Thread: Tillerson argued with a second White House aide

Judy wrote (excerpt):

Rex Tillerson would never "yell" at White House staff, nor would he ever claim the absurdity of "complete autonomy" over his Department.

Unless you know Tillerson personally, I'm going to suggest you have absolutely no way of knowing how Tillerson would respond or behave in a particular way in response to something. Furthermore, unless you were in the room or have more inside information than the rest of us, you can't know what he actually said or didn't say.

Well, I'll stake my knowledge of companies like Exxon-Mobil against anonymous "leakers" in a Politico article every day of the week and twice on Sundays. But of course, you're free to believe whatever unknown anonymous whoever you want. But that was my 2 cents on the subject.

Originally Posted by Judy;1557671[B

]That's because of the court order from Hawaii that was upheld by the 9th circuit.[/B]

You're wrong!

Excerpt:

In her email, Jennifer L. Smith, a department official, wrote that the refugee groups could begin bringing people to the United States “unconstrained by the weekly quotas that were in place.”


Although it came the same day as an appeals court ruling that rejected government efforts to limit travel to the United States from six predominantly Muslim nations, the move by the State Department had nothing to do with the court ruling.

The department’s quotas on refugee resettlement were largely the result of budget constraints imposed by Congress in a temporary spending measure passed last fall. But when Congress passed a spending bill this month that funded the government for the rest of the fiscal year, the law did not include any restrictions on refugee admissions."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/us/politics/united-states-refugees-trump.html

The reduced quotas were the result of Trump's Executive Order. The increases were the result of the Judge's order on the same day. We'll see now that the reduced quotas have been reinstated by the US Supreme Court, if DHS complies with the President's Executive Order. I don't think you'll be hearing too much more about refugees through the remainder of the year because over 45,000 had already been admitted in March according to your NYT's article and more came in during April, May and June, so I think we're done with refugees for the year because we've already reached the cap of 50,000 by now.

Originally Posted by Judy

The reduced quotas were the result of Trump's Executive Order. The increases were the result of the Judge's order on the same day. We'll see now that the reduced quotas have been reinstated by the US Supreme Court, if DHS complies with the President's Executive Order. I don't think you'll be hearing too much more about refugees through the remainder of the year because over 45,000 had already been admitted in March according to your NYT's article and more came in during April, May and June, so I think we're done with refugees for the year because we've already reached the cap of 50,000 by now.

The excerpt I povided above shows clearly that the increased refugee number had nothing to do with the court order. That sounds like it's all on Tillerson.

"Although it came the same day as an appeals court ruling that rejected government efforts to limit travel to the United States from six predominantly Muslim nations, the move by the State Department had nothing to do with the court ruling."

U.S. to increase number of refugees allowed in, reversing a sharp decline under Trump

May 27, 2017
Melissa Etehad

The State Department announced that it will lift its restriction on the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States, after a steep decrease in arrivals in recent months amid President Trump’s efforts to limit entry.

In an email sent to agencies tasked with helping refugees from around the world apply for resettlement in the U.S., the State Department said that it will raise its quota from around 900 weekly refugee arrivals to approximately 1,500, refugee advocates said.

“This happened quickly, and everyone is still trying to figure out what it means,” said Jen Smyers, director of refugee policy and advocacy with the Church World Service, one of the nine official U.S. refugee resettlement agencies. “It is good news for people seeking protection and trying to reunite with family members, but it is still far from what we are hoping to see.”

The sudden and quiet change in the State Department’s policy will affect tens of thousands of refugees who have completed the nearly two-year-long application process but were waiting in limbo during the legal fights over Trump’s executive orders attempting to bar refugees.

The State Department’s announcement came the day after a federal appeals court upheld a nationwide injunction barring the Trump administration from enforcing the travel ban. But refugee aid groups said the department’s move was based on Congress’ approval this month of funding for refugee admission.

A look at the decline in refugees entering the U.S. under Trump

Last October, Congress passed a temporary government spending bill that expired at the end of April. When lawmakers recently approved a budget for the rest of this fiscal year, it included funding for 75,000 refugee admissions, similar to that in previous years.

But with less than five months left in fiscal year 2017 and Trump’s revised travel ban still on appeal in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court, refugee aid groups are concerned about whether they can resettle even 70,000 refugees, far fewer than the 85,000 admitted last year.

“I worry the damage has been done internationally,” said Erol Kekic, executive director of the immigration and refugee program at Church World Service. “Agencies that do refugee processing have been so severely cut [including] staff laid off that even if the money is made available, it will take time.”

A recent report published by the Pew Research Center found that monthly refugee arrivals dropped in all but four states during the 2017 fiscal year. It also found refugee arrivals declined from 9,945 in October to 3,316 in April.

In the months after Trump signed his first travel ban in January, the number of weekly refugee arrivals dropped to around 400, according to data from the State Department.

