President Obama’s proposed refugee admissions for FY2017, which he submitted to Congress for approval, requests that refugee admissions be increased 30 percent from FY2016, from 85,000 to 110,000. The requested budget to administer the program in FY2017 is $1.54 billion, which only includes the costs of resettlement, not the cost of benefits refugees receive after they come to the United States.
Pres. Obama is demanding that Congress provide funding to resettle 110,000 refugees in FY2017. The request is an increase of 30% from FY2016 when Congress funded the resettlement of 85,000 refugees. In previous years, the United States resettled an average of 70,000 refugees per year.
A recent Customs and Border Protection (CBP) report shows that illegal border crossings surged 10% in August countering the usual decrease in crossings due to the hot temperatures. This puts the agency on track to break the 2014 record of family unit apprehensions.
A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies uses data from the 1990 and 2000 Censes and 2010-2014 the American Community Survey (ACS) to show how the adult immigrant population (illegal and legal) has grown from 1990 to 2014 at the county level. The analysis shows that in 232 U.S. counties the number of adult immigrants has quadrupled in 14 years.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ranking Member Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told Senate leadership they oppose a straight reauthorization of the fraud-ridden EB-5 visa program in a FY17 continuing resolution (CR) or appropriations bill. The program must be reformed or allowed to expire on September 30th, they said.
When they returned from August recess this week, Reps. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), David Rouzer (R-N.C.), and Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) signed up to cosponsor Rep. Steve King’s (R-Iowa) bill that would end the practice of birthright citizenship. This brings the total number of cosponsors up to 53, which is the highest amount of cosponsors this bill has had since the 112th Congress.
According to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) the Massachusetts’ immigration court had the lowest deportation rate of any U.S. state last year while ranking as one of the top states in granting asylum to illegal aliens.
During Wednesday’s Commander-in-Chief Forum Donald Trump said that he is open to granting amnesty to illegal aliens who plan on joining the military or are currently serving in the U.S. military. Trump said that this would be a “very special circumstance” and they would have to be carefully vetted but could be granted legal status.
The EB-5 investor visa program is set to expire on September 30, unless Congress can agree on how to reform the program that has become riddled with fraud and abuse. While most of the lawmakers agree that the program needs to be reformed they are gridlocked on what those reforms should be and when the reforms should be enacted.
German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is calling for the accelerated deportations of foreign nationals who are denied asylum. The call is a change of tone for Merkel who, in recent years, has called on the European Union to quickly resettle migrants from outside the region. As a result of her open-borders policies, her approval ratings have declined due to increasing economic and security concerns.
