Tag: UAC

Posted on

States Can Combat Illegal Immigration If They Really Want To

 

When Tennessee’s elected tell you that they can’t do anything about illegal immigration, that it’s all up to the federal government to fix, or because the Chamber of Commerce and the NFIB small business lobbyist say it’s anti-business, or because it’s not really a problem in Tennessee because the governor and too many RINO state legislators refuse to acknowledge the growing problem in Tennessee, show them this:

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/01/11/ron-desantis-agenda-blacklist-companies-facilitating-illegal-immigration-to-florida/

DeSantis has been working hand-in-glove with his Republican state legislators to protect his state’s citizens and legal residents from the destructive immigration policies of the Biden administration.

DeSantis has already issued an emergency order to “ban the issuance or renewal of all state licenses to companies or NGOs that provide services to Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) in Florida.” Now he has sent six legislative proposals to the legislature to address the problem of businesses, NGOs, and any other concern whose operations facilitate illegal immigration.

DeSantis is sending a clear and unequivocal message, that these businesses and NGOs are not welcome in his state and he will do whatever is legally within his power and that of the other branches of his state government, to make life untenable for those helping spur illegal immigration.

Tennessee on the other hand, continues to bend over backwards to accommodate the Chamber and NFIB on any business related legislation practically forgetting that big businesses have been moving to Tennessee because of the business-centric benefits. 

For example, Alliance Bernstein moved its headquarters from NYC because it is simply cheaper from any and all perspectives to operate in Nashville as compared to NYC. In addition, their employees could afford to live where they work. They and their woke politics were welcomed with Tennessee taxpayer money.

As to illegal immigration, Tennessee’s state legislators choose to side with the Chamber and NFIB and close their eyes to growing problem in the state. Even with lax workplace enforcement, GOP Rep. Mike Sparks couldn’t stop himself from whining about the fines placed on employers who hire illegal aliens in violation of state law.

And heaven forbid Tennessee actually pass an E-verify law that actually makes sense, assuming a bill that makes sense is actually filed. The E-verify process requires submission of certain documents which then are compared to U.S. government databases to determine “employment eligibility”, ie, that a person is legally authorized to work in the U.S. There are three categories of acceptable documents to establish identity for submission through the E-verify program. If a person cannot submit one of the documents from List A, then they must submit one document from each of List B & C. 

List B includes submission of a drivers license but it must be backed up by a document from List C.

What this means is that Tennessee’s current statute and any bill that relies solely on a drivers license to determine employment eligibility, is meaningless given the numerous documented reports of fraud perpetrated in the issuance of driver licenses. And that’s to say nothing of the implications for voter fraud.

Tennessee legislators spent months and taxpayer money exploring the arrival of UACs to the state and Sen. Richard Briggs and Rep. Ryan Williams making excuses and minimizing the impact of NGO Bethany Christian Services whose Nashville director openly admitted to contracting with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement to receive and provide transitional foster care to UACs extolling the Christian virtue of facilitating illegal immigration to Tennessee.

Catholic Charities of East Tennessee, also reputed to be assisting UAC arrivals to Tennessee, was asked to appear before the committee but simply didn’t show up and the committee just couldn’t be bothered to follow up.

At least two members of the Joint Study Committee, Sen. Richard Briggs and Sen. Bo Watson, after wasting taxpayer money on the study committee, conceded that addressing illegal immigration is a federal problem and they can’t really do anything about it at the state level. Worse still, Watson says we need to look to our federal legislators to fix the problem and Briggs says Tennessee is not in an illegal immigration crisis, so basically, we don’t have anything to be concerned about.

Both Watson and Briggs were cheerleading Mark Green’s UAC refugee bill which allows an illegal alien living in Tennessee to facilitate the smuggling of a child to the U.S. border without any penalty, and which would override the (unlikely) governor’s veto regarding UAC placements in Tennessee.

Tennessee not only has a growing illegal immigration problem strengthened immensely by the proliferation of well-funded NGOs protecting illegal aliens living and working in the state, so much so that they are holding public rallies protesting employers who take advantage of illegal alien workers because they are “undocumented.”

These are the employers being protected by bad policy pushers like the Chamber and NFIB and bad policy makers like Briggs, Watson to name a few.

They could not be more wrong on all counts. We’ve already had the lesson that when Republicans had complete control of the federal government, they did nothing to address the problem of illegal immigration. In fact, they worked against the most impactful, beneficial for Americans, immigration policies put forward by Trump. Why would we expect anything more in 2022 or 2024?

The DeSantis lesson is crystal clear – our Constitutional system of federalism equips states with power if they choose to use it and it is absolutely up to states to guard their own best interests. Unfortunately for Tennessee, the governor’s office and too many in the General Assembly don’t see it that way and perhaps even believe that a certain amount of illegal immigration (ie, cheap labor), is just fine for Tennessee.

