Retired Dept. of State worker fully supports President Trump's efforts to rein-in refugee program

As a refugee coordinator, I saw the exploitations, inconsistencies and security lapses in the program….

(25-year veteran of the US Department of State)

I know I said earlier this morning that I wasn’t posting today so I could catch up on reading e-mails etc., but this just goes to show what important news is in those e-mails when I find the time to read them!

Dynamite!

From the Chicago Tribune:

Letter: I have seen first-hand the abuse and fraud in the U.S. refugee program

I fully support President Donald Trump’s executive order that temporarily halts admissions from the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and bans travel from nationals of countries that potentially pose a security risk to the United States; however, I don’t think the action goes far enough. Further, I believe there are many people throughout the country who feel the same way.

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Writer says that the movement of Malta’s ‘refugees’ to the US is “legally questionable.” Most are Somalis as we see here in photo and story. http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130618/local/more-than-90-per-cent-of-immigrants-in-malta-get-refugee-humanitarian.474370

As a recently retired 25-year veteran of the U.S. Department of State who served almost eight years as a refugee coordinator throughout the Middle East, Africa, Russia and Cuba, I have seen first-hand the abuses and fraud that permeate the refugee program and know about the entrenched interests that fight every effort to implement much-needed reform. Despite claims of enhanced vetting, the reality is that it is virtually impossible to vet an individual who has no type of an official record, particularly in countries compromised by terrorism. U.S. immigration officials simply rely on the person’s often rehearsed and fabricated “testimony.” I have personally seen this on hundreds of occasions.

As a refugee coordinator, I saw the exploitations, inconsistencies and security lapses in the program, and I advocated strongly for change. Nonetheless, during the past decade and specifically under the Obama administration, the Refugee Admissions Program continued to expand blindly, seemingly without concern for security or whether it served the best interests of its own citizens. For instance, the legally questionable resettlement of refugees from Malta to the United States grew substantially, despite the fact that as a European country with a functioning asylum system, “refugees” should have remained there under the internationally accepted concept of “the country of first asylum.” Similarly, the “special” in-country refugee programs in Cuba and Russia continue, although they are laden with fraud and far too often simply admit economic migrants rather than actual refugees.

As an insider who understands its operations, politics and weaknesses, I believe the refugee program must change dramatically and the courts must allow the president to fully implement the order.

Signed Mary Doetsch
I know there are others of you out there with stories to tell, I’ve heard from some of you before.
See my e-mail address in the left hand column.  For the sake of national security, please send me your stories (they can be anonymous if you fear for your jobs).

Quickie numbers check this morning, now up to 956 refugees since EO signed

100 Syrians rushed in to US between Sunday and today!

You will remember that the Trump Administration gave a reprieve to 872 refugees who were on the way to America as of the date (1/28/2017) of the President’s signing of the Executive order on refugees from all over the world.
Remember also that there is a 120-day pause of the whole Refugee Admissions Program (RAP) and Syrians were completely banned in that EO. (120 days is not long enough in my opinion)
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Then when the rogue Washington State judge effectively re-opened the pipeline for all classes of immigrants entering the US, the Dept. of State re-started the RAP (to the delight of the contractors who are paid by the head to place them).
I see this morning at Wrapsnet that we have now passed the 872 (reprieved number) mark and are up to 956 refugees having arrived since the EO was signed.
But, holy cow!
100 Syrians have been rushed in here between 2/5 (Sunday) and 2/7 (early this a.m.) according to data at Wrapsnet!
The bureaucrats at DOS are still running the show apparently! Imagine the hustling that must have gone on at the UN, at IOM and in the Department of State on Sunday getting these Syrians on planes!
Where did the 100 go?
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New York followed by Virginia are the top two receiving states.

 
This post is filed in our Trump Watch! category as well as ‘refugee statistics’ and ‘where to find information.’

Dept. of State coordinating with its refugee contractors to try to keep refugees coming for two more weeks

That is the time frame they estimate they have before the latest legal wrangles are resolved.

So look for another big rush of refugees in the coming days.

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US Together in Ohio is one of Hetfield’s subcontractors.

