…..they expect Biden to be ready to roll with 125,000 impoverished third worlders moving to America permanently beginning on October first.
“It turned out there was even more damage done than we knew.”
(Having figured out their messaging on the mess they have made angering their friends, Sec. of State Blinken blames it on President Trump)
The Associated Pressmakes every effort to gloss over the recent controversy about the refugee ceiling that put Biden and his administration in the dog house with refugee resettlement industry “advocates.”
Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken were at odds according to White House leakers. Blinken wanted to bring ’em in faster than Biden did.
They complain that the mean orange guy really screwed up the refugee program with demands for more robust vetting of refugees to weed out those with terror connections, or those lying about family members—a rampant form of fraud in refugee resettlement. How dare he!
And, adding insult to injury, the nine contractors*** had to shrink their staffs during the Trump years because your tax dollars flowing into their coffers were cut by a few million bucks.
But all of that is going away thanks to Biden who recently dropped Trump’s plan for additional information to be required of ‘new Americans’ arriving as refugees and is going full-bore open borders—125,000 beginning October first.
Refugees arriving in US unlikely to exceed cap set by Trump
SAN DIEGO (AP) — President Joe Biden, under political pressure, agreed to admit four times as many refugees this budget year as his predecessor did, but resettlement agencies concede the number actually allowed into the U.S. will be closer to the record-low cap of 15,000 set by former President Donald Trump.
Refugee advocates say they are grateful for the increase because it’s symbolically important to show the world the United States is back as a humanitarian leader at a time when the number of refugees worldwide is the highest since World War II. But they’re frustrated, too, because more refugees could have been admitted if Biden hadn’t dragged his feet.
“About 10,000 to 15,000 is what we’re expecting,” said Jenny Yang of World Relief, adding that Biden’s inaction for months after taking office in January was “definitely problematic.”
“That delay meant not being able to process refugee applications for four months. We weren’t able to rebuild for four months, so it really was unfortunate,” Yang said.
As he looked to the midterm elections, supposedly Biden (rightly) feared that the public wouldn’t tolerate a huge refugee flow while the border was in crisis.
“To be clear: The asylum process at the southern border and the refugee process are completely separate immigration systems. Conflating the two constitutes caving to the politics of fear,” said Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
This is important, Blumenthal is right, do not conflate the US Refugee Admissions Program with the illegal aliens invading the southern border.
The 125,000 refugees proposed for FY2022 are in addition to the hundreds of thousands of supposed asylum seekers flooding into the country.
The AP continues…..
Weeks later, on May 3, Biden raised the cap.
So far this year only about 2,500 refugees have arrived, with less than five months left before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.
More than 35,000 refugees have been vetted and approved to come to the United States, but thousands were disqualified under the narrow eligibility criteria Trump established in October when he set the low cap.
Before the Trump administration’s drastic cuts, the United States had admitted more refugees each year than all other countries combined under a program now 41 years old.
It is Trump’s fault!
But a senior official familiar with Blinken’s thinking said it quickly became clear that the State Department offices responsible for refugee resettlement had been so gutted that they wouldn’t be able to process and absorb that number of refugees.
Biden’s got leakers….
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, described the situation as “aspiration meeting reality” and said Blinken reluctantly concluded that 62,500 wouldn’t be possible in the short term.
“It turned out there was even more damage done than we knew,” Blinken told reporters this month.
The Trump bashers give short shrift to the China Virus as one explanation for the slowdown in their goals to change America as refugee travel was slowed worldwide.
Due to travel restrictions in and out of refugee processing sites worldwide, the U.S. suspended refugee arrivals from March 19 to July 29 of last year except for emergency cases. Only 11,800 refugees were admitted in the 2020 fiscal year, the lowest number in the history of the program.
[….]
The “sad truth” Biden warned when he finally set the target at 62,500 is that goal won’t be achieved.
Instead, the administration and advocates are working to fix the program by 2022 when Biden has promised to raise the ceiling to 125,000.
LOL! He dares not do otherwise now that he has experienced the wrath of the “advocates”—refugee placement contractors.
Update April 18th: Biden himself commits to increasing the numberof refugees to be admitted; references the border saying we couldn’t do two things at once, but now we can (oh really! so what changed?).
“This is a breathtaking betrayal of the plan to ‘build back better.’”
(Matthew Soerens World Relief, a refugee contractor)
Don’t get me wrong. I am just fine with it. In fact, I find it hilarious.
However, Biden/Harris have now so screwed-up the US Refugee Admissions Program (which I know a little about) with their ham-handed incompetence that it makes me ask how badly are they screwing-up elsewhere—-like handling the pandemic or dealing with Russia and China?
We know they are creating a catastrophe and angering most Americanswith their policy, or lack of a policy, at the southern border!
