State Department: 30,000 refugee cap for FY19 may not be final number!

09/23/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We too were surprised when Secretary of State Pompeo announced a cap of 30,000 refugees to be admitted to the US in FY19 which begins in nine days.

Although as we have chronicled over the years, the State Department and Congress have played loosey-goosey with the required “consultation” between the branches over the refugee numbers for the coming year, Pompeo’s surprise announcement did seem premature.

(See my post of last year about what the process is supposed to entail, here.)

Goodlatte and Trump — Judiciary Chairman Goodlatte to the Prez: We want to “consult” on refugee cap. So Bob, where is the hearing also required by law!

Now we see there is some waffling after a sanctimonious Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte has called out the Administration for not “consulting” with them first.

Many legally-required consultations over the last ten years have been nothing-burgers where a few staffers from the State Department went to the Hill to meet with staffers there to discuss the coming refugee year.

I don’t know if any Members even show up. I asked my Congressman if I might be permitted to go to the consultation one year and he reported that, no the public was not permitted to attend.

Although, in most years the consultations were perfunctory, there was one exception recently and that was the big show that Secretary of State John Kerry put on for FY2016 about Obama’s inflated 110,000 determination in the fall of 2016. (They thought Hillary was going to win and they were flexing muscles and getting ready for the big year ahead!)

Otherwise there has been only scant attention paid to the law requiring that the President consult with Congress over the numbers.

Now here we see that the outgoing Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, wants his consultation.

Heck, maybe the Administration can give him a consultation next month, or in November, and hold up the whole darn thing with zero coming in in the interim!

From The Hill:

Goodlatte: Administration undercut law, Congress by setting refugee cap

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) on Thursday accused the State Department of defying the law by proposing a sharp reduction in refugees to the United States.

The charge marks a rare rebuke of the administration from Goodlatte, who wants officials to consult “immediately” with Congress before establishing a final cap on refugees to be accepted into the country next year.

“The law is clear: the Administration must consult with Congress prior to the President’s determination of the annual refugee ceiling,” Goodlatte said in a statement. “But this did not happen this year, and the Trump Administration has no excuse for not complying with their obligation under the law.”

[….]

Democrats have pounced on the cutbacks, warning that the administration is undermining the country’s historic role and international credibility as the world’s safe-harbor for threatened populations and a champion of human rights.

Republican critics have focused less on the figures than on the legality of the administration’s move to establish a cap without first seeking input from Congress. Earlier this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) condemned the administration’s unilateral move.

[….]

Goodlatte took that criticism a step further, suggesting no refugee cap can be legally established without Congress weighing in first.

“There is a real question as to whether the President can even set a number of refugees that carries the weight of law unless it is done after an appropriate consultation with Congress,” Goodlatte said.

He’s also calling for reforms that would empower Congress, not the administration, to have the ultimate say in determining that annual number.

By the way, Goodlatte has been responsible for this committee and the refugee program for years and never really pushed for serious reform of the Refugee Act of 1980. Oh yeh, he proposed some legislation, but never made it a priority.

Now we see that in response, the State Department is saying there is wiggle room in that 30,000 cap. The Hill story continues….

On Tuesday, the day after Pompeo’s announcement, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the administration plans to consult with Congress before finalizing its refugee ceiling. The cap “may” change, she said, based on those talks.

Hey folks, don’t think this means the number could go down!

Remember I said it should be zero, which would be the only leverage the White House would have to push a complete overhaul of an ill-conceived US Refugee Admissions Program.

Where is Goodlatte’s hearing?

Before the President makes his final ‘determination’ a hearing “shall be held” in the House and Senate Judiciary Committees!

So let’s have the full legal requirements carried out which includes a public hearing by Goodlatte’s committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee centered around a report the State Department is supposed to send to Congress as part of the consultation process.

Let’s begin following the law now and maybe the whole decision can be dragged out for months.

Why I think a refugee cap of 30,000 was a bad decision

09/18/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m going to try to be brief because faithful readers have heard this all before.

The President was going to be vilified if he had come in anywhere under the 75,000 the ‘humanitarian’ refugee industry was pushing for anyway. (See Pompeo announces 30,000 cap here yesterday.)

