Editor: Sorry I haven’t been posting much here lately, I’ve been busy at RRW (as well as being distracted as I assume many of you are as well by of demands of just living these days!), but this is very important and I’m not sure how many of you read RRW.
Cross-postedthis morning in an effort to find groups that could support the Thomas More Law Center’s legal petition to the Supreme Court.
I know it’s a little hard to believe that there are other things going on in America besides the virus crisis, but here is important news I should have mentioned sooner.
The Thomas Moore Law Center has filed a petition to attempt to get the Supreme Court to review the Tenth Amendment case that has been working its way through the legal system.
The heart of the case is the Tenth Amendment argument that the federal government has no Constitutional power to shift the cost of refugee resettlement onto state governments as it has been doing for decades.
TMLC is looking for other like-minded organizations to file amicus briefs in support of their argument which has far-reaching implications beyond just the refugee program!
Here is their press release from earlier this month.
Thomas More Law Center Petitions U.S. Supreme Court to Review Tennessee’s Challenge to Federal Refugee Resettlement Program
ANN ARBOR, MI – In what could have far reaching implications for all states seeking to withdraw from the federal refugee resettlement program, the Thomas More Law Center (“TMLC”) collaborating with attorney John Bursch, filed a certiorari petition Monday, March 16 in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Will they, or won’t they consider the Tenth Amendment case about how the feds have been dumping the costs of refugee resettlement on the states?
The petition asks the Court to hold that the Tennessee General Assembly has standing to challenge the constitutionality of the federal government’s forced state funding of the federal refugee resettlement program.
The Thomas More Law Center (“TMLC”) is a national nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Both TMLC and Mr. Bursch are representing Tennessee without charge.
John Bursch, a former Michigan state solicitor general, nationally prominent appellate lawyer and past chair of the American Bar Association’s Council of Appellate Lawyers, authored the petition for certiorari.
The petition argues that the issues presented in the Tennessee case cut to the core of the Constitution’s protection of states against overreach by the federal government. The Constitution does not give Congress the authority to appropriate state funds, contrary to the wishes of the state, to fund a federal program.
According to the petition: “If a state legislature cannot vindicate its rights in court when the federal government picks the state’s pocket and threatens the state if it dare stop providing funds, then federalism is a dead letter.”
The petition seeks to overturn a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision which ruled that the General Assembly does not have institutional standing to challenge the constitutionality of the resettlement program. The cert petition does not challenge the federal government’s right to resettle refugees in Tennessee. What it objects to is forcing Tennessee taxpayers to pay the costs of the resettlement.
Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of TMLC, noted: “From the beginning, opposition to the federal refugee resettlement program has been about protecting Tennessee’s state sovereignty from impermissible federal interference. The federal government cannot simply commandeer state tax dollars to fund a purely federal program to extend benefits to noncitizens.”
Tennessee initially agreed to participate in the federal resettlement program because the federal government promised to reimburse 100 percent of the cost. In fact, Congress crafted the 1980 Refugee Act specifically intending that states not be taxed for programs they did not initiate and for which they were not responsible. As is often the case, however, the federal government began shrinking its financial support to the states and by 1991 eliminated it entirely. Due to the mounting costs the federal government was not covering as promised, Tennessee withdrew from the program effective June 30, 2008. But that didn’t stop the federal financial burden on Tennessee taxpayers. The federal government simply designated Catholic Charities of Tennessee, a non-governmental private organization, to continue the program with state dollars.
Between 2007 and the end of 2019, resettlement agencies pumped more than 15,000 refugees into Tennessee cities and towns. They came from Afghanistan, Bosnia, Burma, Central African Republic, Congo, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan 3 and many other countries. They often arrive from United Nations camps in poor health, with no job skills or English-language abilities.
The resulting cost to state taxpayers amounted to tens of millions of dollars. In 2015 alone, the refugee-related Medicaid costs paid by Tennessee tax dollars topped $30 million.
Instead of resolving the merits of Tennessee’s claim, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals sidestepped the pivotal constitutional issue concerning federalism by ruling that the Tennessee General Assembly lacked standing to bring its lawsuit.
The petition filed on March 16, 2020, argues that this was in error:
“The General Assembly is an institutional plaintiff asserting an institutional injury; the federal government has co-opted the General Assembly’s appropriation power and impaired its obligation to enact a balanced state budget. That is because the federal government can siphon state funds—to help pay for a federal program from which Tennessee has withdrawn.”
TMLC originally filed the federal lawsuit in March 2017 on behalf of the State of Tennessee, the Tennessee General Assembly, and state legislators Terri Lynn Weaver and John Stevens challenging the commandeering of millions in state taxpayer dollars for a purely federal program.
A U.S. district court judge dismissed the case on the federal government’s motion. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s dismissal on the sole grounds that the General Assembly lacked standing. It never reached the merits of the case.
The Supreme Court now has a chance to shed light on the proper role of the states relative to the federal government—which is the bedrock constitutional principle of federalism.