Although the State Department increased the number of weekly arrivals to about 900 in April — following a court injunction in March that stopped Trump’s proposed cap of 50,000 — it was nowhere near the almost 2,000 weekly arrivals that were arriving in the months prior to January.

Refugee advocates welcomed the State Department’s announcement.

“This was long overdue,” said Mark Hetfield, president and chief executive of HIAS, another of the official resettlement agencies. “But I’m happy that refugees who have been vetted and screened can finally start to come.”

Experts are also concerned about the near-complete halt in interviews and screenings by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, which is required for refugees to complete the application process.

“Only people with urgent cases are being screened and interviewed,” Kekic said. “Unless we continue to add people to the pipeline, we aren’t certain if we will be able to even meet the level of 50,000 refugees entering the U.S. for fiscal year 2018.”

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-...527-story.html

_____________________


It was not Tillerson, it was the Court Order issued the day before.

I can certainly see the possibility of a clash with Miller over immigration. It appears that Tillerson is a bit of an appeaser, while Miller is 100% on the side of citizens in this country and against amnesty in any form.

There are several programs that the State Department could address concerning immigration that are detrimental to the US that so far it has not.

Personally, I could not disagree with Tillerson more myself, he sounds like the Obama Administration instead of the Trump Administration and Kelly has been showing his immigration weakness also.

Legal immigrants - yes. Illegal migrants and economic refugees -NO JMO

In his own words...

Rex Tillerson: West must do a better job making immigrants feel welcome

by Joel Gehrke | May 26, 2017, 11:15 AM




Western countries have to grapple with the problem of assimilation in addition to more direct counterterrorism tactics, Secretary to State Rex Tillerson said on Friday.

"For whatever reason, as people immigrate into our countries, whether it be in Great Britain or in the United States or other countries, we seem to have difficulty assimilating those people so that they feel part of our society and would never consider supporting acts of violence against their fellow citizens and their fellow neighbors," Tillerson said during a press conference in London.

Tillerson's remarks, in a joint press conference with UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, came as the U.K. deals with the aftermath of the suicide bombing in Manchester. That attack was carried out by a British-born son of Libyan refugees who traveled back to Libya and likely received Islamic State training in Syria, according to officials.

"I think that it's an extremely complex issue, this mass migration of people that we are witnessing around the world," Tillerson said. "It's not a problem only for Great Britain. It's not a problem only for the United States. It's a problem for countries all over the world. It's one that we have to learn better how to address."

It is especially a problem for Italy, which is separated from Libya by just a few hundred miles of water. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from Africa have set out for Europe from Libya, as the instability in that country has made it a standard point of departure for migrants. Italy, which is hosting a conference of the G7 — the seven largest industrialized democracies — hoped that the group would agree to a statement on the importance of refugee resettlement, but President Trump's team reportedly spiked that proposal.

"In line with President Trump's pledge to build a wall to keep Mexicans out of the United States, the White House has been pressing the G7 leaders to focus more attention on the need to prevent illegal immigrants from crossing borders than on finding migrants who make the journey a permanent home," Foreign Policy magazine reported Friday.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/re...rticle/2624244

Tillerson is wearing the hat of a polite diplomat on the foreign talk circuit. He can't really say what he might want to say in a speech in London after a terrorist attack. I mean the mayor of London is a Muslim and the British Prime Minister has her head all wrapped around the stip-upper lip of ensuring Muslim equality in Great Britain.

Tillerson isn't going to violate Trump's EO, why would he want to? Refugee numbers will virtually stop this month if they haven't already now that the court order has reinstated the refugee reduction called for in the Trump EO on the subject.

Newmexican, I agree that the DOS isn't doing it's job as thoroughly as it should on some of these screenings they conduct at the Consulates and Embassies. That has to be improved dramatically, but that's a lot of foreign service people who have been doing it their way for a long time, it will take strong leadership and better procedures to change it around, and probably some change in personnel to fix the problem, and done in a diplomatic way, because these are the people who have the contacts and relationships for the US in those countries. You don't know who among them might be selling US out and letting terrorists and n'er do wells sneak in on a visa they provided the background information to get through. It's kind of scary when you think about how it actually works and how easy it is to set US up from one of these foreign DOS outposts.

While Tillerson was the head of Exxon, they contributed to LaRaza. Sorry, there are no excuses for Tillerson or his comments. I would hope that Miller would set him straight. Tillerson serves at the pleasure of the President and represents his agenda.



Corporations Exposed Funding More Sanctuary City Advocates

September 1, 2016
3 Min Read

The topic of illegal immigration will be a critical issue in the 2016 presidential campaign and last night we heard Donald Trump highlight the dangers of sanctuary city policies that undermine our nation’s laws by prohibiting law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration officials. Sanctuary cities are essentially havens for criminals and many are released back on the streets to commit more crimes because law enforcement is hamstrung by these policies – as we saw in the tragic death of Kate Steinle in San Francisco.

