Ronald Reagan was NOT responsible for Refugee Act
of 1980; fake news from The Salt Lake Trib. Posted by Ann Corcoran on June 10, 2018.
Letter: Hatch and Lee shouldn’t allow an immigration critic to
dismantle Reagan’s refugee system. As a returned Peace Corps volunteer who
strongly supports our nation’s efforts to assist families fleeing conflict and
persecution around the world, I share your deep concern (Tribune editorial:
“Lee and Hatch Should Stand Against Mortensen,” June 2) about President Trump’s
nomination of Ronald Mortensen as assistant secretary of state for the Bureau
of Population, Refugees and Migration.
No wonder people can’t trust the big print media anymore.
Don’t
mainstream media outlets have some responsibility to fact check letters to the
editor or can anyone just make up ‘facts’ from history, that are very easy to
check, and just throw them out there for the gullible public?
I looked for a photo of Eric Goldman,
but there are too many political activists with that name, but heck, why not
illustrate this story with this refugee convicted murderer from Burma resettled
in Utah by Catholic Charities or the International Rescue Committee.
Before
I get to the letter from someone named Eric Goldman, let me
say that there was a time that I wrote in glowing terms about the reporting
from The Salt Lake
Tribune and that was when they did super reporting on the
horrific rape and murder of Hser Ner Moo, a little Christian Burmese refugee,
by a fellow refugee from Burma (a likely Rohingya) named Esar Met.
The Salt Lake Tribune actually
sent a reporter to the camps in Thailand to get the full
story.
But, that was before the Mormon church had drunk the koolaide on the UN/US
Refugee Admissions Program and began enthusiastically welcoming refugees of all
stripes to Utah.
Click
here for all of my
posts on this Utah murder case that was never thoroughly reported on a national
level, but see what a good job the Trib did in its coverage. (I think it was
never widely reported because Esar Met didn’t fit the media image of a
refugee—lovable, grateful and hardworking.)
Now back to my beef today with The Salt Lake Tribune…..
It
is one thing to print false information in a letter, but surely the editorial
page editor shouldn’t repeat the fake news in the headline!
As a fellow at the Center for
Immigration Studies, a conservative think tank, Mortensen has been one of the
nation’s harshest critics of immigration reform and has engaged in visceral
attacks against Republican senators John McCain and Marco Rubio, the Mormon
church, and evangelical leaders for their support of these reform efforts.
Clearly,
the nomination of someone so controversial is one more step in the
administration’s effort to dismantle the public-private partnership that has
helped countless communities such as Salt Lake City resettle refugees successfully
since President Ronald Reagan signed the current Refugee Act into law in 1980.
Under Mortensen, we can expect to
see the complete dismantlement of our system of refugee resettlement that our
nation has developed, refined and strengthened over the past four decades. I
only hope our representatives in Congress, including Sens. Lee and Hatch, will
speak out to oppose this nomination and work to restore our nation as a
champion of freedom and hope for refugees around the world.
Eric Goldman, Salt Lake City - It should have taken Mr. Goldman, or
the Trib editor, about 30 seconds to find out that it was the peanut farmer
from Georgia, Jimmy Carter, who signed Ted Kennedy’s bill in to law in March of
1980. (St. Patrick’s Day—cute for Teddy!) Duh! Reagan wasn’t elected
until November of that year! Read all about it here:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=33154
But,
I can’t place all the blame on the Lefties and the biased media for continuing
to promote fake news. One of the most egregious purveyors of this false
information was Republican operative Grover Norquist. We reported Norquist’s big lie in 2014, thanks to a reader tip! Do
not miss Norquist’s 2014 letter in
which Republicans call for more refugee resettlement. See who signed the letter!
However, Reagan
did preside over a very large flow in to the country in the first year of the
program. I checked some numbers at the ORR
Annual Report to Congress for 1980 and
this is what I found (in rounded numbers):
Southeast
Asians (Cambodia, Laos, VN): 167,000
Soviets
(mostly Jews and religious minorities): 21,000
Eastern
Europeans: 5,000, Cubans: 37,000, Middle Easterners: 2,000, Africans: 500 What did most of those refugees have in
common? They were escaping COMMUNISM, so Reagan likely
had no problem welcoming them to the country.
Today
those last 2 categories, Middle East and Africa, are among the largest
refugee-producing regions of the world, some of it due to ongoing in-fighting
among Muslims.
Unfortunately, The Salt Lake Tribune letter is behind a paywall, but if you feel strongly,
please take time to comment!
I
thought it best to take a screenshot of Norquist’s 2014 letter posted at Human Rights First, just
in case it disappears!
I
suppose most of you are not surprised about these Republicans pushing for more
refugee admissions to the US. And, I guess before signing, they never
bothered to check their facts about their primary argument—that Ronald Reagan
created the program! NOT!
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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