President Biden and Congress Need To Think Bigger On Refugee Resettlement In The U.S.

The Biden administration has managed an almost flawless first 100 days in office. The media villagers cannot handle all this competency and professionalism, they are used to the “chaos theory” of the Florida man. They were often complicit partners in generating his daily chaos.

This weekend, the media villagers have been falling all over themselves trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill, and falling back on their lazy “dems divided” meme (as the GQP implodes), desperate to find anything negative to say about Joe Biden because their “bothersiderism” brand of reporting requires it.

The AP has one of the lesser offensive pieces of this reporting this weekend. After outcry, Biden plans to lift refugee cap in May:

President Joe Biden plans to lift his predecessor’s historically low cap on refugees by next month, after initially moving only to expand the eligibility criteria for resettlements and getting swift blowback from allies in return.

In an emergency determination signed Friday, Biden stated the admission of up to 15,000 refugees set by President Donald Trump this year “remains justified by humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest.” But if the cap is reached before the end of the current budget year and the emergency refugee situation persists, then a presidential determination may be issued to raise the ceiling.

That set off a deluge of criticism from top allies on Capitol Hill such as the second-ranking Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, who called that initial limit “unacceptable.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said later that Biden is expected to increase the refugee cap by May 15, though she didn’t say by how much.

Asked Saturday by reporters about the cap, Biden didn’t offer new details. “We’re going to increase the number,” he said after golfing in Wilmington, Delaware. “The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people. We couldn’t do two things at once. But now we are going to increase the number.”

Biden’s use of the word “crisis” raised some eyebrows — and caused hysteria among some on the right — because the White House had bent over backwards in recent weeks to avoid the politically charged term to describe the situation at the border, opting instead for words like “challenge.” But the White House also insisted that it was taking the matter seriously no matter the nomenclature, but any link between the border and the administration’s decision on refugees was not immediately clear.

Biden has been consulting with his advisers to determine what number of refugees could realistically be admitted to the United States between now and Oct. 1, the end of the fiscal year, Psaki said. “Given the decimated refugee admissions program we inherited,” she said it’s now “unlikely” Biden will be able to boost that number to 62,500, as he had proposed in his plan to Congress two months ago.

But Biden, she said, was urged by advisers to “take immediate action to reverse the Trump policy that banned refugees from many key regions, to enable flights from those regions to begin within days; today’s order did that.”

The new allocations provide more slots for refugees from Africa, the Middle East and Central America and lift Trump’s restrictions on resettlements from Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

The White House indicated the border situation was partly why Biden had not acted before now, even though migrants at the border do not go through the same vetting process as refugees.

“It is a factor,” said Psaki, noting that the Office of Refugee Resettlement “has personnel working on both issues and so we have to ensure that there is capacity and ability to manage both.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said he didn’t buy that.

“This cruel policy is no more acceptable now than it was during the Trump administration,” Blumenthal said. “To be clear: the asylum process at the southern border and the refugee process are completely separate immigration systems. Conflating the two constitutes caving to the politics of fear.”

Since the fiscal year began last Oct. 1, just over 2,000 refugees have been resettled in the U.S.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken notified Congress on Feb. 12 of a plan to raise the ceiling on admissions to 62,500, but no presidential determination followed. The law does not require congressional approval and past presidents have issued such presidential determinations that set the cap on refugee admissions shortly after the notification to Congress.

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Biden in a letter Friday that his inaction “undermines your declared purpose to reverse your predecessor’s refugee policies.”

Menendez said it also makes it unlikely that the program can hit its target next budget year of 125,000, which Biden has pledged to do.

Refugee resettlement agencies said it was important that admissions go higher even if it’s not possible to meet the target to send a message that America will be a leader again in offering safe haven to the world’s oppressed.

Some 35,000 refugees have been cleared to go to the United States, and 100,000 remain in the pipeline and their lives remain in limbo, said David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee.

“This leadership is sorely needed,” he said.