He should have, in my opinion, halted the entire program until it was completely reformed. *

Simply cutting the numbers for a few years will do NOTHING. If the basic flawed structure is left in place the big contractors will simply hold out until Trump is no longer in office. They have already said so!

Yes, one or two of the contractors might go belly-up with a paying client number of 30,000 or less to be divvied up by the present nine contractors, but the giants, like the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the International Rescue Committee, will survive.

Why do political activists who want to see lower immigration numbers always play small-ball?

Screenshot (1452) — Church World Service employee in Lancaster, PA

If the President said no refugees will be admitted until the program is reformed that would be the hammer to get the job done because those in Congress who want the cheap labor and those who want more Democrat voters would have been forced to cooperate with the White House.

Here are some of the reforms I want to see (assuming there is a demand for a refugee admissions program at all!):

~The present contracting system must go. For non-profit groups to be paid by the head for each refugee they place is an insane system that only encourages them to beg for more refugees each year whether our towns and cities are already in overload or not!

And, it sets up an advocacy (read political agitation) system potentially using taxpayer dollars to promote policies and candidates.

~States must have a larger role (the largest role!) in determining the number of refugees placed in their states since the federal government is at present burdening states by requiring state taxpayers to carry much of the load for refugee care (medical, schooling, housing, translation services, criminal justice and so forth).

In the present system the US State Department and the contractors sit down every week and determine which refugees will be your new neighbors without any input from state and local governments (LOL! Unless those governments have been determined to be friendly in advance!).

~The program must be reformed to promote transparency. Local citizens have a right to know who is coming to their towns. When President Trump first came in to office, his early executive orders on refugees actually mentioned that the Administration was going to visit refugee placement towns and cities to hear testimony and ascertain the impact the refugees are having in those locations. What happened to that idea?

In fact, right now, we can’t even find out which towns are targets. At least during the Obama years we could find which contractors and subcontractors were working in each location. That list maintained by the Refugee Processing Center is no longer available under the Trump Administration. Why?

Screenshot (1449) — This is the most recent map available, produced in 2015, showing the resettlement sites and contractors operating around the country. Why is the Trump State Department keeping this information from us?

Continuing on reforms that would promote transparency—for many prior years (although Obama cut this off toward the end of his Presidency) there were “scoping meetings” held by the US State Department in May or June of each year where people like me (us!) could at least voice our opinions about admissions for the coming fiscal year. They are no longer held even by Trump’s State Department.

~Citizens must be assured that the vetting process is as fool-proof as it could be and that additional steps are taken to eliminate fraud. By just reducing the numbers and not telling us—the public—about what measures are being taken to eliminate dangerous refugees and the ones committing fraud, we are still being left with great uncertainty and frankly fear!

~The United Nations should be removed from our decision-making process. We should pick our own refugees based on our own US interests and concerns. We don’t need the UN to tell us which people in the world need help.

~If big business is looking for cheap laborers, let’s have that debate. Stop talking about the refugee program as solely a humanitarian program. Have them come forward and identify themselves so citizens in communities, where the business is located, know who is coming to their towns and why.

~We must stop stretching refugee law by picking up illegal migrants from places like Malta, South Africa, Israel or Australia.

More as I think of them, but this is getting too long! Simply reducing the numbers for a few years does nothing to solve the problem going forward.

The window for serious reform is rapidly closing. Does the Trump team assume the House and Senate will remain in Republican hands and they will get it done next year? Big assumption!

Or, is this (reducing numbers for a few years) it?

If so, in 2021 or 2025 it will be business as usual for the refugee industry and we might as well go lay on a sunny beach somewhere with a cool drink in hand!

*To head off the complaints from even people on the immigration restriction side, there could have been provisions made for the admission of some extreme cases.

How resettlement contractors get federal bucks (a series)

09/14/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

LOL! I hope I can stick with doing a series because juicy fresh news is so much more fun to write about. But here goes….

Money machine

I’m sure many of you wonder how the resettlement contractors, the nine*** I always mention, end up with millions and millions of taxpayer dollars when they are paid by the head to resettle refugees.

You have probably noticed that the per head payment doesn’t seem to match up with the millions each get from the US Treasury.

Well, let me tell you, that per head payment from the US State Department is only half of the story! The great variety of lucrative grants they are eligible for from the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services supply the rest!