The petition states: “The (Tennessee) General Assembly does not object to the federal resettlement program. It does not even object to the federal government resettling 4 refugees in Tennessee. The General Assembly does object to the federal government reaching its hand into Tennessee’s pocket to pay for the cost of such a program, particularly when the enabling legislation was enacted with the promise to reimburse states for all expenses incurred in this program.”
The federal government mandates that states provide Medicaid to otherwise eligible refugees, or face termination of federal benefits.
Accordingly, the federal government forces Tennessee to continue funding the refugee program by threatening to pull $7 billion in federal Medicaid funding, which represents 20 percent of the state’s total budget.
The argument in favor of the General Assembly’s standing is bolstered by the fact that both chambers of the Tennessee General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in 2016 in favor of filing a civil lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the federal refugee resettlement program. The State Senate passed Senate Joint Resolution 467, by a vote of 27-5 while the House voted 69-25 to pass the same resolution.
And without any waiting period they can automatically apply for all welfare programs provided by the State of Tennessee.
If you know any organization that is in agreement with the broad-reaching tenets of the case, please have them contact the Thomas Moore Law Centerimmediately. Time is short!
If we don’t keep Donald Trump in the White House for another four years, you will never again see head lines like this or, for that matter, any effort to slow migration to America.
Indeed if he doesn’t succeed in November, there will be no need for blogs like mine—we will be cooked and done!
Trump administration unveils new rules aimed at preventing foreign women from traveling to US to give birth
The State Department on Thursday unveiled new rules that could make it more difficult for pregnant foreign nationals to travel to the United States using tourist visas, citing security concerns.
The rules, which will become effective on Friday, are an attempt to crack down on “birth tourism,” or the practice of giving birth in the United States in order to obtain U.S. citizenship for a child. They apply to B visas, or those issued to nonimmigrants.
“Closing this glaring immigration loophole will combat these endemic abuses and ultimately protect the United States from the national security risks created by this practice,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement. “It will also defend American taxpayers from having their hard-earned dollars siphoned away to finance the direct and downstream costs associated with birth tourism.”
The Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative group that advocates for stricter immigration laws, estimated last year that there were 33,000 births to women in the country temporarily on tourist visas between the second half of 2016 and the first half of 2017.
It is all over the news today and I plan to write about it at Refugee Resettlement Watchshortly. But, here is just one of many stories on the ban expected to be announced on Monday, this one at the New York Post.
The Trump Administration must have credible concerns about criminals and possibly terrorists entering the US from the new countries being proposed.
Coincidentally I just saw this Youtube video (h/t: Bob), below, and ask you to make sure your friends and family members know what is already happening to America as we move the African continent to your home towns.
No, this is not somewhere else in the world—This is Minnesota!
***Update*** Here is my new post at RRWabout the possible new travel restriction list.
U.S.-Bound Migrants Gambling on Trump Defeat in November
TAPACUHLA, Mexico — Honduran Katherine Cabrera is among thousands of migrants who didn’t expect to get bottled up in this southern Mexican city, unable to proceed to the American border as planned, because of President Donald Trump’s insistence that Mexico block them with troop deployments and whatever else the Mexicans could come up with.
New Mexican travel restriction rules required that Cabrera either go home with her newborn child or stay here in Tapachula to apply for Mexican asylum and await an outcome perhaps months in the future. Rather than return home as some have, though, Cabrera said she reached a carefully reasoned-out decision. She’ll stay in Mexico and pursue that asylum claim in a calculated gambit: that Donald Trump will lose the November 2020 election and once the Democrats control the White House, they’ll reverse everything Trump did and reopen the U.S. southern border so that she can finally breach it.
“I want Trump out!” Cabrera said. “I’ll wait for that because it would make things easier to get in.”
Read it alland then see that additional migrants from Central America can’t wait and were attempting to break into Mexico just over the weekend. Story from Reuters.
Meanwhile the President has announced a new effort to halt the explosion of so-called “birth tourism.”
And, his refugee reform has been temporarily halted by a court injunction sought by the federal refugee resettlement contractors that stand to lose millions of tax dollars if the President reins-in the dysfunctional Refugee Admissions Program.
Editor: I don’t like to cross-post between my two blogs (I fear it looks lazy!), but it is very important that what Tucker Carlson reported last night gets the widest distribution possible. (I don’t know how many of you read RRW.)
Much of what is discussed in Carlson’s piece is that the Christian federal contractors pushing for more refugees are not truly ‘religious’ charities when they are paid by taxpayers for their supposed good works—so the topic is apropos for ‘Frauds and Crooks.’
In just a little over 5 minutes last night Tucker Carlson in a segment on the US Refugee Admissions Program and the President’s efforts to reform it, explains exactly what we have been saying for weeks in dozens of posts.
Especially interesting is the focus on phony Christian charity as Carlson’s millions of viewers learn that it is federal contractors masquerading as charitable religious groups that have successfully lobbied Republican governors—18 so far—to thumb their noses at Trump and ask for more refugees for their states!
It is vitally important that you send this far and wide.Hat tip: Brenda.
The segment begins here:
Don’t miss my post yesterdayabout CAIR sending wet kisses to Maryland Governor Larry Hogan when he became the 18th governor to say his state welcomes more poverty from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
