefed!
No one in the Administration wants their name used—-just disgusting!

We’re joined today by senior administration officials from the White House, Departments of State, Homeland Security, and also from Justice. From the Department of Justice we have [Senior Administration Official Five]. From DHS we have [Senior Administration Official Four]. From State we have [Senior Administration Official Two] and [Senior Administration Official Three].

As a reminder, the call will be conducted on background. Attribution should be to senior administration officials.

Transcript of press briefing, here.
My previous posts on the this topic are filed in a new category:  Supreme Court.

State Dept. leaking like sieve to CNN, reveals WH thinking of moving refugee program to DHS

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update July 1: Michael Leahy at Breitbart has more on this story, here yesterday.
I know, I know, it is a CNN story with Jake Tapper on the byline, but there is very likely truth to it.
I’m not weighing in on the merits (or demerits) of such a move, my purpose here is to once again show you that the Obama shadow government, in this case Anne Richard, FORMER Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration has a pipeline in to the career bureaucrats running the refugee program in the Department of State and she is carrying their news to the likes of CNN.

Anne Richard came to her former post at the Department of State from the federal contractor the INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE. Prior to her job at the IRC, she was at the State Department! The system is incestuous!

The primary reason that the Deep State would not support the move of the program to the Dept. of Homeland Security is that they (in State) have a decades-long cushy relationship with the refugee contractors that I keep yelling about (here and here just this morning).
They are all on the same page—more, more, more refugees for America!
First, get the contractors (yelling and propagandizing) out of the system completely and reform of the program could be accomplished. (This depends on the lazy lunks in Congress!)
And, second!

Trump must get his loyalists placed in positions above the bureaucrats to get this under control.

Career people can’t be fired unless, and until, they are caught in insubordination to a boss. Right now Trump is at fault for not picking their bosses!
Here is CNN quoting Anne Richard extensively so she must be the one carrying the tales….

Washington (CNN)The White House is considering a proposal to move both the State Department bureau of Consular Affairs and its bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration to the Department of Homeland Security, a senior White House official tells CNN.

The move, which the White House official cautioned was far from becoming official policy, would likely be controversial among diplomats and experts in State Department matters.

[….]

“It would be a huge mistake,” said Anne Richard, who led the bureau of Population Refugees, and Migration during President Barack Obama’s second term.

[….]

The proposals were written in a memo submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget from the White House Domestic Policy Council as part of President Trump’s March executive order pushing for ideas for Government Reorganization.

A State Department spokesperson referred CNN to the White House for comment.

The extremely complicated admissions process now starts with the UNITED NATIONS making the first cut as we have reported ad nauseam.

The White House did not explain the reasoning behind the recommendations, but perhaps the idea is rooted in a desire to streamline the refugee vetting process. As it stands currently, the United Nations High Commission of Refugees refers applicants to the State Department for vetting. This vetting is carried out by nine International Resettlement Support Centers (RSC) with American interests***; all of which are managed by the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. Approved applicants are then sent to the Department of Homeland Security for final vetting. After final vetting at DHS, the State Department then resumes supervision of the process with its Reception and Placement Program.

[….]

Richard, the former Obama State Department official, pinned the proposal on an “imperfect understanding” of the bureau’s function. It’s not mainly a law enforcement body, Richard said, rather, it works with nongovernmental organizations and the UN to assist refugees around the world. [And that is the problem—the NGOs and the UN—ed]

More here.
*** Are there other interests operating Resettlement Support Centers???  See here.
Nine Department of State-funded Resettlement Support Centers (RSCs) not to be confused with the nine major refugee contractors (except that there is some overlap because some contractors work at these RSCs). Look at these locations. Can you say opportunity for fraud!

  • Amman, Jordan with sub-offices in Baghdad, Iraq and Cairo, Egypt;

• Bangkok, Thailand with a sub-office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia;

• Damak, Nepal;

• Havana, Cuba;

• Istanbul, Turkey with a sub-office in Beirut, Lebanon;

• Moscow, Russia with a sub-office in Kyiv, Ukraine;

• Nairobi, Kenya with a sub-office in Johannesburg, South Africa;

• Vienna, Austria; and

• Quito, Ecuador with small sub-offices in San Salvador, El Salvador and Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

The nine federal resettlement contractors who are fighting tooth and nail to let nothing rock their cushy relationship with the DOS:

 
 

White House and anonymous leakers at DOS (and outside DOS) in battle over refugee costs

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Can you believe it!  Reuters is reporting on four anonymous leakers (inside and outside the Dept. of State) who are saying chief White House aide Stephen Miller is trying to skew numbers to make the refugee program look more expensive than they claim it is!

Former Asst. Sec. of State Anne Richard is still in DC. Is she getting inside info. from her old pals at PRM? Just wondering!

