Thread: Trump nominates Ronald Mortensen to head State Department refugee program

Trump nominates Ronald Mortensen to head State Department refugee program

Posted by Ann Corcoran on May 25, 2018

Who is Ronald Mortensen?

I had never heard of him, but CNN and other outlets call him an immigration hardliner, a “fellow” at the Center for Immigration Studies.





Clearly a Trump supporter in Romney country, Mortensen said in August of 2016 that Trump is our only hope against corrupt elites. http://archive.sltrib.com/article.ph...26&itype=CMSID


Doing a quick scan of the Utah native’s writing at CIS, we see that he has mostly written about DACA and illegal alien issues, so his experience with the refugee program is apparently limited.


The most recent op-ed I found from him is from 6 months ago at The Hill about how to structure an amnesty for the DACA ‘children’ entitled:


Want to pass the DREAM Act? Let’s combine mercy with justice

Hmmmm?


As a retired Foreign Service officer, he surely has a good feel for the countries and cultures that feed in to the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, and if approved by the Senate (a very long shot!), he might be able to find some experienced people to surround himself with who know where the problems are with the USRAP.

Here is one story from Deseret News:


Trump nominates Utahn to be an assistant secretary of state

SALT LAKE CITY — Utahn Ronald Mortensen was nominated by President Donald Trump Thursday to serve as assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration.


If his nomination is approved by the U.S. Senate, Mortensen, a retired Foreign Service officer with the U.S. State Department, would head the U.S. State Department Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

The bureau’s mission “is to provide protection, ease suffering, and resolve the plight of persecuted and uprooted people around the world on behalf of the American people,” according to its website.

Mortensen has lobbied the Utah Legislature on identity theft and other issues and supported Trump in 2016. He is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan organization that bills itself as “low immigration, pro-immigrant.”
He has been described as continuing to respond to humanitarian crises around the world, including in Mali and Iraq after being recognized by the State Department for his courage during a civil war in Chad.

Mortensen, a veteran who holds a doctorate degree, was on the White House advance team for the 1986 summit between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland that helped lead to an end to the Cold War.

As time goes on, we will hear more about Mortensen. You can be sure that the Refugee Council USA (the lobbying arm of the refugee industry) will soon weigh in. (I haven’t seen anything from them yet.)


Readers may not know that the last Republican (under GW Bush) to hold this position, Ellen Sauerbrey, only got it through a recess appointment. Trump may have to go that route if he wants to fight for Mortensen.

And, then of course, if he is confirmed, the big question will be: Is he the man to push serious reform of the entire program, or simply a place holder?

At present, the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration is headed by a Stephen Miller acolyte, Andrew Veprek, as deputy assistant secretary—an assignment that has the refugee industry in high dudgeon.

Get out the popcorn, this should be a good show!


https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wor...m/#more-167822

Terminate these programs!

Put them in safe zone on their soil and give them a "Comprehensive Plan for Reform" to follow

No US money, no food and no oatmeal.

We need GLOBAL POPULATION CONTROL...not dump the world's overbreeding poor on the backs of US taxpayers!

They want a better life? Quit fighting, get on birth control, keep your pants zipped, get an education and get a damn job on your soil.



START A MOVEMENT FOR THEM TO BUILD AMERICA ON THEIR SOIL...DO NOT COME HERE!



THEY HAVE LAND, THEY HAVE RESOURCES

GO DIVERSIFY THEIR COUNTRIES...THEY SHOVE DIVERSIFICATION DOWN OUR THROATS...TIME TO PASS THE BATON...THEIR TURN!

IF IT IS GOOD FOR US...IT IS GOOD FOR THEM!

SLAM OUR BORDER SHUT!

Trump administration nominates immigration hard-liner for migration post at State Department


Washington (CNN)The Trump administration has tapped immigration hard-liner Ronald Mortensen to be the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

Mortensen, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank that advocates restricting legal and illegal immigration, previously worked for the State Department as a foreign service officer, according to his biography on the center's website.


Mortensen's nomination was announced by the White House on Thursday, among several others, and has to be confirmed by the Senate.

The bureau that Mortensen would be in charge of is expected to provide "protection, ease suffering, and resolve the plight of persecuted and uprooted people around the world on behalf of the American people," according to its mission statement.

According to the State Department, this includes working with refugee and at-risk populations to offer protection and aid.

Mortensen has written several articles published on the Center for Immigration Studies website that are highly critical of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program put in place by the Obama administration that offers protection from deportation for certain individuals who were brought into the United States as children.

