Trump Bureaucracy Pulling In Two Different Directions On Refugees And DACA
03/04/2018
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The Trump Administration is working hard on the refugee issue—it is slow rolling most refugee adjudications in an effort to underperform on the goal of 45,000 refugee admissions.  That is great for patriotic Americans.  However, despite complaints of a backlog in the ongoing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) mess where kritarchs have ordered all DACA applicants who lost status to be renewed, the Trump Administration is apparently fast tracking those applications.  Even the Aussies see to think that President Trump might back off on the Obama refugee agreement.  Let us pray he does.

First, real patriotic immigration reform in the refugee racket:

But soon after the children’s application was approved by the Department of Homeland Security, President Donald Trump banned all such family admissions, as part of his October 2017 executive order that resumed overall refugee admissions but ordered another 90-day halt on refugees from 11 mainly Muslim countries. In late December, a federal judge ordered that the family arrivals resume—but, almost three months later, Jane has received no updates about her case.

[Trump Has Slowed Refugee Admissions to a Crawl, by Meredith Hoffman, Politico, February 26, 2018]

It appears to be deliberate sabotage, the good kind, by the bureaucracy.  As I suggested before, the State Department doesn't really like their work with refugees, but more importantly, the Trump Administration has learned to slow walk refugees with administrative hurdles.  Probably also thanks to the ongoing purge of the State Department by an otherwise cuckish Rex Tillerson.  Those who remain in the State Department are probably thinking more about promotions rather than doing the unprestigious refugee work.  Better yet would be to replace Tillerson with a right wing veteran of the bureaucrat wars at Foggy Bottom, The 'Stache, John Bolton.  Someone who understands how to Make America Great Again.  He is a skilled knife fighting veteran there and supports a patriotic immigration agenda.  I know some at VDare consider him a neo-con, but he's not, he's a patriot.
The lack of these arrivals, at a time they were legally ordered to resume, is just one window into how the Trump administration has slowed the resettlement process through administrative obstacles, lack of proper staffing and “enhanced security measures,” say advocates and former staffers. Many of them are starting to wonder if the dysfunction is intentional. “The program isn’t being managed—or, it’s being managed to fail,” said Bob Carey, former director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement during the Obama Administration. “What couldn’t be achieved through executive orders is being achieved through administrative roadblocks or lack of will.”

These workers’ impression of engineered chaos comes as the State Department is already using low numbers of refugees to justify the closure of dozens of offices of resettlement agencies, which are private nonprofits that contract with the federal government. The resettlement agencies and employees still standing are left with the question of how to do their jobs under an administration that at best is making resettlement a very low priority.

This shows how the Trump Administration can fight back against the kritarchs interfering with the authority of the Executive Branch.  As Arizona v. U.S. said, immigration is part of foreign policy, and keeping out refugees is a foreign policy prerogative of the President.

However, despite shallow complaints from the Cult Marx left, the Trump Administration, to wit, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is not doing the same with the interference by kritarchs with the prosecutorial discretion program called DACA, something also within the sole discretion of the Executive.

Trump shut down new DACA applications in September. But over 20,000 immigrants who’d already applied are still waiting.

In September, when the Trump administration announced that it was winding down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protected young unauthorized immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation, tens of thousands of immigrants were waiting to hear back about DACA applications they’d already submitted...

According to new statistics from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, at least 20,000 immigrants who applied for the program before the September announcement are still awaiting approval for their applications.

[New Statistics Show The Government Is Sitting On Tens Of Thousands Of DACA Applications, by Dara Lind, Vox, March 1, 2018]

Sadly, if only it were true.  Voxsplainer Lind eventually admits that there is no problem with the DACA applications—those applications are sailing through.
The new statistics show the Trump administration has actually been working hard on DACA — but only for immigrants who already had it.

The administration has sent out tens of thousands of new two-year work permits to DACA recipients who applied for renewals, either before the September 5 announcement or before October 5, when the administration stopped accepting renewals for immigrants whose work permits expired before March 5. DACA recipients whose work permits are set to expire after March 5 weren’t allowed to apply for renewals in the fall but are now able to do so thanks to a January federal court ruling.

At the end of September, there were 82,612 applications for renewal pending at USCIS offices; as of January 31, there were 29,606.

Unfortunately, USCIS has not committed to sabotaging the kritarchs as the State Department has.  USCIS has considerable and effective means to slow walk the illegal interference by a kritarch in prosecutorial discretion decisions, including DACA renewals.  For instance, USCIS could require an in-person interview for any DACA application.  Given the workload of USCIS field adjudicators with other, this could indefinitely delay the illegally imposed DACA renewals.  Other requirements could be require proof of residence for the periods included in the original DACA program, such as presentation of original documents to prove the period of residency, such as school records.  USCIS could also end participation in DACA by those with criminal convictions, of which up to 3 misdemeanors are currently allowed.  There is much similar that could be done, but is not for some strange reason.

There is much the Trump Administration could do to slow walk the DACA renewals, but it appears uninterested and USCIS appears to be much too enthusiastic about the program, which this correspondent warned about, repeatedly, and suggested solutions.

President Trump needs to fight the kritarchs at all levels: some dirty street fighting in the bureaucracy is in order.

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