And, if they don’t materialize, contractors will have to start reducing their federally-funded staffs.
From CNN:

Washington (CNN) For the second weekend in a row, nonprofits tasked with welcoming refugees to the United States are reacting to a sudden, major shift in the policies that govern their work.

A week ago, President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending resettlement for 120 days and initiating a review of the vetting procedures used to approve applicants to come to the United States.

Then Friday, a more welcome surprise for refugee groups: A federal judge in Washington reversed several key provisions of the executive order, paving the way some refugees to enter the country.

US Together is the Ohio subcontractor for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

I feel like our whole world has been turned upside-down,” Danielle Drake, community relations manager at the Cleveland*** nonprofit US Together, told CNN Saturday.

“The executive order came in so quickly, no one was prepared for it,” she said. “We had zero notice.”

Why can’t leftwing media like CNN be completely honest about this funding and explain how contractors are paid by the head out of the federal treasury to do their ‘work.’  As subcontractors of the big nine contractors, groups like US Together are almost exclusively funded by taxpayer dollars!
I am sure that the average American reading this has no understanding that they are talking about mom and pop taxpayer paying for all of this.

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Henshaw is a career federal employee obviously running the show and giving guidance to the DOS refugee contractors. Trump must appoint his replacement.

Funding for resettlement groups is also in question as the administration and the courts each consider the future of the US refugee program.

If the administration is given the go-ahead to move forward with its four-month suspension, Drake estimates US Together will have to lay off at least half its staff.

“One of the other very difficult aspects of the executive order was the financial implications faced by the local resettlement offices,” Sarah Krause, a senior director for the national resettlement agency Church World Service, told CNN. [See my funding analysis of CWS, here.—ed]

Busy, busy bureaucrats!

The State Department has been coordinating with CWS and other agencies to provide guidance on what Friday’s court ruling means for them in practical terms.

As of Saturday afternoon, CWS had been advised that flights were expected to resume early next week and continue for at least the next two weeks.

The cap of 50,000 refugees for this fiscal year remains in effect. See here where we explained why this was still too high! Bush had 4 years under 50,000, so this does not represent any big slowdown! Even 50,000 is going to cost taxpayers several billion dollars!

But for refugees still awaiting approval to go to the United States, the uncertainty created by the executive order and subsequent legal challenges has left them in limbo.

That’s due, in part, to a provision of the Trump administration’s order that was not overturned in Friday’s court ruling — a provision capping total refugee admissions at 50,000 for the 2017 fiscal year, which ends October 1.

More than 30,000 refugees had already been admitted to the US before the new policy went into effect, according to State Department data, leaving just under 20,000 spots open.

Continue reading here.
Church World Service and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society are organizing demonstrations against Trump. There should be a federal law prohibiting federal contractors from such overtly political activities.

*** Interested readers might want to visit my 2013 post about when ‘Welcoming America’ came to Cleveland to push for changing the city by seeding it with more third worlders.

Here comes the truth! Do-gooder refugee agencies fear job losses—theirs!

Update February 4th: Now the big boys (top nine refugee contractors) are wailing and moaning, see here.
I am just being flooded both from readers and from my alerts with articles expressing concern for refugees (you know those emotional stories they were promoting in the conference call earlier in the week), but many articles make it clear that the refugee agencies—the federal contractors—are worried about THEIR pocketbooks too.

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Where is Congress? This whole refugee contractor system must be trashed! These per head payments to federal contractors for refugee placement leaves no incentive for an agency to slow the flow if a town is overloaded!

The original Refugee Act of 1980 contemplated a ‘public-private’ partnership for placing refugees around America, but what has happened over the years is that the ‘non-profits’ (they call themselves volags, short for voluntary agencies!) became dependent on greater and greater amounts of taxpayer dollars to stay afloat.
Indeed, one contractor USCRI is 97% funded by you.  In other words they have become fat and lazy on your money and so charity fundraisers put on by them are a rare sight.
It’s sort of like a Ponzi scheme!

They are paid by the head from the US State Department, so when not enough “clients” are admitted to the US, guess what? They run out of your money!

Now they are admitting it!