And, that is not so funny.
Now, by not going forward with his promise to reset the annual refugee cap to 62,500 for what remains of the 2021 fiscal year, RRW readers know that Biden has been pissing-off his friends in the NO Borders community.
Leading the pack of the pissed-off are the refugee contractors*** whose business it is to place third world clients in your towns and cities while being paid by you, the taxpayer, to do it.
And, see here that the final straw for those who helped Biden steal the White Housewas when a contractor, the International Rescue Committee, published a report saying Biden was ‘welcoming’ fewer refugees than President Trump.
If that wasn’t bad enough, yesterday all hell broke loose when the White House announced it would leave TRUMP’S CAP of 15,000 (or fewer) refugees to be admitted by September 30th in place.
The “faith groups” (aka contractors) were “outraged.”
Nothing Trump did should ever be left in place!
A few hours later Biden/Harris backtracked and said they would set a new higher cap/ceiling in mid-May.
Keep in mind that while running for the presidency Biden promised his 80 million (ha! ha!) voters that he would admit 125,000 annually.
There is a lot of coverage of the “betrayal.” Here is one account at Religion News Service:
Biden reverses course on refugee cap after faith groups express outrage
WASHINGTON (RNS) — President Joe Biden’s administration has reversed a decision to keep in place a historically low cap on refugee admissions left by Donald Trump, saying it will raise the ceiling next month after faith-based groups initially decried the move as an “abandonment of our ideals.”
Matthew Soerens of World Relief
Biden signed a memorandum Friday (April 16) aimed at speeding up refugee admissions this year — but that memorandum does not increase the so-called refugee ceiling, something the president has pledged to do when speaking to religious audiences.
Although the memorandum leaves open the possibility of raising that number should the United States resettle the maximum 15,000 refugees this year, news that the ceiling will at least temporarily remain at that historic low was met with disappointment by many religious communities, including the faith-based groups that partner with the federal government to resettle refugees.
By Friday afternoon, TheAssociated Press and CNN reported the Biden administration has reversed course, announcing plans to lift the Trump-era refugee cap next month in the wake of widespread pushback from allies.
The White House confirmed to Religion News Service on Friday that officials intend to revisit the refugee ceiling sometime in the coming days, saying in a statement, “We expect the President to set a final, increased refugee cap for the remainder of this fiscal year by May 15.”
Keep reading hereto see what the other Christian contractors, in addition to Soerens, had to say about their man Joe yesterday.
In a more tempered response, see what the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society is saying about the flip-flopping from the White House.
‘Relieved but disappointed’: How America’s Jewish refugee aid agency is doing 3 months under Biden
“We’re relieved but disappointed,” said HIAS CEO Mark Hetfield following Friday’s initial announcement that the cap, also known as the refugee ceiling, would not be raised.
Following the second statement, Hetfield added, “There’s no reason to delay raising the refugee ceiling. It’s just a ceiling, it’s not a floor. They should be focused on what’s the goal and how are you going to reach it?”
It is all Trump’s fault!
The fight over the refugee cap encapsulates a dilemma confronting HIAS as the agency moves from Trump to Biden. On one hand, HIAS leaders are glad that the United States no longer has a president who opposes refugees, separates families at the border and fires up his base with anti-immigrant rhetoric.
On the other hand, they say that Trump did so much harm, and made immigration so heated an issue, that it will be a challenge just to bring the immigration and refugee systems back to where they were before Trump.
Returning to a point in which the U.S. allows hundreds of thousands of refugees a year, and passing immigration reform through Congress, these leaders say, feels even more daunting. [HIAS was heavily involved in lobbying for failed Comprehensive Immigration Reform some years ago.–ed]
“It’s just a relief to have that administration in the rearview mirror,” said Melanie Nezer, vice president for public affairs at HIAS. She dubbed the Trump era “the fire swamp.”
But Nezer is cognizant as well of “the sheer amount of time, effort and creativity it’s going to take for the new administration and those of us who work on these issues to unravel and fix it.”
“The prior administration really decimated our infrastructure, our systems, our staffing,” she said. “It’s stunning to think about the damage that was done.”
[….]
Trump’s actions on immigration, beginning with the travel ban, spurred a flood of donations to HIAS.Since Trump’s term, the agency more than doubled its annual budget to $90 million. But resettling refugees — how the organization had once spent the majority of donations — became unprecedentedly controversial and difficult.
With its windfall, HIAS sued the Trump administration over its travel ban, increased its advocacy work and shifted its weight outside the U.S.
For refugee resettlement nerds there is a lot of useful information in this article, sokeep reading.
Here is the data from the State Department showing the paltry number of refugees admitted in the first half of the fiscal year.