Posted on

Pro Illegal Immigration Org Says State Needs to Fund More Services for UACs

A June 2021 report issued by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) says that Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) and the “parents or other sponsors” to whom they are released after being smuggled across the border illegally, need better post-release services.

Better yet, MPI’s report Strengthening Services for Unaccompanied Children in U.S. Communities, recommends that state and local governments and philanthropy should fund legal, medical, mental-health, economic and educational services needed by these illegal aliens. They are especially concerned about UACs who are relocated to “rural and other underserved communities.”

Major funders of MPI include the U.S. State Department, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc, National Conference of State Legislatures, Soros Open Society Foundations, and the Gates Foundation.

MPI emphasizes that immigration status and any immigration enforcement must not be connected to any post-release services provided to either the UAC or their sponsor. The disconnect between immigration status and enforcement is echoed in Mark Green’s UAC bill and was similarly ignored in 2015, when Tennessee state senators voted to reward illegal immigration by awarding in-state tuition to illegal alien students in the state.

Then state senator Green voted for that bill as did Sen. Richard Briggs who supports Green’s UAC bill and also sits on the legislative joint study committee addressing the UAC issue in Tennessee.

One particular post-release service emphasized in the MPI report is free legal representation for UACs since it dramatically increases the likelihood that immigration relief will be awarded so they can remain in the U.S.. Noted in multiple reports is the fact that UACs who do not have attorneys simply don’t show up for their immigration hearings. Per the DHS FY20 enforcement report, of the 6,105 UACs ordered removed by immigration judges 4,514 of them failed to show up in court. That was just for FY20 which one analyst says demonstrates the incentive for UACs to enter illegally because they know they can stay and also incentivizes parents to smuggle their children into the U.S..

The MPI authors claim that after the federal government makes sure to dump the arriving UACs into local communities, “most children receive no federal follow-up services.” MPI says that enhanced post-release services are needed because UACs are traumatized by their trip to the U.S. border (many of whom are smuggled by coyotes paid for by parents also in the U.S. illegally), they may be reuniting with parents who abandoned them in their home country and may have now married in the U.S. and have anchor babies, so integrating into this new environment can be stressful for the arriving UAC. 

Like Green’s UAC bill, the MPI authors acknowledge that there is “no citizenship or immigration-related requirement for sponsor (for the UAC) approval. Green’s bill goes one step further and enables an illegal alien sponsor to override a governor’s veto for UAC placement in a state. This effectively puts a state in a position of abetting illegal immigration which former federal prosecutor Josh Jones says is indisputably “linked with organized crime.”

MPI admits that parent benefit from getting UACs into the U.S.:

“The great majority of unaccompanied children who enter ORR custody are released to a parent or close relative. In FY2020 of children who left ORR custody, about 39 percent were released to a parent, 46 percent to another close relative, and 16 percent to a more distance relative, family friend, or other approved sponsor.”

The open border advocates also want schools to do more to provide support to these new students and their families but admit that not all entrants enroll in school. It is reasonable to assume that the high number of male 15-17 year olds currently entering as UACs are not coming for education. Illegal employment and gang connections are, however, reasonable assumptions based on accumulated data. MPI itself cites (and disputes) 2017 ORR data that “1.6 percent of unaccompanied children in ORR custody had gang affiliations.”

While emphasizing the economic stresses for arriving UACs and their families made worse by the COVID pandemic, MPI also confirms what should be of great concern to legislators:

“Unaccompanied children often lack health insurance and lack access to primary care after release from ORR custody. Some children with jobs cannot access health insurance through their employer if they are not eligible for work permits.” (emphasis supplied)

Anyone else wondering how and where they are working? This admission by the left should be enough for Tennessee legislators to finally require ALL businesses in Tennessee to use E-verify.

In addition, officials reported a “900 percent increase in July for the number of migrants testing (COVID) positive.” And while the federal government is putting travel restrictions in place for U.S. citizens and state and local governments are debating whether to revert to certain COVID restrictions, the Biden administration is moving UACs and other illegal aliens from the border to communities across the country.

At the same time, the Biden administration had earlier threatened Americans further by planning to lift the Title 42 public health restrictions used by the Trump administration to block thousands of illegal aliens from entering the U.S. due to COVID. With numbers increasing, rescinding the Title 42 order is on hold.

In the meantime, GOP Senators John Coryn and Thom Tillis are using the “bipartisan” approach to reward illegal immigration by proposing an amnesty for DACA grantees even while admitting that the Obama program is unconstitutional. Tennessee state legislators Mark White and Todd Gardenhire also wanted to reward beneficiaries of the unconstitutional program. Coryn and Tillis unabashedly admit that it’s about maintaining the workforce. This is no different than Tennessee state legislators who refuse to protect legal workers in Tennessee, especially lower skilled workers, by passing comprehensive E-verify. Tennessee has it’s own misguided pro-illegal immigration state legislators who also are all too willing to concede on the issue. 