Most interesting to me is that a former State Department “official” is in on the effort to skewer Miller (and Trump of course!).
Can you say ‘Obama shadow government’!
Editor: Sorry I’m giving you a quicky post here.  I am preparing for something this evening and have no time for more comment and analysis, except to say that getting at the true cost of the overall migration of impoverished third world refugees to middle America is almost impossible because in most states, the welfare offices do not track and separate out the different classes of immigrants using social services, medicare, or sending kids to school.
For federal budget planning, I’m guessing Miller is trying to get at the true cost to admit the refugees in the first place which is where the federal budget costs are initially incurred for decision-making needed by September.

Here is  Reuters on the ‘Deep State’ undermining the White House (again!), getting more cocky by the day aren’t they!
Is Simon Henshaw leaking?

Two studies that President Donald Trump hopes will buttress his case to cut the number of refugees are at the heart of a fight between senior White House adviser Stephen Miller and career U.S. government officials over immigration policy, four current and former officials said.

Trump in March ordered the U.S. State Department and other agencies to tally only the costs of resettling refugees but not the benefits that policy experts said refugees can also bring, including tax revenues, professional skills and job creation. [Virtually impossible, and are we going to tally medicare, schools, housing, SSI and criminal justice system costs for how many years?—ed]

Is Larry Bartlett leaking?

A current official said Miller had convened meetings with State Department staffers to discuss the refugee cost reports. When department specialists proposed including refugees’ economic contributions in the studies to produce a more balanced assessment, Miller rebuffed the idea, one current and one former U.S. official said.

The White House said Miller did not hold meetings on the specific subject of the cost reports and that Trump’s overall fiscal year 2018 budget proposal sought to “make transparent the net budgetary effects of immigration programs and policy.”

The current and former officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they believe, however, that the administration wants to help make a case to restrict refugee flows by creating a skewed analysis.

“It’s a policy outcome in search of a rationale,” said a former U.S. official familiar with the debate.

Continue reading here and prepare to be outraged!
Endnote: If Henshaw and Bartlett are not the leakers, they better find out who is! They are responsible for whoever is talking to the press!  Like it or not, they work for President Donald Trump!

70 MEN held in Australian offshore detention will soon be told if they are moving to Anytown, USA

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is truly insane.  You really must unload on the White House and on your members of Congress and Senators to stop this awful “deal” with Australia.
If you are new to RRW, see my post here last week and be sure to read Nayla Rush’s (CIS) detailed accounting of the insanity, here.
From Today Online:

SYDNEY – The United States will tell dozens of refugees held in an Australian-run offshore detention center whether they will be offered resettlement in America within six weeks, two detainees told Reuters on Friday.

The deadline marks the first concrete timetable for a U.S.-Australia refugee swap arrangement that sparked tensions between the strong allies after President Donald Trump described it as “a dumb deal” for America.

So whose brilliant idea was this? According to Nayla Rush at CIS, it was Anne Richard, Obama’s Asst. Sec. of State for PRM who said this: Richard told reporters she was approached by the Australian embassy in Washington, D.C.: “When the Australians first came to us my motivation was let’s do this, let’s make this happen, we have got to get these individuals to a better place.”

U.S. officials representing Homeland Security this week returned to Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, home to one of two Australian-administered detention centers in the Pacific, to conduct medical examinations on 70 men.

Extreme vetting involved six hours of questioning (oh boy, that is rough)! Any chance they used lie detector tests?

The men last month completed “extreme vetting” interviews that lasted up to six hours, with in-depth questions on associates, family, friends and any interactions with the Islamic State militant group.

After completing the medical tests, refugees were told to expect a decision on their resettlement applications within six weeks, two of the Manus Island detainees told Reuters.

[….]

It is not clear how many of the 70 men vetted will be accepted for resettlement in the United States. The refugees include men from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Myanmar. [These from Myanmar, aka Burma, are likely Rohingya Muslims.—ed]

[….]

In exchange, Australia has pledged to take Central American refugees from a center in Costa Rica, where the United States has taken in a larger number of people in recent years. [A ‘deal’ implies that both sides get something. Again, why are any mostly economic migrants who got to Costa Rica our problem?—ed]

The swap is designed, in part, to help Australia close one of its offshore centers that is expensive to run and has been widely criticized by the United Nations and others over treatment of detainees.

[….]

Australia’s hardline immigration policy requires asylum seekers intercepted at sea trying to reach Australia to be sent for processing to camps at Manus and on the South Pacific island of Nauru. They are told they will never be settled in Australia.

So Australia has a hardline immigration policy and we bail them out???  And, to add insult to injury, you won’t be told if any of Australia’s illegal aliens (they are not refugees!) will be placed in your towns!
Illegal aliens (or legitimate refugees) who get to Australia are Australia’s problem, not ours!  Imagine a scenario where some Africans came across our southern border, asked for asylum (although there is no way of screening them) and we asked Australia to take them.  Would that ever happen? No!
And, remember this!  Australia needs us more than we need them!
Continue here.
President Trump’s first instinct to call this a “dumb deal” was right, the only thing dumber is to know that and go ahead with it anyway!
For my complete Australia archive, go here where this becomes post #204.
Photo:  Anne Richard was the Asst. Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) for Obama. She came to that job from the International Rescue Committee (I wrote about them yesterday, here). She represents the classic revolving door since she worked earlier in her career at the DOS, then went to the private contractor job, and then back to dole out refugees and your money to her contractor comrades.  Click here for my archive on Richard.
The Deep State is running PRM! (probably with the help of the Obama shadow government, including Richard, in DC).