This is what has the contractors hopping mad.
Notice (sorry the screenshot isn’t clear, but take it from me) that although we are admitting hundreds of thousands of illegal border jumpers from Central America, more are being admitted as refugees through this legal avenue.
2050 total for six months. They will have a hard time getting to even 15,000 at this rate.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the unhappy contractors.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris and lobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
So, let me ask, why should we admit any more Africans to America if they are going to lecture us about our racism?
How would Come Nzibarega and others of his ilk—like Rep. Ilhan Omar—react if we said okay there need to be more white people in Africa and we made a joint effort with European countries to colonize Africa (again! now!).
Can you imagine the uproar!
And, do you think for a minute there wouldn’t be racism against the white immigrants by the black native population, heck, there wouldn’t just be some hurtful words directed at the newcomers. The migrating whites would be killed.
But, when its black Africans colonizing the US we are supposed to keep our mouths shut.
Well, yes, that is exactly what Burundi refugee Nzibarega is saying.
He is also saying we haven’t welcomed enough and that means Trump is racist and you are too!
See my post last month about how insane it is to invite more potential Black Lives Matter activists to America, and pay for their upkeep on top of it!
By the way, the early US Refugee Admissions Program mostly admitted refugees escaping Communism in the old USSR and in Southeast Asia (Vietnam etc), it wasn’t until much later that the refugee program began admitting large numbers of Africans (bringing their socialist/communist desires with them?).
According to Heidi Boas in her lengthy 2007 paper entitled, “The New Face of America’s Refugees: African Refugee Resettlement to the United States:”
….several of the individuals interviewed for this paper identified the Congressional Black Caucus as one of the most influential groups advocating over the past decade for increased African refugee resettlement to the United States.
Now why would the Congressional Black Caucus want the number of angry Africans increased?
Does Black Lives Matter apply to immigrants as well?
The declaration that “Black Lives Matter” has been written on countless protest signs, hashtagged across social media and even painted on a street, with the words now visible from space.
As a Black man in America, I’m encouraged that more Americans seem eager to affirm my dignity. But a series of recent immigration policy changes belie the statement that Black Lives Matter, as African individuals have been systematically excluded from entry to the U.S.
I’m one of more than 150,000 Africans in the past decade to have come lawfully to the U.S. through the refugee resettlement program. [Maybe 150,000 is enough!—ed]
In my home country of Burundi, my work as a translator for UN peacekeepers made me a target for rebels. One night, as I returned from a run, they kidnapped me at gunpoint, tortured me and held me for two weeks before United Nations peacemakers rescued me.
But I was still not safe, and my presence put my family at risk, so I made the difficult decision to flee my homeland. I made it to a refugee camp in Ethiopia, where I spent six wasted years before the U.S. refugee resettlement program gave me a new lease on life. I arrived in Spokane, Washington in 2012.
As recently as fiscal year 2016, more than 31,000 African refugees were resettled. But the refugee resettlement program has been decimated in recent years. Halfway through fiscal year 2020, only about 3,000 African refugees have been resettled. If resettlement continues at that pace, 90% fewer African refugees will find safety and freedom in the U.S. this year than in 2016.
Now get this, he is complaining that in comparison there are too many white people being admitted from Europe (Ukrainians mostly).
Meanwhile, the share of resettled refugees who come from Europe has risen from about 5% in fiscal year 2016 to about 25% this fiscal year.
Nzibarega (well, not him really, his handlers at World Relief) go through a litany of changes that have reduced the migrant flow from Africa since Trump was elected. You canread those yourself. Then this…
These and other policy changes have already resulted in a sharp reduction to the number of Black people allowed to immigrate to the U.S. It’s hard not to wonder if the disparate racial impact is intentional. The president himself has reportedly referred to African nations and Haiti as “shithole countries,” expressed his preference for Norwegian immigrants, and imagines that Nigerians live in “huts.” It’s implausible that these views don’t have an impact on how he crafts our nation’s exclusionary immigration policies.
Like most Black Americans, I have experienced racism in the United States.
We have absolutely no obligation to admit one more African to the US through the US Refugee Admissions Program, so don’t let these guilt-tripping political agitators get to you!
And Trump is right—they are “shithole countries” or they wouldn’t be exporting millions of refugees looking for a better life. I say, let them fix their own countries before they try to ‘fix’ America.
However, your tax dollars are still flowing out to federal refugee contractors even as the number of arrivals has dropped dramatically.
The Chronicle of Philanthropyhas published a survey of the financial fallout to non-profit groups in the wake of the Chinese virus ‘crisis’ and finds that big foundations are still giving, but otherwise donations to non-profits are declining.