Nebraska resettlement agency may lose federal funding, here.

Possible layoffs at Catholic Charities as federal money dries up in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, here.

Wisconsin refugee agencies face reduced funding, here.

Oregon refugee agencies fear closure, here.

Local refugee agency fears Trump’s EO, here, in Tennessee.

Catholic agency in Rochester, New York worries staff will decline like it did during slowdown following 9/11, here.

I have no sympathy for them, they got fat on federal funding.  They should all have been figuring out how to raise private money for their ‘charities!’
And, maybe some of their CEOs like British national David Miliband will have to take a pay cut! Heck George Soros could help him out for awhile!
Readers, send me more stories like these (where they complain about having to downsize) and I will update this post!
For new readers, here are the nine major refugee contractors (the volags!), those mentioned in stories above are their subcontractors:

What is the holdup? Now over 500 more refugees have been recorded entering US today

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Trump Watch!

I told readers this morning that 521 refugees were recorded today by the Refugee Processing Center and now as I check the numbers again at 6:30 p.m. I see it has risen to 1,073. They added 552 more refugees since this morning! [Correction, I am told this 1,073 would be for roughly a 36 hour period.]

***Update*** See my explanation of how I screwed up with my numbers last night and my methodology going forward, here.
Also watching the numbers all day, as the administration dithered and delayed again the highly anticipated executive order on refugees, was reporter Michael Leahy at Breitbart!
Leahy posted this headline story a few minutes ago:

Bureaucrats Gone Wild, Bring In 526 More Refugees on Thursday

And, so from 5 p.m. until I checked at 6:30 p.m. another 26 were recorded!  This is insane!
What is holding up the Trump announcement?
Let me guess! could it be the globalists in Congress—Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell pressuring the White House?

Here is Leahy:

Bureaucrats at the State Department brought in an additional 526 refugees in the seventeen hours between midnight and 5 p.m. eastern on Thursday.

The continued inflow is a bureaucratic challenge against President Trump’s campaign promise to temporarily ban refugees from Syria and other countries hostile to the United States.

Press reports on Tuesday said Trump was expected to sign an executive order announcing a four-month temporary ban on refugees from all countries, starting some time this week.

An additional executive order, reports indicated, is expected to block visas from seven Middle Eastern countries: Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Iran, and Iraq.

Trump has signed a number of other executive orders in an action-packed “shock and awe” first week on the job, but the expected temporary ban on refugees has not been among them.

[….]

Since Tuesday, when reports of the impending refugee ban were first published, bureaucrats at the State Department have brought in a total of 1,613 refugees to the United States: 575 on Tuesday, 512 on Wednesday, and 526 up to 5 p.m. eastern on Thursday.

Of the 526 refugees who arrived in the United States in the seventeen hours between midnight and 5 pm Thursday, 47 percent, or 250 out of 526, arrived from the seven Middle Eastern countries in which President Trump is expected to block visas. The countries were Syria (79), Sudan (11), Somalia (85), Yemen (0), Libya (0), Iran (46), and Iraq (29).

How many more around the globe are holding plane tickets for tomorrow? And, the day after as Trump’s team delays.

Here comes General Kelly

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General Kelly, the Director of Homeland Security was in position to make this move on the DHS portion of the Refugee Admissions Program, while the State Dept. is still in the hands of the Obama bureaucrats.

One bit of good news (and confirmation that a slowdown has begun) reported by Reuters this evening is that refugee interviews abroad have been halted. Thanks to reader ‘heymister24’ for the tip!

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has temporarily halted trips by staff to interview refugees abroad as it prepares for a likely shakeup of refugee policy by President Donald Trump, two sources with knowledge of the decision said on Thursday.

The decision effectively amounts to a pause in future refugee admissions, given that the interviews are a crucial step in an often years-long process.

The DHS leadership’s decision to halt the interview trips was communicated to those involved in the U.S. refugee admission process on Wednesday, one of the sources said.

It means that though Trump has not yet ordered a temporary halt to the refugee program, future admissions are likely to be delayed.

More here.
That is good news, but again how many refugees around the world are holding plane tickets?
See all posts in our Trump Watch! category, here.