I have to admit, I haven’t read it yet, but, for diehard grassroots investigators, know that the report is a treasure trove of information on the US Refugee Admissions Program and Trump’s 45,000 refugee ceiling *** for the year that began this past Sunday.
Don’t miss the tables at the end, often more useful than all the verbiage about why we need to save this or that ethnic group by hauling them to your town.
Here is the table that shows that the US admits the vast majority of permanent refugees.
Be sure to keep this so that the next time some Open Borders pusher says that Lebanon, Turkey, Germany and Jordan are doing more, remind them that ours are PERMANENT, not temporary residents. (note that this table uses calendar year numbers when we usually use fiscal year)
And, here is a table showing the costs of just the resettlement (this year, FY18, for up to 45,000 refugees).
Come to think of it, when those economic studies are done to ostensibly show how much refugees benefit America, do they ever show that it will cost the US taxpayer over $1 BILLION just to get 45,000 bodies in here?
Read the footnotes!
Please note that the anticipated costs do not include taxpayer funding for: educating the kids, Medicaid, some forms of cash assistance, food stamps, housing subsidies, interpreter costs, criminal justice system costs, etc.
Again, go here for the full report. One of the things I’ve noted over the years is that the report has no date on the cover. I can only guess that is because it is always very late and they don’t want any record of the fact that they skirt the law always on the whole determination/consultation process.
***Did you see that the Federation for American Immigration Reformcalled this a “responsible” number! Have friends like these been in the swamp too long?
Readers should know, that until very recently FAIR has not taken much interest in the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.
Nevermind, that the Refugee Act of 1980 gives the power to the President to set the CAP/CEILING*** for refugee admissions for the coming fiscal year which begins on Sunday.
I have to laugh because I can always count on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society to be the first of the nine federal contractors to break from the gate on the next political action the refugee industry will take.
As CEO of HIAS, Hetfield makes an annual salary of $358,718 (doing well by doing good!). Will he take a pay cut if there aren’t enough paying ‘clients’ (aka refugees) entering the US this year?
For new readers, see how much of your money, your tax dollars, goes to each of the nine to resettle refugees on a per head basis, here.
There can never be serious reform while the nine are rolling in your money using it to hold rallies and lobby on the Hill while the media tries to make the public think that this is all about ‘humanitarianism’ and ‘religious charity.’
As you surely know by the keening sound coming from contractors like HIAS they aren’t happy with the 45,000 cap announced this week. (I can see huge bidding wars between the contractors as they bid for bodies in a smaller pool of refugees.)
I’m very unhappy with the number too, as I saidhere. The UN/US Refugee Admissions Program should be reviewed by Congress to determine if it is still even a program the US should continue.
If the President had suspended the program and said a ‘determination’ would not be sent until Congress reviewed the program, he might have achieved some important campaign promises. Sending a determination of 45,000 was meaningless—splitting the baby—and will do very little, if anything, to bring about needed long term change.
I digress, more later on what Donald Trump should be doing on the issue.
Here is HIAS telling its followers what to do:
This is a screenshot, so links are not hot. If you want to see the text of what they want their followers to send the Washington reps, go here: https://www.hias.org/stand-against-record-low-cap-refugee-admissions
This is what you should be doing today.
Tell the Presidentthat you are unhappy with 45,000. He clearly wimped out! And, tell your representatives in the House and Senate how you feel too because you are up against lobbyists, like those at HIAS (likely teamed up with global corporation/Chamber of Commerce lobbyists) working the halls of Congress.
*** You will be hearing more from me about the fact that the 45,000 is a CEILING (NOT A TARGET). Trump could stay well under 45,000 and still be operating within the law.
He doesn’t need an Executive order to stay under the ceiling—he never did!
We are still waiting to hear what the Trump Administration is going to do with the Presidential Determination on how many refugees (and from where they will come) starting in 6 days.
Puerto Rico is a US territory and you know we will need to help them! So, on top of that financial burden, is Trump getting ready to invite 40,000-50,000 third worlders to the US beginning next week when so many people in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico are homeless?
In six daysyou could see a new wave of 40,000-50,000 third worlders begin arriving in your towns and cities as American refugees suffer in the wake of three major hurricanes
Although Trump lumped the two issues together in his first Executive Order….
Don’t get the refugee ‘determination’ confused with this latest so-called ‘travel ban’ issue especially because while adding Venezuela and North Korea (few come to the US anyway!), Trump won’t do extra scrutiny of the refugees arriving in potentially large numbers from Iraq, Afghanistan and Burma (Rohingya!). He even took Sudan off the list!
(See Leo Hohmann at World Net Dailyon the Rohingya, here. And, see Politico on the latest list of countries with new restrictions on travel.)
We are six days away from the new fiscal year!
Where is the State Department report to Congress, where is the consultation with Congress, where is the publication in the Congressional Record of the consultation, and where are the House and Senate Judiciary Committee hearings that are supposed to proceed the final determination (See the steps set out in the Refugee Act of 1980, here.)?
America First!
The politically smart move for Trump now is to suspend the Refugee Admissions Program for FY18, for at least 6 months until American people are back on their feet!
And, he could tell Congress to hold oversight hearings on the USRAP with an eye to trashing the system altogether or reforming it!
See my previous report on what is alleged about the International Rescue Committee (IRC). (This is David Miliband’s organization.)
And, if you are thinking, ho hum, so refugees got placed possibly illegally in inadequate housing (as some of you previously commented), I need to explain why this case is significant.