In a post he penned in 2009, Mortensen claims that "illegal immigration and high levels of identity theft go hand-in-hand," "children are prime targets" of identity theft by undocumented immigrants and "Illegal aliens commit felonies in order to get jobs," among other things.

In February 2017, Mortensen wrote that "President Trump's Executive Order 13768, 'Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior United States', has shocked illegal aliens and their supporters because, unlike the Obama administration, the Trump administration will not 'exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.' This means that the vast majority of people unlawfully in the United States are once again subject to deportation."




https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/24/polit...sen/index.html

Want to pass the DREAM Act? Let's combine mercy with justice

Why hasn’t Congress been able to pass the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act despite 16 years of trying?


One answer could be that it's because it is a "win-lose" bill. It provides legal status for those brought into the United States illegally as children (known as "Dreamers") while totally ignoring justice for the American victims of job-related felonies committed by those Dreamers.


According to one survey conducted jointly between the University of California, United We Dream (UWD), the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and the Center for American Progress (CAP), 43.9 percent of those who would be covered by the proposed DREAM Act worked before they gained DACA status. That percentage increased to 60.7 percent for DACA recipients over 25 years of age.


The problem is that those Dreamers were unable to legally obtain Social Security numbers, which are required for employment purposes. As a result, in many cases, they used numbers that they obtained fraudulently. In fact, the unlawful use of Social Security numbers is so pervasive that the Obama administration instructed Dreamers not to disclose them when they applied for DACA status.Thus, American citizens whose Social Security numbers were used illegally were left with problems including destroyed credit, arrest records attached to their names, unpaid tax liabilities and corrupted medical records while the Dreamers who were granted DACA status were allowed to walk away from felony crimes such as forgery, Social Security fraud, perjury on I-9 forms and identity theft.


How can Congress fix the problem? An easy answer is that it could try combining mercy for the Dreamers with justice for their American victims. A few provisions that could be added to such a law:

• Require Dreamers to disclose each and every Social Security number they used for employment or other purposes;

• Require government employees to advise the rightful owners of those Social Security numbers that they have been compromised; and

• Restitution for the victims of immigration-related identity theft.

This represents a win-win solution. Dreamers would be able to resolve their immigration status and they would receive amnesty for job-related felonies. American citizens would receive justice through a program that enables them to recover from the devastating financial and emotional consequences that identity theft places on them.


How would restitution work? The DREAM Act could establish a “Dreamer Victims Restitution Fund” (DVRF) funded by a fine paid by each applicant who unlawfully used a Social Security number. The fines could also be tier-based; for instance, a sum of $3,000 for the unlawful use of one number, and $5,000 for the unlawful use of two or more Social Security numbers. Expenses incurred by those who need to fix their credit, arrest and medical records, and by those who need to wipe out unpaid tax liabilities linked to their Social Security numbers, would be reimbursed from the DVRF up to a certain limit.


How would Dreamers get the money to pay the restitution fine? If Dreamers or their parents were unable to pay the fines, the U.S. Chamber, Mark Zuckerberg’s Fwd.US, religious organizations, employers, sanctuary cities and others who support the Dreamers could help applicants cover the cost. It would be better than insisting that those who came here illegally receive amnesty while Americans shoulder all of the costs.


The bottom line is that if the DREAM Act is to be fair to both Dreamers and their victims, it needs to combine mercy with justice. Perhaps a win-win approach will change the fortunes of the Dream Act after 16 years of failed attempts to pass it.


Ronald Mortensen is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies (@wwwCISorg), a nonprofit group that advocates for legal immigration. He holds a Ph.D from the University of Utah and previously worked as a Foreign Service Officer.



http://thehill.com/opinion/immigrati...y-with-justice

"The bureau that Mortensen would be in charge of is expected to provide "protection, ease suffering, and resolve the plight of persecuted and uprooted people around the world on behalf of the American people," according to its mission statement."

----------------------------


Yeah, in other words...STEAL OUR MONEY OUT OF OUR PAYCHECKS AND FORCE US TO PAY FOR THE WORLD...rather than hold these countries RESPONSIBLE for their people!!!

Give them a "Comprehensive Plan for Reform"...No money, No refugees, No asylum on our soil!



STOP GIVING THESE COUNTRIES OUR MONEY AND STOP BRINGING THESE PEOPLE HERE...IT SOLVES NOTHING!

GET THEM ON BIRTH CONTROL!

WE ARE NOT THE ATM MACHINE OR DUMPING GROUND FOR THE WORLD!

