Strong reactions (fear too!) from federal refugee
resettlement contractors/supporters in wake of Trump win, by Ann Corcoran 11/15/16
“I do believe that future
flows will be affected significantly!” (Doris Meissner reacting
to Trump win)
Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart has
a good piece yesterday, a compendium of views from the refugee contractors and
immigration industry activists. Check it out here.
I’ve got a couple more stories I
want to mention this morning. The first is one focusing on Rutland, VT
which has just recently been chosen by the US State Department as a new site for
Syrian Muslim refugee resettlement after months of strong opposition that
roiled the political waters in the town.
Will Rutland get its 100 Syrians, or
not?
The article at Vermont Public
Radio features
quotes from Doris Meissner, a woman who is the doyenne of the Washington DC
refugee/asylum/immigration circles.
Meissner was around for the passage
of the original Refugee Act of
1980 and I’ve heard her speak a couple of times over the
years. (Her bio is here)
The first time was at the
‘celebration’ for the 30th anniversary of the Refugee Act at Georgetown University in 2010. I
was struck by one thing Ms. Meissner said at a conference that seemed heavily
weighted toward a discussion of the asylum portion of the Act and the
opportunities it afforded to get more people in to the US.
She told the audience that the
original discussions about asylum were geared toward the odd ballet dancer
(referencing Russians I presume) who would ask for asylum when performing in
the US. But, she and the audience seemed to be pleased that asylum was now a
process that was getting tens of thousands in to the US each year as they feared
the normal channel for refugee resettlement was constricting and not fast
enough for their purposes.
In 2011, I wrote this post about asylum-seeking-Somalis at our southern border
and suggested
a Congressional investigation (where are you Trey Gowdy?) to determine if
non-profit groups were actually aiding and abetting illegal aliens coming
across the world and
who miraculously (who pays for the travel?) got the US southern border and knew
to ask for asylum. Meissner is quoted as saying that they have to wait
too long in our normal process so they come here illegally. Congress should
call Meissner to testify. The specter of Donald Trump was haunting them already on October 29,
2015:
Again at Georgetown University, this
time in October 2015, Meissner was the moderator of a panel on the upcoming
2016 Presidential election. Trump was on their minds and here is what I said in my post:
The
“Trump phenomenon” has them obviously shaken and they are trying to figure out
how to cope with it. The phrase “Trump phenomenon” was practically the
first words out of Ms. Meissner’s mouth when she opened the session. They
expected immigration to be an important issue in 2016, but with a different
tone to the discussion, not Trump’s outright “anti-immigrant tone.” The whole
presentation that followed was based on the understanding that this audience
was all pro-Democrat/pro-Hillary. The refugee
resettlement industry needs your money (less money=fewer refugees)!
Back to the article at Vermont Public Radio and what Ms. Meissner told them…Doris
Meissner is the former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service, and is currently a Senior Fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in
Washington. She says given the strong language Trump used about refugees in the
campaign, she expects big changes. “It will not be business as usual where refugee
resettlement is concerned once he’s in office, and that might in particular
affect the Syrian program,” Meissner says.
Doris Meissner of the Migration
Policy Institute is obviously pessimistic about future of US Refugee Admissions
Program under President Donald Trump. Will she and her cohorts encourage more
to come illegally and apply for asylum?
Meissner says that while it’s
possible Trump would send back refugees now living in the United States, she
thinks that would be a very costly and difficult. And given the deplorable
conditions in Syria, she believes it’s unlikely. “But I do believe that future flows will be
affected significantly,” she says.
Meissner says U.S. immigration law sets a benchmark of allowing 50,000
refugees a year into the country. But she says the president has the power to
come to Congress on an annual basis to propose boosting or cutting that number,
and she expects Trump to call for reductions.
Funds for the coming year’s refugee resettlement programs are currently
included in the federal budget. But that budget is part of continuing
resolution, which means it needs to be renewed by Congress on Dec. 9.
Meissner says she expects
those funds will remain, but admits nothing is certain. Meissner
gets it, they can’t function without the money Congress appropriates so once
again I am pleading with you to call your member of Congress and your two US
Senators and tell them to DEFUND the RAP in the lame duck session that is now upon us! And, beware!
Look for larger numbers of border
crashers to be asking for asylum. I’ll bet a buck that massive numbers of
immigration lawyers are on standby waiting to process asylum claims especially
if the RAP is slowed or stopped. See what I said about the Migration Policy
Institute here in 2011.
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