The bleak picture (title with a positive spin!):
Nonprofits That Rely on Foundation Grants Fare Better Than Others Amid Pandemic
Most nonprofits that get foundation grants haven’t suffered cutbacks as many had feared when the Covid-19 and economic crisis struck in March, a study released today finds.
[….]
The survey found that revenue from other sources was far less reliable. Only 14 percent of nonprofit CEOs reported an increase in giving by major donors (those who give more than $7,500 annually), while 43 percent saw gifts from those donors decline. For donors who contribute less than $7,500 annually, only 18 percent of CEOs reported increased giving, while 51 percent saw decreased giving.
I was interested in this section about refugee resettlement contractor World Relief.
The pandemic has placed a greater burden with more demand for services on nonprofits that serve “historically disadvantaged communities,” according to the survey; 61 percent of those CEOs say the demand for services has increased, compared with 35 percent of CEOs at other nonprofits.
Chitra Hanstad, executive director of World Relief Seattle, said her organization has been hit hard by the loss of government contracts for refugee resettlement, which has come to a halt***.
The nonprofit continues to provide a wide array of services to refugees who have arrived in the United States recently, and demand for those services has increased. [But aren’t we continuously hammered about how refugees are not a burden and are self-sufficient within a few short months of arrival?—ed]
Wealthy people set up family foundations to shelter some of their money and are then able to use the foundation to promote their pet political projects. https://www.stoltefamilyfoundation.org/about#main
However, Hanstad added that donors have been very generous and flexible during the current crisis. She cited in particular the Stolte Family Foundation, created by Heidi and Chris Stolte. Chris Stolte was co-founder of Tableau Software, and Heidi Stolte is a former educator.
[….]
However, Hanstad said that while donors are being generous in terms of immediate need, she’s worried those donations may come at the expense of funding long-term challenges, such as providing refugees with income stability, securing affordable housing, and attaining citizenship status. “I wish people would give as robustly to systemic solutions,” she said.
***But wait! World Relief , the parent contractor to World Relief Seattle, is still bringing in millions of federal bucks!
During the first week of May I reported that World Reliefhad received just short of $30 million from taxpayers in 2019 (an amount higher than they received in many Obama years) and I see that they have received $13 million this year!
This story is no surprise and I expect there will be many more like it in the coming days and weeks.
Refugees work at menial labor—cleaning hotel and dorm rooms, working in restaurant kitchens, etc. all no longer essential services—and they are increasingly unemployed (however $$$ is on the way from the feds).
I guess we can say it sure is a good thing that the Trump administration cut the flow of refugees to America starting last October or we would have even more unhappy, struggling people as those described here.
Refugees in Orange County struggle to make ends meet amid COVID-19 economic hardships
All those North Carolinians who have been ‘welcoming’ refugees to the state for the last decade need to get out there now and pay the rent, tutor the kids and feed/clothe the impoverished people they invited to their towns and cities.
Coronavirus has forced many families to alter their ways of life. Although COVID-19 has impacted almost every Orange County resident, a group that has been especially devastated is the local refugee community.
Refugees can already be a vulnerable population without something like the coronavirus, said Flicka Bateman, director of the Refugee Support Center, a volunteer-based organization that helps transition refugees in Orange County to their new lives.
“I know people who’ve been here less than three weeks, I can’t imagine what in the world for them it must be like,” she said. “They’re totally uprooted, they’ve left situations that were full of violence and uncertainty, and then they come here and instead of being able to learn English and get all these services, suddenly they’re told to stay where they are and people will do the best they can remotely. It’s just very tough.”
Orange County has about 1,200 refugees, primarily from Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria. [It would be many more if Trump had not cut the flow this year—ed]. Bateman said a lot of refugees in the area have lost their jobs or seen reduced hours, especially those who work in restaurants or hotels, or in food service and housekeeping at UNC, where dorms have been closed and dining services have been severely reduced.
Adam Clark, office director of World Relief Durham, a refugee resettlement agency based in Durham that serves refugees across the Triangle area, said programs that help refugees with employment have seen a spike in applications due to a greater amount of people needing sudden job assistance.
He said they’ve seen about 20-30 unemployment applications among refugees just in the last week, and a long list of people are already waiting.
“There are a lot of refugees worried about their rent, obviously the same things that are affecting everyone,” he said. “But I think it just affects them even more because of the sectors they work in.”
Hannah Olmstead, a junior at UNC who is a part-time caseworker at World Relief Durham, said as local school districts transition to online instruction, many refugee parents don’t have the English ability or understanding of American education to homeschool their children.
“We’re relieved but disappointed,” said HIAS CEO Mark Hetfield following Friday’s initial announcement that the cap, also known as the refugee ceiling, would not be raised.
Returning to a point in which the U.S. allows 
Here is the 