It is surely not a one-off case, but what is important is that a mainstream media outlet has actually had the nerve to investigate a darling of the left—the US Refugee Admissions Program, and its contractor, the IRC. You might not have sympathy for the refugees, but you should.
Your critical aim should be at the federal policies, the bureaucrats, and the contractors*** hired by the feds to bring the refugees to your towns, not the specific refugees who took advantage of what Congress and the White House have offered them.
We need more investigations (like this one) by mainstream media of questionable practices by the contractors in order to further the education of voting Americans!
Number of bodies resettled, more important than quality of care.
A local refugee resettlement agency is searching for a new executive director little more than a week after the organization’s national office found the affiliate had violated housing policies.
I’m guessing that Murphy was sent more refugees than the office could handle in the first place.
A spokesman for the International Rescue Committee‘s headquarters in New York confirmed David Murphy is no longer the relief agency’s executive director in San Diego, but would not address additional questions. A posting for the position appeared online last week.
Earlier this month, the national office said the San Diego affiliate had engaged in housing placement practices that were “inconsistent” with its policies, but declined to discuss its findings further.
The agency’s statement followed a KPBS investigation first published in July that found seven families, who arrived during a rush of refugees last year, living in El Cajon apartments with more people than were listed on their leases, a potential contract violation.
[….]
The resettlement agency receives a one-time stipend of federal dollars to cover housing and other needs for refugees…
***These are the federal contractors paid by the head for refugee “clients” they place (secretively!) in your towns and cities. Congress should be investigating how they are using the millions of federal dollars they receive annually. The San Diego housing irregularity is, I suspect, the tip of the iceberg!
Of course it’s possible that Melanie Nezer and Mark Hetfield—two of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society‘s executives and DC insiders—aren’t being completely honest to those on last Thursday’s conference call, but since they were looking for help from supporters, I don’t know what they would gain by being cagey with them.
(I told you about the call here, but you can listen yourself here.)
To save me a lot of work, I’m going to simply list nuggets I learned while listening. Here they are in no particular order:
~Funding the USRAP continues for now at the FY16 leveland they say that is enough for 75,000 refugees a year.
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society is pushing for 75,000 refugees to begin arriving on October 1st. HIAS is the smallest refugee contractor but appears to have the biggest megaphone. https://www.hias.org/welcome-least-75000-refugees-us-2018.
~75,000 is their minimum target number for FY18 in order to not “undermine [their] infrastructure” (code for keeping the federal money coming so they can pay salaries and rent, but of course they never admitted that to listeners on the call). Less than 50,000 would mean “long lasting erosion” of the program.
~Everything is very confused this year they say. No Presidential Determination (PD) yet. (I expected them to know more!)
~They say the Report to Congress (in advance of the PD) has come in June or July in some previous years. I have never seen it that early. It usually is mid-September because until the last couple of years, Congress didn’t care what the President sent up. Other than a few diligent staffers, it is likely that no members actually ever looked at the report. See last year’s report dated September 15th by clicking here.
~Mark Hetfield likened the PD to another kind of Executive Order. I think he wants to make it sound like its an Executive Order for future lawsuits.
~They admit they have a stable of lawyers readyand waiting for all possibilities from this White House.
~They even suggested there is a possibility that Trump would make no PD! Wow! One of their people remarked that Bush delayed his immediately after 9/11, but that was understandable they admitted (implying the Trump situation is not). So even they are considering the possibility of a suspension of the program.
~A caller asked if there was any way Congress could ‘punish’ the President if he simply doesn’t make a ‘determination’ or initiate a consultation in the coming 3 weeks. No, there isn’t, said one of the HIAS experts. But, their stable of lawyers is looking at all the legal angles.
~Until Trump was elected, they (contractors) were in “expansion mode” opening new offices in new towns. Bringing in more communities now is impossible.
~There was a lot of discussion about what refugee advocates could do. Top of the list was to tell their Congressmen and Senators that they want to “welcome” more refugees. Interestingly, I believe it was Hetfield who admitted the President sets the number not Congress, but important to try to get Congress to pressure Prez.
~They asked listeners to set up meetings with their Washington Reps in their own districts. But, surprisingly, could not give a caller the names of specific reps to target.
See Mark Hetfield and Melanie Nezer in action this time last year. https://www.hias.org/blog/video-hias-mark-hetfield-and-melanie-nezer-brief-foreign-press-members
~Some other action ideas included getting rabbis to sign their letter in support of more refugees. They have 48 states represented but no one from North and South Dakota.
~They want people to show up to demonstrate on the steps of the Supreme Court when it hears the so-called ‘travel ban’ case on October 10th.A caller asked how the timing of the case and the decision announcement (could be May or June) would affect refugee admissions, and the experts on the call could not say. As I said in my earlier post this morning, their own lawsuits have made such a hash of the program they have probably done more damage to refugee admissions than if they had simply let the 120 day moratorium run its course.
~They want people to plan demonstrations and to use social media to get the pro-more-refugees message out. And, they want donations.
~There were several mentions of all the eager volunteers who want to help resettle refugees, but alas they may be disappointed with few new ones coming. I felt like shouting—-put them to work helping your previously resettled refugees who are struggling, or better still tell them to help American refugees of Harvey and soon-to-be refugees from Irma.
There is a lot more, those of you in ‘pockets of resistance’ should listen to the 43-minute call, here. Then…..