(I sure hope the Trump Administration is squeezing them financially at HHS!)

It’s been years (in some cases) since I talked about the grants available to contractors for administering such things as special federally matched savings accounts, planting community gardens, educating refugees about how to have healthy marriages, or to promote ethnically appropriate daycare for Somalis and others.

Today I want to talk about the vaguely described grant program called “PREFERRED COMMUNITIES” which I see as just an excuse, with no legal basis, to send the big nine more of your money!

When you visit ORR’s website today you get this very cursory description of what it means to get a Preferred Community Grant:

Since the early 1990s, preferred communities have provided resettlement services to newly arriving refugees. Preferred communities allow ample opportunities for early employment and sustained economic independence. In addition, they support special needs populations.

Two types of preferred communities programs are available:

~Programs that receive a minimum of 100 new refugees annually.

~Programs that receive a proposed number of cases that will need intensive case management. These programs require a history of qualifications and experience in serving special needs cases.

By the way, only the usual gang of nine*** are eligible to apply.

To receive your millions through a Preferred Communities grant a contractor must say they are using the money to resettle challenging and needy cases in certain cities. We are no longer told which cities are PREFERRED.

Again, there is nothing in refugee law requiring a grant like this. The grant is simply an excuse to send more of your money to the contractors!

Go here to see how many millions were awarded for the Preferred Communities just as Obama was headed out the door in September 2016. (There are no newer grants posted? Has Trump cut them off or is the ORR not publishing them?).

Does anyone audit these grants?

Which cities?

Screenshot (1432)

But, here is the head-scratcher for me. Up until Fiscal Year 2013 we could learn a lot more about who was getting the extra millions and why.

Back in 2013, we were also told which cities were PREFERRED!

What follows are sections from the FY13 ORR Annual Report to Congress. That is the last year they published (in a report to Congress) a list of contractors identifying cities as PREFERRED.

See if your city is a PREFERRED city in which to place challenging cases requiring taxpayers to pony-up even more money for the contractors!

Screenshot (1441)

Screenshot (1442)

Screenshot (1436)

Screenshot (1435) — Just fyi, Domestic and Foreign Mission Society is another name for Episcopal Migration Ministries. One more way of making it hard to follow the money!

Screenshot (1434)

Screenshot (1433)

I sure hope the Trump Administration is getting these grants and contracts under control!

***Here below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.

You might be sick of seeing this list almost every day, but a friend once told me that people need to see something seven times before it completely sinks in, so it seems to me that 70, or even 700 isn’t too much!

And, besides I have new readers every day.

The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!

And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’

The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! And, get them registered to vote eventually!

From my most recent accounting, here. However, please see that Nayla Rush at the Center for Immigration Studies has done an update of their income!

Australia’s rejected asylum seekers arriving as refugees in the US don’t show up in State Department’s data, or do they?

09/08/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Manus Island refugees — 330 of these mostly single Muslim men held in detention by Australia have been placed in American towns and cities during Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump said we would take up to 1,250 (processing is continuing) that Australia will not allow on its mainland.

Every few months I have a look at the “Processing Country Map” provided by Wrapsnet (The US State Department’s Refugee Processing Center).

The new map is posted usually on the fifth of the month for the previous months of the present fiscal year (in this case FY18).

The processing country is the location where the ‘refugee’ goes through his or her paperwork processing and security screening. We are not told what nationality they are.

One is left guessing about who exactly is coming in from that country.

The latest map is below. You can find it here yourself (click on this: Map Arrivals by Processing Country and Nationality as of August 31, 2018) and you might want to look at it because it is accompanied by a table which gives exact numbers for each processing country.

For example, it lists Malaysia (a Muslim country) as having processed 1,443 ‘refugees’ in to the US this year. Those aren’t Malaysians, but likely a large number are Rohingya Muslims from Burma who have been illegally entering Malaysia over the last few years. They should be Malaysia’s problem, not ours.

Here is the map…

Processing country map Aug 18 — When you look at this map and see the countries where we are processing refugees consider how much fraud could be being perpetrated on America.

Let’s talk about some of the questionable processing countries.

But, first, I had been wondering for months why the rejects from Australia (the “dumb” Obama deal that Trump is honoring) weren’t showing up as being processed by Australia. Ah ha! Here they are! 234 were processed by Nauru and 96 in Papua New Guinea.