Earlier this summer, we added Immigration to the issues scored in 2ndVote’s database because corporations like Bank of America, Comcast, and Walmart fund La Raza and LULAC, two liberal organizations that advocate for sanctuary cities.

Our research team has found two more organizations that receive corporate donations and support these dangerous sanctuary policies: the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC) and the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans (AAMA), which is an affiliate of La Raza. Both of these liberal organizations have joined coalitions that have lobbied Congress in opposition to legislations that would defund sanctuary cities.

Below we’ve included lists of the companies that directly fund and partner with these liberal organizations; Starbucks, for example, has donated over $100,000 to AAMA. We think conservatives should study this list and understand how corporations are funding the efforts to keep dangerous sanctuary policies in place.

We’ll continue to follow the Immigration issue and expose the corporations and organizations that support sanctuary cities. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to be the first to see 2ndVote’s latest research.

USHCC Corporate Partners
5/3 Bank
AARP
ACCCE
AFPM
AIG
airbnb
Allstate
Altria
American Airlines
Anheuser-Busch
API
Apple
AT&T
AvisBudgetGroup
Bank of America
BB&T
BBVA Compass
BMW
BNY Mellon
BP
Cancer Institute of America
Capital One
Cargill
CFSA
Chevron
Cigna
City of Dallas
Coca-Cola
Comcast
Comerica
Cracker Barrel
Cummins
CUNA
CVSHealth
Diageo
Duke Energy
eCOM-L@C
EEI
Enterprise Holdings
Experian
ExxonMobil
Facebook
FedEx
FIU
Ford
Fox
FPL
Friedman & Fieger
GE
GM
Goldman Sachs
Google
Goya
GPC
HCA
Heartland
Hilton
Honda
Intel
Johnson & Johnson
JPMorganChase
Kaiser Permanente
Kraft
Kroger
Macy’s
Marriott
Merck
MGM Resorts
Microsoft
MillerCoors
MLB
mobilite
MoneyGram
Motorola
MyBusinessMatches.com
NAB
NACA
NANA
Nationwide
NCTA
netSpend
NewYorkLife
Northrop Grumman
Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
Paychex
Pepsico
Pfizer
PNC
Principal
Prokarma
Shell
SiempreTax
Sodexo
Sprint
Starwood Hotels
State Farm
Supervalu
Target
Telemundo
The Home Depot
The Walton Family Foundation
TIAA-CREF
Toyota
TransCanada
Uber
UDT
Union Bank
UnitedHealth Group
Univision
UPS
US Bank
Verizon
Visa
Walgreens
Wells Fargo
Wyndham Worldwide

https://www.2ndvote.com/corporations...ity-advocates/

Are you Funding Sanctuary Cities and Illegal Immigration? Companies You Support Do

iStockphoto





By DUSTIN SIGGINS Published on July 22, 2016 •
Dustin Siggins


A new report is accusing some of America’s most popular corporations of funding leftist groups that encourage “sanctuary cities” to violate federal immigration law. The approximately 200 cities with sanctuary policies include San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and New York.

According to the conservative corporate watchdog 2nd Vote, many companies — including Southwest, Coca-Cola, Walt Disney, UPS and Toyota — have donated to the National Council of La Raza, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) or the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Many supported all three. 2nd Vote’s list of those who supported La Raza and LULAC appears below.

The groups have also opposed bills in the U.S. Congress that would have eliminated funding for these so-called “sanctuary cities,” which have policies of not reporting to federal immigration authorities when illegal immigrants are arrested and released from custody. (The latest attempt failed earlier this month in the Senate, when Democrats voted almost unanimously to block it.) These bills were proposed after an illegal immigrant who had been deported multiple times killed a woman, Kathryn Steinle, in San Francisco.

One effect is the release back in society of dangerous criminals. “The numbers are ugly,” reports John Perazzo of FrontPage. “Of the 9,295 deportable aliens who were released after their arrest by sanctuary jurisdictions during the first eight months of 2014 alone, some 2,320 were subsequently re-arrested, on new criminal charges, soon thereafter. And before their initial release, 58% of those 9,295 aliens already had felony charges or convictions on their records, while another 37% had serious prior misdemeanor charges.”

Advocates For Lawlessness

“The corporations that fund LULAC and La Raza enable their advocacy for sanctuary cities and their lobbying efforts to promote the lawless and unsafe policies that prevent law enforcement from coordinating with immigration officials,”2nd Vote spokesperson Robert Kuykendall told The Stream. “Through their active involvement and financial support, these companies have purposefully aligned with policy positions that encourage the violation of our immigration laws.”

