As perhaps a signal that this case is incredibly important, the Thomas More Law Center will be represented in the case by a renowned appellate attorney the Center announced yesterday.
Because I don’t want to show my ignorance about the ins and outs of legal cases, I’m posting most of this breaking news in its entirety.
And, am directing you back to my many posts on the case at Refugee Resettlement Watch.
The gist of the argument, for those of us not steeped in the law, asks the question: does the federal government have the right to dump budgetary costs on a particular state’s taxpayers by its decisions in Washington to place refugees in states that have already said they do not want to participate in the US Refugee Admissions Program?
Frankly, many of us who want to see the US Refugee Program dumped or reformed had high hopes for a political solution via the Trump Administration and a Republican Congress, but Trump went no further than temporarily reducing the numbers. And, Republicans under the leadership of Paul Ryan clearly had no stomach for dealing with this tough issue.
Now we will see if the courts will force this critical reform.
Continue reading “Tennessee States' Rights Case involving US Refugee Program to be Argued by Top Appellate Attorney”
Tag: Donald Trump
Example of Fraud in US Refugee Program: More of Australia's Rejects Headed to Your Town
He said scores of the refugees are suffering serious mental health problems after being held in indefinite detention without trial for so long.
(Ian Rintoul, Australian refugee advocate)
When President Trump took office he did not have to honor Obama’s offer to take off of Australia’s hands ‘asylum seekers’ that Australia did not want to bring to its mainland.
But, he did extend the offer and now we see that we have admitted 500 (so far!), mostly young men, that had been living for several years in detention on offshore islands.
This is a completely fraudulent use of the international refugee system that requires that asylum seekers ask for asylum in the first safe country they enter.
It would be like us saying to Australia—hey Aussie’s! how about you take a couple thousand of the caravan migrants we have rushing our southern border. It is laughable! Right?
From Radio New Zealand,
More Manus refugees bound for the United States
Twenty-two Manus Island refugees left Papua New Guinea yesterday to be resettled in the United States.
[….]
He said including about 300 refugees from Nauru, a total of about 500 from Australian offshore detention have so far been resettled in the US, under a deal struck in 2016 to take up to 1250.
Mr Rintoul said the US deal is “glacially slow” with about 1000 people still left on Manus and Nauru without a future after almost six years.
He said scores of the refugees are suffering serious mental health problems after being held in indefinite detention without trial for so long.
More here.
See many, many posts on the Australian “dumb deal” at RRW by clicking here.
You, the American taxpayer are paying for all of this—the cost of resettlement and the cost of mental health treatment!
And, the government (even the Trump Administration) is counting on citizens forgetting about these outrages!
What do you do? Tell the White House again how much this deal stinks and make sure that you use every means possible through social media to keep this issue alive!
Report: Jared Kushner Driving Immigration Policy Debate in White House
For me, as goes Stephen Miller, so goes the nation!***
Miller, if you don’t know, was Senator Jeff Sessions chief aide on immigration when Sessions was the Senator holding his finger in the dyke to stem the flood of illegal and LEGAL immigration flooding America.
The Dems want the “new American” voters and powerful business interesting in the Republican Party want a large pool of immigrant laborers to compete with American workers for jobs (at all levels!).
Now we are learning that Miller, who is one of only a few who went from the campaign to the White House with Trump (and survived, so far) is being sidelined as Jared Kushner, the first son-in-law, wants to practice his bipartisan deal making skills on the issue of immigration.
Here is McClatchy reporting on Kushner’s latest play,
Jared Kushner privately working on reshaping legal immigration
And, pushing Stephen Miller to the sidelines?
WASHINGTON
As debate in public rages about illegal immigration and a border wall, Jared Kushner has been holding private meetings in the West Wing on ways to overhaul the legal immigration system, according to six people familiar with the conversations and documents obtained by McClatchy.
President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law is operating on at least two tracks — the first is working with a small group studying specific ways to redistribute employment visas and the second is helping lead a series of “listening sessions” with about three dozen interest groups important to Trump to see if there is a position that Republicans can rally around before the 2020 elections.
