'REFUGEE' RESETTLEMENT ACCELERATES IN OBAMA'S FINAL MONTHS
'REFUGEE' RESETTLEMENT ACCELERATES IN OBAMA'S FINAL MONTHS
Admissions of Syrians, Somalis ahead of last year's pace
December 20, 2016
PAUL BREMMER Through the first 11 weeks of fiscal year 2017, the United States welcomed 23,428 individuals as “refugees,” according to the Refugee Processing Center. At this rate, the U.S. will resettle roughly 110,580 this fiscal year, which would exceed President Obama’s target of 110,000.
Contrast that with last year, when the U.S. welcomed only 13,786 “refugees” through the first 11 weeks of FY 2016. The country would end up welcoming 84,995 by fiscal year’s end.
Leo Hohmann, a veteran journalist and WND news editor, sees this as part of a “concerted effort” by the Obama administration to admit as many as possible before Donald Trump becomes president.
“Get them here before Trump takes office on Jan. 20, because you don’t know exactly what Trump will do with regard to this controversial program,” is how Hohmann summarized the current administration’s attitude. “The left is in panic mode because this program has run on autopilot for 35 years, and now for the first time we have a president who has expressed an interest in taking a hard, critical look at how it is run and the effects it’s had on our cities, states and country.”
The program to which Hohmann refers is the U.S. State Department’s Refugee Admissions Program, which he writes about extensively in his brand-new book“Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration and the Resettlement Jihad.”
This program does not need to be renewed each year; it has run on autopilot since Congress passed and President Jimmy Carter signed the Refugee Act of 1980. However, the president has the authority to set an annual ceiling on the total number of refugees admitted, as well as to determine which nationalities and how many of each to let in.
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While Obama has set his sights on admitting 110,000 refugees this fiscal year, Daniel Horowitz, senior editor at Conservative Review, noted Trump can block the roughly 80,000 who are scheduled to come in after he takes office.
“To begin with, §212(f) of [the] Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president unilateral authority at will to shut down any form of immigration under any circumstance,” Horowitz explained in a recent column. “In particular, §207 delegated to the president full authority to set the number of refugees to be admitted in a given year. Thus, Trump can easily shut down refugee resettlement through executive action on day one of his administration.”
Hohmann holds a similar hope the president-elect will use his executive power to curtail the refugee resettlement program.
“Trump could decide to put in place a complete moratorium on all refugee resettlement from Muslim-majority nations like Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq, or he could significantly slow up the influx from these countries using what he calls ‘extreme vetting,'” Hohmann advised.
He explained those are the “big four” that have been the source of a steady flow of Shariah-compliant Muslims into the U.S. since the 1980s.
Through the first 11 weeks of this fiscal year (Oct. 1 through Dec. 17), the U.S. admitted 3,074 refugees from Syria, according to data from the Refugee Processing Center. This puts the nation on track to welcome more than 14,500 Syrians by the end of the fiscal year. Meanwhile, at this point in FY 2016, the U.S. had only admitted 674 Syrian refugees on its way to admitting 12,587 for the whole year.
And more than 97 percent of the Syrian refugees admitted so far this fiscal year are Muslims, as were more than 99 percent of Syrians admitted last year.
Hohmann said the U.S. has had the opposite of “extreme vetting” of Syrians over the past eight years.
“It’s gone from slack to even slacker,” he observed. “Back in the spring, Obama cut the screening period on Syrian refugees from 18-24 months down to three months by sending more screeners to the United Nations camps in Jordan and setting up a template that basically takes the refugees’ story of who they are and runs a search of social media and government databases to see if they can refute that story.
“Since there is little to no law enforcement data available on people who claim to be Syrians and false passports are easily purchased on the black market, we have no idea who these people are coming to our country as so-called Syrian refugees.”
While many Americans worry about the influx of Syrians, the U.S. has taken in even more refugees from Somalia this year. Through the first 11 weeks of FY 2017, the U.S. resettled 3,269 Somali refugees. At this rate, the country would absorb more than 15,550 by fiscal year’s end. At this point in FY 2016, the U.S. had only admitted 1,721 Somali refugees on its way to taking in 9,020 for the year.