One of Trump’s great failings is that he has put no one loyal to him in a leadership role in PRM, so they are outmaneuvering him on refugees!

Here we go again, local resettlement agencies operating in secrecy

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Electing Donald Trump has apparently changed nothing in the way local refugee resettlement agencies contracted by the federal government treat taxpayers—the very people paying their salaries!
I’m beginning to get calls from some of you working in your communities telling me that you are (again!) being barred from “stakeholder” meetings.
For new readers “stakeholder” meetings occur in resettlement towns and cities usually quarterly and it is where the contractor gets together with impacted agencies and departments in your town—like the school system people, health officials, criminal justice officials, and sometimes non-profit group members who are supportive of more refugees for the town. Not usually admitted are concerned members of the taxpaying public who might want a smaller number brought to their neighborhoods.

(At this time of  year they often talk about how many refugees your town can take in the coming fiscal year.)

State Department bureaucrat Larry Bartlett told then Senator Jeff Sessions that there is “consultation” in towns targeted for resettlement. What he didn’t say is that anyone in opposition was not welcome to the meeting!

I had to laugh during testimony to the Senate in 2015 when Lawrence Bartlett, with a straight face, told Senator Jeff Sessions that refugee planning for towns was done in full and open planning meetings called “stakeholder” meetings and implied the consultation was open to all citizens of the towns. (Come to think of it, maybe he doesn’t know that his contractors are turning people away!)
This is what I said in October 2015 (reporting on Sessions’ hearing) about “consultation” and stakeholder meetings:

Consultation is a joke!

Near the end of the hearing, Senator Sessions asked about whether there was consultation with the communities that would be receiving the refugees, and Lawrence Bartlett (US State Department) said with a straight face that there are quarterly consultations with stakeholders and elected officials.

He did not mention that the taxpaying public is prohibited from attending!  He did not mention that if elected officials are hostile, they aren’t invited.  He did not mention that in many communities there is no quarterly meeting.  He did not mention that the meeting usually only involves ‘stakeholders’ that are friendlies.  Go here to a post we wrote in May about the efforts by citizens in St. Cloud, MN to get into a ‘quarterly consultation’ (while ‘leaders of the Somali ‘community’ had been invited), but were told initially that they were not permitted to attend.  (After a public outcry, a few representatives of the concerned public did eventually gain entry to a sanitized meeting.)

Readers are always asking me what they can do.  You can do this!

Go here and find a contractor operating near you (even one within a hundred miles).
Call them and ask when the next ‘stakeholder’ meeting is scheduled and tell them you want to come.  If they say no, call your member of Congress and complain. I know you think they are useless, but you must hound them!
While you have the contractor (they call themselves ‘affiliates’) on the phone ask for the 2017 R & P ABSTRACT.  They may pretend they don’t know what you are talking about, but be polite and persistent.
Even if we should be seeing the documents before they go to Washington, they are not going to give you the FY18 one they are working on at this minute, but there is no reason for them to withhold the 2017 version.  Tell them you want all of the pages including any letters of support attached.
The best one I ever saw is this one from Reno, Nevada.  BTW, they tout Tesla as one of the global companies looking for laborers.
For FY18, they will claim it is a planning document not yet submitted to the US State Department.  The ABSTRACT is the document in which they justify how many refugees your town could get starting on October 1, 2017 and you should have every right to know what they are asking for.
I’ve talked about those documents here at RRW until I’m blue in the face.  Use my search function for the words R & P Abstracts.

The Trump team did not need an Executive Order for this—for creating more transparency and involvement in the local planning process!

Sure hope he is working on this because it would only require some regulatory tweeks, not an EO!

When the Trump team came in to office and crafted those now stalled Executive Orders, they said this (below) in the first order.  I see no reason why this effort should be stalled and I sure hope that they are working on it behind the scenes. They can accomplish this goal with some simple regulatory tweeks!
However, from what I’m hearing about the process on-going in communities, nothing is changing.  Secrecy is still the watchword as much now as it was under Obama.
Here is what the early Trump EO said about a larger role for targeted states and communities:

“It is the policy of the executive branch that, to the extent permitted by law and as practicable, State and local jurisdictions be granted a role in the process of determining the placement or settlement in their jurisdictions of aliens eligible to be admitted to the United States as refugees. To that end, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall examine existing law to determine the extent to which, consistent with applicable law, State and local jurisdictions may have greater involvement in the process of determining the placement or resettlement of refugees in their jurisdictions, and shall devise a proposal to lawfully promote such involvement.”

If anything the Dept. of  State has become more secretive.  I could be wrong, but I don’t believe they held an annual scoping meeting that normally happened in May (for all the years I’ve been writing this blog) where they at least pretended to get public input about the program.