[….]
What is clear from conversations with participants and both current and former Trump officials is that Kushner has helped kicked (sic) off a fresh discussion on immigration that reflects a new paradigm in the White House. It’s a shift away from priorities of 2017 that sought to prevent the influx of foreign workers who could displace American workers in favor of a new approach preferred by more traditional Republicans, particularly those close to the corporate sector who are desperate to attract more foreign workers to fill U.S. factories and tech hubs.
[….]
According to meeting agendas obtained by McClatchy, those invited to sessions with Kushner come from some of Trump’s core constituencies in the worlds of religion, law enforcement, agriculture and business. They include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Heritage Foundation, Association of Builders and Contractors, Faith and Freedom Coalition, Council on National Policy, George W. Bush Center and Select Milk Producers.
I want to remind readers that the Heritage Foundation may be good on illegal immigration, but they sure did get wobbly on refugees awhile back, so I wouldn’t count on them being your voice at these meetings. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce openly supports more immigration of all kinds. I don’t know what the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s views are on immigration, do you?
Kushner wants a deal!
“He’s a smart guy,” one of the participants said. “But he doesn’t care about the issues. He’s there to find out where the deal is. Where is the sweet spot?”
The senior administration official said the White House is rethinking some policies that it supported before, such as the Sen. Tom Cotton’s RAISE Act, which would institute a merit-based system to determine who is admitted to the country — that the White House continues to support — but would also slash legal immigration.
“The president said many times he wants to raise immigration,” the official said.
Such language is concerning to conservative immigration groups. Indeed, between Kushner’s business background and the large number of guests with corporate interests, conservatives are worried that the changes Kushner is pursuing run counter to Trump’s “Hire American” priorities.
“There is a real dance going on in the White House on all the legal immigration issues as they work on their vision for reform,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, who is in regular discussions with the administration. “It’s hard for me to tell sometimes what is based on actual policy goals and what is meant to assuage an interest group and who is just being stroked and whose ideas have been convincing to Kushner and his group.”
Kushner edges-out Stephen Miller!
Adding to that anxiety is the feeling that Kushner has edged out Stephen Miller, Trump’s chief architect on some of the toughest proposals and a favorite in conservative circles, in the policy area on which Miller is best known.
“That is how you have to understand it,” said a former Trump official who remains in contact with White House officials. “And look, Steve may be willing to go along with it, because he’s there for the long game. And there is always other battles to fight. He’s more strategic than people think he is. But there is no doubt that he’s not getting what he wants out of this move.”
The White House emphasized that discussions are still in the early stages. It could take weeks or months before anything is presented to the president. Trump may also decide not to do anything with the information if they can’t get enough buy in.
More here.
While we are beguiled by the media on the subject of the Smollett hoax, a serious policy shift could be occurring in the Trump White House.
By the way, NumbersUSA, the largest grassroots group concerned with protecting American workers by keeping immigration numbers low is very concerned by what they are hearing. See one story here.
What do you do? Let the White House know what you think about the Kushner coup going on under the President’s nose. Do it today and every day! Your job is to make your voices louder than those of the Open Borders forces and thus keep the White House on track!
***Stephen Miller is my barometer. I can’t imagine him staying if the Trump White House gets too wobbly on immigration and if he is fired (like Bannon and others) then you know it’s all over for those of us who want to see immigration numbers lowered.
Story about Unaccompanied Alien Children in Florida Shelter is Humorous and Infuriating
This is a story from UPI last week that has been languishing in my posting queue.
It’s a longish story, but worth reading if you want to know more about life (the good life) in a shelter for the “children” who have come across our border illegally and unaccompanied.
I’m only going to bring your attention to a couple of points, one that made me laugh, the other that should infuriate you as it did me!
The point that makes me laugh is this!
The Office of Refugee Resettlement shelter (never mind that they are not refugees!) houses up to 1,600 youths older than 13. However, in almost every paragraph (there are 53 paragraphs!) in the story the teens are referred to as “children.” In fact, the word “child” or “children” is used a whopping 63 times (twice in some paragraphs) while the word “teen” or “teenager” is never used, not even once!