THEY HAVE THE LAND AND RESOURCES TO BUILD AMERICA ON THEIR SOIL AND PROVIDE FOR THEM!

(Older Article about Andrew Veprek, mentioned at top of this thread.)

Refugee industry unhappy with new hire at State Department

Posted by Ann Corcoran on March 9, 2018


Unhappy is probably a mild description of the mood of refugee activists inside and outside the government with the posting of Andrew Veprek, described as an aide to the White House’s resident monster, Stephen Miller, to a post as Deputy Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM).
Politico says that inside the agency, other staff might resign in protest.

(They obviously are convinced Veprek is on the side of slowing the refugee flow to America. And, for the record, I don’t know him, so I couldn’t say.)
Here is Politico reporting the latest discouraging news for the once prosperous refugee industry:




Since I couldn’t find a pic of Stephen Miller’s right hand man Veprek, this is my image of how the refugee industry is viewing the appointment.

A White House aide close to senior policy adviser Stephen Miller who has advocated strict limits on immigration into the U.S. has been selected for a top State Department post overseeing refugee admissions, according to current and former officials.
Andrew Veprek’s appointment as a deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) is alarming pro-immigration activists who fear that President Donald Trump is trying to effectively end the U.S. refugee resettlement program.

Current and former officials also describe Veprek’s appointment as a blow to an already-embattled refugee bureau.

The Deep State blabs to Politico:


Veprek is a Foreign Service officer detailed to the White House, which listed him as an “immigration adviser” in a 2017 staff document. He has worked closely there with Miller and the Domestic Policy Council, according to a current State officialand a former one in touch with people still serving in the department. A former U.S. official also confirmed the appointment.


In interagency debates, some administration officials have viewed Veprek as representing Miller’s hard-line views about limiting entry into the U.S. for refugees and other immigrants.

Veprek played an influential role in Trump administration’s December withdrawal from international talks on a nonbinding global pact on migration issues. He also argued in favor of dramatically lowering the nation’s annual cap on refugee admissions, the current and former officials said.


Resignations coming???

Politico continues….


“He was Stephen Miller’s vehicle,” the former State official said. The current official predicted that some PRM officials could resign in protest over Veprek’s appointment.


“My experience is that he strongly believes that fewer refugees should admitted into the United States and that international migration is something to be stopped, not managed,” the former U.S. official said, adding that Veprek’s views about refugees and migrants were impassioned to the point of seeming “vindictive.”


Veprek’s appointment as a deputy assistant secretary is unusual given his relatively low Foreign Service rank, the former and current State officials said, and raises questions about his qualifications. Such a position typically does not require Senate confirmation. [It is significant that Trump has still not chosen an Asst. Secretary for PRM because that job does require Senate confirmation—a hellstorm they are apparently avoiding.—ed]




Politico tells us that Sec. of State Tillerson has given up on the idea of scrapping PRM. If I understand it, he was considering moving the refugee program to Homeland Security, a proposal that had some merit in my opinion.

[….]

The White House referred questions to the State Department. A State Department spokesperson confirmed Veprek’s new role and, while not describing his rank, stressed that Veprek comes to PRM “with more than 16 years in the Foreign Service and experience working on refugee and migration issues.”

[….]

The PRM bureau, like several other bureaus at the State Department, does not yet have an assistant secretary to lead it. People familiar with the bureau say the morale among its employees has sunk to unusually low levels as top officials have left or been reassigned and amid the anti-refugee messages emanating from the White House. But initial worries that Tillerson would scrap the bureau completely have faded, at least for now, as the secretary has scaled back plans to restructure the department.

More here.

In another report on the “refugee hard-liner”, The Hill says this of Trump’s reduction in the number of refugees to be admitted to the US:


The move signaled that there would no longer be a need for all of the 324 resettlement offices that were operating in 2017.

As we reported extensively in the waning years of the Obama Administration, the State Department was on a high identifying as many as 40 prospective NEW resettlement sites.

Elections have consequences after all.


But the consequences come with a time stamp and if there is no move to reform the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program by Congress, by changing the law, during the Trump Administration, the program will simply pick up where it left off when a new President (without Trump’s guts) comes in, bumps the numbers up, opens those offices and away they will go!


Where is Congress?


https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wor...te-department/

Related:

White House Weighs Taking Refugee Programs Away From State Department

https://www.alipac.us/f12/white-hous...rtment-359094/

Based on reading, in my opinion, Andrew Veprek is better suited for this position as far as protecting and promoting "America First" in immigration matters. Appointing another amnesty supporter and someone who may like refugee influx does not seem to me as the best choice.