Under Biden’s new allocation, 7,000 slots are reserved for refugees from Africa, 1,000 from East Asia, 1,500 from Europe and Central Asia, 3,000 from Latin America and the Caribbean and 1,500 from the Near East and South Asia. A reserve of about 1,000 slots can be used as needed.

The State Department, which coordinates flights with resettlement agencies, booked 715 refugees to come to the United States with the anticipation that Biden would have acted by March, but those flights were canceled since the refugees were not eligible under Trump’s rules, according to resettlement agencies.

Most of the refugees are from Africa and fleeing armed conflict or political persecution. Trump limited most spots to people fleeing religious persecution, Iraqis who have assisted U.S. forces there, and people from Central America’s Northern Triangle.

Unaccompanied minors from Central America’s Northern Triangle are seeking asylum. They are not applying for refugee status. There are more refugees today worldwide than at any time since World War II. The increase to 62,500 refugees is unrealistic and wholly inadequate.

Let’s start with those individuals who have assisted U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Syria), now that the U.S. is withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Congress needs to enact a refugee resettlement program similar to the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act (1975) in which war refugees from South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were allowed to enter the United States under a special status, and the act allotted for special relocation aid and financial assistance. There also needs to be an evacuation plan now for war refugees before the U.S. completes its withdrawal by September 11, and resettlement to the United States under a special status.

Have we forgotten the debt we owe to those who have assisted the United States? I am old enough to have lived through the Resettling Vietnamese Refugees in the United States (excerpt):

President Gerald Ford acknowledged the serious human rights issues facing many South Vietnamese residents. These included forced relocation, being held as political prisoners, and even death. Many abandoned their homes and sought asylum and refugee status in the United States and other Western nations. To pave the way for the refugees’ arrival, Ford gathered a coalition of church groups, southern Democratic governors, labor leaders, and the American Jewish Congress to secure housing and jobs.

Several airlifts were organized to bring Vietnamese refugees and asylum-seekers to the U.S. Close to 120,000 were rescued and relocated following the war. Ford stated, “[T]o ignore the refugees in their hour of need would be to repudiate the values we cherish as a nation of immigrants, and I was not about to let Congress do that.”

Some were critical of President Barack Obama that he did not create a similar war refugee program for Iraqi’s when the U.S. initially withdrew from Iraq at the end of 2011, before later having to return to fight ISIL (fka Al Qaida in Iraq). Does anyone seriously believe that Republicans in control of Congress at the time would have permitted such a program?

In January 2020, the Iraqi Council of Representatives passed a non-binding measure to “expel all foreign troops from their country,” including American and Iranian troops. In March 2020, the U.S.-led coalition began transferring control over a number of military installations back to Iraqi security forces. We are gradually withdrawing from Iraq as well. And we sure as hell should not abandon our loyal Kurdish allies in Iraq and Syria who have done the bulk of the fighting against ISIL.

Back in December, during the interregnum, the Washington Post reported Thousands of Afghans and Iraqis are under threat for helping Americans. Now they hope Biden will help them resettle in the United States.

President-elect Joe Biden will inherit a backlog of tens of thousands of such cases from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and a bureaucratic tangle that refugee advocates say President Trump ignored or made worse.

“We have a moral obligation to those who served shoulder to shoulder with our men and women on the ground and who put their security and the security of their family members at risk,” said retired Gen. David H. Petraeus, who commanded U.S. forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The backlog includes about 17,000 Afghan translators and others who helped U.S. forces or diplomats and who are seeking special visas to resettle in the United States. With immediate family members who would come too, those applications represent an estimated 70,000 Afghans. The number for Iraqis is estimated at about 100,000.

Many claim harassment or death threats, and the danger may increase as Trump plans to withdraw additional U.S. forces from war zones where Americans have been deployed for nearly 20 years.

[T]he interpreters are among more than 1,000 Iraqi and Afghan applicants who signed a petition to Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris this month.

“Many of them risked everything to work with U.S. Armed Forces in our countries (Afghanistan and Iraq) because we believe in America and its values. Because of this, we have been threatened and targeted” by the Taliban, the Islamic State and other armed groups that consider them traitors, the current and former interpreters wrote.