Just that one little linguistic trick is meant to direct your thinking so that you imagine hundreds of little children missing mommy and daddy and crying themselves to sleep each night.
And it infuriates me to read that 670 of the “children” are 17 and older and as they age-out at 18, a big hunt begins to find them “sponsors” to take charge of them so that they aren’t turned over to ICE.
Here are the opening paragraphs of the UPI story,
Feb. 13 (UPI) — A month after federal officials removed the last child from a facility in Texas, 1,600 unaccompanied migrant children are being housed at a so-called temporary emergency shelter in Florida.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services invited UPI and other media on Wednesday to tour the facility in Homestead, Fla., which is located in a former Job Corps facility near the Homestead Air Reserve Base. It is used as a shelter for what HHS calls “unaccompanied alien children,” or UAC — migrants between the ages of 13 and 17 who have no lawful immigration status and no legal guardians able to provide care in the United States.
Since March 2018 more than 6,000 children have been placed at the site and about 4,450 have been discharged to what the department considers suitable sponsors — generally a parent or some other relative — in the United States, according to HHS.
At the time of UPI’s visit, 1,575 children were being sheltered at the facility — 1,143 males and 432 females.
Now check this out! 43% of the “children” are between 17 and 18 years old! (Or, they could be older, see my next post!)
The south campus houses 905 children between the ages of 13 and 16, including 634 males and 271 females, while all 17-year-olds at the facility live on the north campus, which houses 509 males and 161 females.
In case you wondered what happens when the “children” turn 18:
Three months before a “child” turns 18, the sponsor hunt begins in earnest.
Children who turn 18 while in custody at a shelter are considered undocumented immigrants and are released to authorities, Weber said.
There were 21 such cases at the Homestead facility last month and 90 in the past year, the Homestead program coordinator said.
A team of case managers at the facility focuses on finding sponsors for children within three months of their 18th birthday and the program coordinator receives daily reports regarding their status in the two weeks before those children turn 18.
Read the whole story, it is worth your time.
Remember, YOU are paying for all of this! And, more are on the way! You MUST scream at your elected officials—‘Enough is enough!’—and do it at every opportunity! Today, you might tell the President (again!) by going to the White House comment page and voicing your opinion.
What We Lost When Trump Fired Jeff Sessions
“He obsessed over the connection between crime and immigration, and he believed that Islam was an inherently violent religion.”
(Andrew McCabe says of Jeff Sessions)
On the day after Trump’s big cave that will now allow more migration to your towns and cities, the Leftwing publication ‘Slate’ joyfully tells us about how the liar and fraud—former Deputy Director of the FBI Andy McCabe—described his former boss Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Of course this is meant to further denigrate a man who for decades fought tirelessly in the US Senate against amnesty for illegal aliens and was the first US Senator to back Donald Trump in his bid for the presidency.
From the hard Left Slate,
According to a Wall Street Journal review of the book, McCabe wrote in his book that Sessions was only interested in immigration issues. He obsessed over the connection between crime and immigration, and he believed that Islam was an inherently violent religion, according to the Post. When presented with a counterterrorism case, he would first ask where the suspect was born or where the suspect’s parents were from. “He blamed immigrants for nearly every societal problem and uttered racist sentiments with shocking callousness,” Miller concluded from McCabe’s book.
McCabe’s assessment is surprising in only that it comes so bluntly from a man who once was acting head of the FBI but now seems intent on speaking out against the men who made his professional and personal life so difficult for 10 months (before he was fired just hours before his planned retirement, blocking him from receiving his full pension benefits). Sessions has a long, long history of making racist and anti-immigrant comments, while also implementing racist and anti-immigrant policies.
You can go read more if you wish, but let me ask you, don’t you agree with Sessions’ assessments (here cast, of course, in the harshest of terms by Slate)? You must, or you wouldn’t be reading my blog!