More than 99.9 percent of the Somalis admitted this fiscal year are Muslims, as was the case in FY 2016 as well.
Hohmann noted Somali refugees are probably an even bigger risk than Syrians, as Somalis have committed several terrorist attacks on U.S. soil recently.
“There’s been no debate in Congress or the media asking the obvious questions: Why is America still taking thousands of refugees every year from Somalia more than 25 years after that country’s civil war broke out?” Hohmann asked. “How many is too many, and why aren’t the Somalis doing a better job of assimilating? Dozens have gone off to fight for overseas terror organizations while even more have been charged, tried and convicted here at home of providing material support to overseas terrorists.”
Horowitz, the author of “Stolen Sovereignty: How to Stop Unelected Judges From Transforming America,” pointed out the U.S. is bringing in Somali refugees at a record pace, even though Somalia collapsed more than two decades ago.
“Think about this: We’ve brought in 3,000 Somalis in just two-and-a-half months,” Horowitz wrote. “That is outpacing our typical 8,000-10,000 that we’ve unprecedentedly brought in almost every year for over two decades. Thousands more have come from other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Clearly, Obama is trying to front-load refugee resettlement and set it in motion for the remainder of the fiscal year, even after he leaves office.”
Horowitz acknowledged Minnesota and Ohio continue to be pumped full of Somali refugees even though Minneapolis and Columbus have had terror recruitment problems within their Somali communities. What’s more, Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America has continued as relatively large numbers of Somali and Syrian refugees have been planted in small-to-mid-sized cities such as Bowling Green, Kentucky; Owensboro, Kentucky; and Erie, Pennsylvania.
But Obama has no right to concentrate so many refugees in one place, according to Horowitz.
“This is a clear violation of the refugee law,” he admonished. “The statute directs the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to ‘insure that a refugee is not initially placed or resettled in an area highly impacted by the presence of refugees or comparable populations.’ When making this determination the director of ORR is supposed to take into account, among other things, ‘the proportion of refugees and comparable entrants in the population in the area.’ [8 U.S.C. 1522]”
Texas leads all states in terms of receiving refugees so far this fiscal year, having welcomed 2,217. Hohmann said Texas has spent the last 10 to 12 years being inundated with refugees.
“Despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to pull his state out of the federal resettlement program, the refugees just keep coming,” he lamented. “Amarillo, Texas, has been particularly hard hit, and I go into the situation there in some detail in my book.
“It’s important to remember that the resettlement program has not been supported solely by Democrats, but also Chamber of Commerce Republicans who see it as yet another avenue for the importation of cheap foreign labor. We’ve seen many Republican governors, for instance, support the program enthusiastically. Governors like Nikki Haley in South Carolina, John Kasich in Ohio, Rick Snyder in Michigan, they’ve all been on board with the program.”
In fact, seven of the top 10 refugee-receiving states so far this year were ones that voted for Trump on Nov. 8 (Texas, Arizona, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky). Only three of the top refugee destinations (California, New York and Washington) voted for Hillary Clinton.
Ann Corcoran, a leading refugee watchdog who authors the Refugee Resettlement Watch blog, told WND she believes the Obama administration and the federal resettlement contractors are deliberately trying to turn red states blue by injecting them with refugees who are likely to vote for Democrats.
“Of course it would take a while with refugee numbers, but add in the illegals, et cetera, in those states and, yes, it is about turning the state,” Corcoran said. “Consider it the California model – it worked there!”
Hohmann said while he can’t prove the State Department and the federal contractors have targeted red states over blue ones, it wouldn’t surprise him. But he warned that the availability of housing is the biggest factor in determining the placement of refugees.
“They are bringing the refugees in so fast right now that it’s difficult to find places to house them,” he revealed. “I’ve been hearing stories from my sources that some are being secretly housed in Muslim-owned hotels and being held there until openings can be found in local apartment complexes. Housing is always the key for this program. That’s why I often tell people to be wary of government-subsidized housing projects being built in your city because this is often a precursor to refugee resettlement, especially if you have a liberal mayor at the helm of your city.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/12/refugee-r...pOSRJJHg3zd.99