[A]dvocates for the interpreters said delays that mounted over the past four years are due in part to new security and bureaucratic requirements, while denials for seemingly qualified applicants increased.

“Even people who applied at the end of Obama’s time are still waiting, or their visa was denied for no reason during the Trump administration,” said Janis Shinwari, a former Afghan interpreter who came to the United States under the special visa program seven years ago.

“It didn’t happen before the Trump administration that visas were getting denied for no reason. Now I know hundreds of them,” said Shinwari, a founder of the advocacy group No One Left Behind, which organized the petition.

Bureaucratic paralysis and confusing requirements predate the Trump administration, but worsened over the past four years with inexplicable or impossible demands of applicants that advocates claim are rooted in Trump’s larger efforts to stem both illegal and legal immigration.

“From everything I know, they intentionally sabotaged it,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a former Marine Corps officer in Iraq.

“I don’t have direct evidence of that, but just listen to what they say,” said Moulton, who helped one of his translators come to the United States. “They said from Day 1, they are going to target immigration and target people who don’t look like White Americans.”

The Trump administration has far overshot the congressional mandate of nine months to process each case, with the average wait time now topping three years. Wait times also exceeded the nine-month window during the Obama administration, with officials from both administrations blaming the demands of performing rigorous background checks.

This special immigrant visa program appears to be the problem. The various programs to be streamlined into a refugee resettlement program, similar to the one enacted at the end of the Vietnam War. Congress needs to act now.

The Trump administration admitted more applicants overall from the special immigrant visa program than did the Obama administration in the four years before Trump was elected. The figure under Trump was 46,941; for Obama’s second term the figure was 31,637.

But lawyers for would-be refugees say applications are frequently denied for reasons caused by the years-long delays between application and various stages of review, meaning applicants are being punished for the system’s own failures.

“They submit into a black hole and for two or three years they hear nothing,” said Deepa Alagesan, a senior attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Alagesan, whose organization sued both the Obama and Trump administrations over processing delays, said the initial application to the embassies in Kabul and Baghdad is often the biggest stumbling block. If the applicant moves past that screening, which refugee advocates complain is opaque and overly arbitrary, there may be 13 more steps to go before a visa is issued.

“It seems very much like it depends on who is reviewing,” said Megan McDonough, a lawyer with IRAP who works directly with Afghan and Iraqi applicants.

The State Department inspector general calculated the average number of days it takes the government to process a successful Afghan special immigrant visa at 852, or about two years and three months. That does not include the time it takes applicants to submit paperwork and complete other tasks to move their cases from one rung of the bureaucratic ladder to the next.

Up to 4,000 Iraqis would have been able to immigrate to the United States in fiscal year 2020 under a separate program for Iraqi refugees who helped Americans or are members of a persecuted minority. The program admitted 161 Iraqis in the period ending Sept. 30, only partly as a result of delays and restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden has pledged to restore Trump’s cuts to the separate general refugee program, which serves applicants from across the globe. The Trump administration has capped the number of refugees it will admit into the United States at 15,000 for 2021, a historic low.

Biden has not specified plans for the Afghan and Iraqi programs, but Antony Blinken, Biden’s nominee to become secretary of state, has promised to expand them.

Now is the time to propose your plan, Mr. Secretary. As U.S. troops begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq, those “17,000 Afghan translators and others who helped U.S. forces or diplomats and immediate family members, represent an estimated 70,000 Afghans.” The number for Iraqis is estimated at about 100,000.

This is well above the 62,500 number of refugees currently being floated. To quote President Gerald Ford, “[T]o ignore the refugees in their hour of need would be to repudiate the values we cherish as a nation of immigrants, and I was not about to let Congress do that.” Congress needs to enact a new Migration and Refugee Assistance Act for Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

And it is time for Congress to start moving forward on comprehensive immigration reform and asylum reform to deal with Central American migration.

Quitcher bitchin’ about what the White House should do to bail out your own congressional inaction, and just do your damn job.