A total of 330 failed asylum seekers to Australia are now living in Yourtown, USA!

These were Australia’s problems not ours! (See my Australia deal file here.)

Donald Trump could do more!

The choice of which countries we work through to process refugees is a choice that is made through the US State Department and the UN. As I have said repeatedly the US Refugee Admissions Program must be completely overhauled by Congress.

Meanwhile, however, the President can do a lot administratively and one thing he could do is to reassess where we pick up ‘refugees’ around the world!

This post is filed in my ‘Where to find information’ category, you might check it out from time to time.

Former State Department employee: virtually impossible to vet refugees

08/28/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Adding a knowledgeable and experienced voice to the on-going debate in the White House on possible refugee admission numbers for FY19, don’t miss Mary Doetsch writing at the Daily Caller yesterday on the question of security screening of refugees.

FAILURES IN REFUGEE VETTING PROCESS LEAD TO CRIMINAL ACTIVITY IN OUR HOMETOWNS

As refugee contractors — who make money on every refugee they resettle — break into hyper-lobbying mode to demand that the Trump administration resettle “at least 75,000” in the coming fiscal year, the recent lies and criminal activity of five refugees who were resettled via the fraud-laden U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) are, once again, being willfully ignored.

we are all america tweet — This is part of the refugee industry’s extensive and well-funded media campaign to pressure the President in to agreeing to admit 75,000 refugees beginning in five weeks.

Four improperly deemed “refugees” were charged with murder, lying to gain admission into the United States, and immigration benefits, among other crimes, while a fifth was charged with attempted murder.

In each case, the approved refugee likely would have been subjected to the much-touted, though often feckless, “enhanced vetting” that advocates say both ensures the legitimacy of the refugee claim and protects U.S. security interests. Nonetheless, at least four of the five successfully lied their way through what advocates claim is the “most vetted” interviewing process, duping refugee officers with their fabricated stories.

Sadly, these cases are simply the tip of the iceberg. As a Refugee Coordinator who covered the Middle East, Africa, Russia, Europe and Cuba for eight years, I had first-hand knowledge of country conditions and political realities, and I saw and read hundreds of fraudulent refugee claims.

Disturbingly, the majority of refugee claims are ultimately approved, despite serious questions regarding the applicants’ reliability and truthfulness, often based solely on their testimony.

[….]

Despite claims that refugees are subject to the most intense scrutiny prior to resettlement into the United States, the bottom line is that in countries with ill-functioning governments or where no reliable data exists, it is virtually impossible to vet refugee candidates.

Read it all here.

Moratorium!

And, if you haven’t told the White House what you think about how many refugees could be admitted to the US beginning October first, do it now.

I’m saying zero until the refugee program is completely reformed by Congress!

Tag: US State Department

State Department: 30,000 refugee cap for FY19 may not be final number!

Goodlatte: Administration undercut law, Congress by setting refugee cap

On Tuesday, the day after Pompeo’s announcement, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the administration plans to consult with Congress before finalizing its refugee ceiling. The cap “may” change, she said, based on those talks.

Why I think a refugee cap of 30,000 was a bad decision

He should have, in my opinion, halted the entire program until it was completely reformed. *

Here are some of the reforms I want to see (assuming there is a demand for a refugee admissions program at all!):

More as I think of them, but this is getting too long! Simply reducing the numbers for a few years does nothing to solve the problem going forward.

How resettlement contractors get federal bucks (a series)

Again, there is nothing in refugee law requiring a grant like this. The grant is simply an excuse to send more of your money to the contractors!

Which cities?

Australia’s rejected asylum seekers arriving as refugees in the US don’t show up in State Department’s data, or do they?

Other questionable processing locations are these:

Donald Trump could do more!

Former State Department employee: virtually impossible to vet refugees

FAILURES IN REFUGEE VETTING PROCESS LEAD TO CRIMINAL ACTIVITY IN OUR HOMETOWNS

Sadly, these cases are simply the tip of the iceberg. As a Refugee Coordinator who covered the Middle East, Africa, Russia, Europe and Cuba for eight years, I had first-hand knowledge of country conditions and political realities, and I saw and read hundreds of fraudulent refugee claims.

Moratorium!