“The involvement of these companies with LULAC and La Raza is not limited to charitable contributions alone,” continued Kuykendall. “In 2016, over 50 companies sponsored LULAC’s National Convention, the same event where the organization approved a resolution in support of sanctuary city policies in 2015. Furthermore, executives from 25 different corporations sit on La Raza’s Corporate Board of Advisors.”

Kuykendall said that even if they don’t support the advocacy of the immigrant groups, Coca-Cola, AARP, BP and other companies bear culpability for how their money is used.
“The truth is LULAC and La Raza are able to advocate for policies that undermine the rule of law and make our cities much less safe because of help from these companies.”
In addition to its corporate backers, La Raza has received millions of dollars from the federal government, according to its last three annual reports (2013, 2014, and 2015).

CORPORATE SUPPORTERS OF LULAC AND LA RAZA

LULAC
Anheuser-Busch
AT&T
Bank of America
Blue Cross Blue Shield Association
Comcast
Cox
Darden Restaurants
Denny’s Corp.
Exxon Mobile
Ford
GM

Hilton
Mars N.A.
Mead Johnson Nutrition
MillerCoors
Nat’l Cable & Telecommunications Assoc.
Nissan
PepsiCo
Pfizer
Shell Oil
Southwest Airlines
Coca-Cola

P&G
Sherwin-Williams
Walt Disney
Time Warner Cable
Toyota
Tyson Foods
Univision
Verizon
Walgreens
Walmart
Western Union


La Raza
AARP
Airbnb
American Academy of Family
Physicians Foundation
American Beverage Association
American Chemical Society
American Diabetes Association
American Express
American Federation of Teachers
Amerigroup Kansas
Amgen Foundation
Amtrak
Anheuser-Busch Companies
AT&T
Bank of America
Bank of America Foundation
Baxalta
Baxter Healthcare
BBVA Compass
Bloomberg Philanthropies
Blue Mountain Construction Services
BMW of North of America
BP America, Inc.
Caesars Entertainment
California Health & Wellness
Capital One Bank
Centene Corporation
Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities
Cerner Corporation
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
Chevron
Citi
Citi Foundation
City of Kansas City, Missouri
Connect2Complete, Inc.
Cordish
Corporation for National and
Community Service
CVS Health
Direct Selling Association
Discovery En Español
Disney Worldwide, Inc.
Duke Energy
El Rey Network
Eli Lilly and Company
Enterprise Holdings, Inc.
Ewing Kauffman Foundation
Facebook
Fannie Mae
FedEx Corporation

Fiat Chrysler Automobile
Fifth Third Bank
First Book
Florida CHAIN
Ford Foundation
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company Fund
Four Freedoms Fund
Freddie Mac
FuseMedia Group Inc.
GEICO
General Motors Company
General Motors Foundation
Google Inc.
GreenLatinos.org
H&R Block
Hallmark, Inc.
Kansas City
Hilton Worldwide
Honda
Hyundai Motor America
Intuit, Inc.
J.E. Dunn Construction
Jackson County Missouri
Department of Finance
Johnson & Johnson
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
JPMorgan Chase Foundation
Kraft Foods
Levi Strauss Foundation
Marguerite Casey Foundation
Marriott International, Inc.
Master Your Card, Oportunidad
McDonald’s Corporation
Mercury Public Affairs LLC
Metropolitan Area Advisory Committee
MGM Resorts International
MillerCoors, LLC
Mitú Network
Nationwide Insurance
NeighborWorks America
New Venture Fund
Nielsen
Nissan North America
Northern Trust
Ocwen Financial Corporation
Open Society Foundations
Pennsylvania State Voices
PepsiCo Foundation
PepsiCo, Inc.
Perennial Strategy Group LLC

Pfizer RxPathways
Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers of America
Polsinelli
Procter & Gamble
Prudential Financials, Inc.
Raza Development Fund (RDF)
REACH Healthcare Foundation
Red Nose Day Fund
Rockefeller Foundation
Rod and Leslie Aycox Family Foundation
Rosenberg Foundation
Shell
Sodexo, Inc
Southern California Edison
Southwest Airlines
Sprint
Squire Patton Boggs, LLP
State Infrastructure Fund
Target Corporation
The Atlantic Philanthropies
The Bauman Foundation
The Boeing Company
The California Endowment
The Christopher Reynolds Foundation
The Coca-Cola Company
The Comcast Foundation
The Kellogg Company
Charitable Trust Foundation of Science
The Prudential Foundation
The Raben Group, LLC
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
The TJX Companies, Inc.
The University of Kansas
The Walton Family Foundation
The Wyss Foundation
Third Sector New England, Inc.
Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Inc.
Univision Communications, Inc.
UPS
U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services
Urban Development
Venable LLP
Verizon
Verizon Foundation
Viacom
W.K.Kellogg Foundation
Walgreens
Walmart

https://stream.org/funding-sanctuary...l-immigration/