Posted on

Judge Shuts Chattanooga UAC Facility But TN Legislators Support Them Coming Anyway

Last week an administrative law judge upheld the state’s license revocation for the federally contracted facility in Chattanooga housing unaccompanied alien children (UAC).

During the (misnamed) Tennessee state legislative Joint Study Committee on Refugees meeting three days prior to the judge’s ruling, the Commissioner of the Department of Children’s Services testified and was questioned extensively by Tennessee legislators about the incidents leading up to the suspension of the facility’s license.

Towards the very end of the hearing, state Sen. Bo Watson (R-Hixson, which is part of Hamilton County), offered some very interesting comments. First he reminded everyone that when discussing UACs and referring to them as “children” can be misleading because the data shows an “overabundance of male older youth” which he put at about 70% who are between 15 – 17 years old. 

Then Watson read an excerpt from correspondence he had received from a constituent prefacing it by stating that “it represents what I would believe is a significant percentage in my district.” He went on to read from the correspondence:

“It is heartbreaking to me to see and hear of children being dropped into our city, separated from their families and left to the government system of the United States. Tennessee must insist on the rights of their citizens in this matter. I hope that you will insist that Tennessee expedites the return of these children to their parents, in their country right away. It is not only abusive to these children, but also to require that Tennessee bear the cost of promoting this child abuse.”

Is it safe to assume that Watson read his constituent’s letter into the legislative record because he agrees with it?

If that’s true, then why is Watson supporting Mark Green’s UAC bill which allows an illegal alien living in Tennessee to facilitate the smuggling of a child to the U.S. border without any penalty, and which would override the governor’s veto regarding UAC placements in Tennessee? And to incentivize smuggling even more, the “biological relative” to whom the UAC is reunited with in Tennessee can also be an illegal alien.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has pointed out that “poorly written laws that incentivize the smuggling of illegal immigrants under the age of 18” contribute heavily to the increasing number of UACs crossing the border illegally. In 2018, then DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen cited certain draw factors for increasing the number of UACs surging at the border which included, “an immigration system that rewards parents for sending their children across the border alone…”

Regarding Green’s bill Watson was quoted in full support: “I was glad to provide my input and greatly appreciate Congressman Green seeking it. This bill fully addresses the federal government’s failure to seek Tennessee’s approval and should be passed immediately.”

Worse still, Sen. Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville), who is also on the (misnamed) Joint Study Committee on Refugees also supports Green’s bill and said, “I spoke with Congressman Green at length concerning the unacceptable relocation of illegal immigrants to Knoxville. His legislation is simple, straightforward, and provides the changes necessary to ensure our state has a say in the process.”

And finally, giving law-abiding conservative Tennessee voters a realistic taste of the direction state Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson would move the state should the rumor be true that he is vying to become the next Lt. Governor, he said in support of Green’s bill: “It is unacceptable for the Federal government to relocate unaccompanied minors into communities in Tennessee without the consent of state officials. I am grateful for Congressman Green’s leadership in addressing this pressing issue.”

Watson is chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Briggs is chair of the Senate State & Local Government Committee, and Johnson is the Senate Majority Leader.

Presumably each one of these senators know how to read and understand legislation. Each one of these Senate leaders should be questioned about their support for a bill that would have the state of Tennessee knowingly abet child smuggling and reward facilitating illegal immigration to the state.

Bo Watson – sen.bo.watson@capitol.tn.gov

Richard Briggs – sen.richard.briggs@capitol.tn.gov

Jack Johnson – sen.jack.johnson@capitol.tn.gov

Posted on

TN Must Stand Against Smuggling Unaccompanied Alien Children!

Since we can’t count on Congress to get this done, it will have to come from the state legislature. 

The federal government has known for decades that parents, other relatives and sponsors in the U.S. whether here legally or illegally, have been paying coyotes and other criminal entities to smuggle children to the border who then enter as unaccompanied alien children (UAC). But Congress is too dysfunctional (even when Republicans are in the majority), to do anything about it. State legislators on the other hand have the authority to effectively address the issue. Criminalizing child smuggling is a way that helps protect children, disincentivizes illegal immigration to the state, and makes it clear that the state government will not abet facilitating illegal immigration or turn a blind eye to anyone who does.

Ignoring this practice is unfair to the children and unfair to American citizens and legal immigrants.

Whether a person uses a child to help get them over the border more easily, albeit illegally, or pays a coyote to smuggle a child over the border to reunite with a “biological relative” who may themselves be illegally in the country, using children in this way must stop. 

The first situation was sickeningly and tragically illustrated in a recent case of a 2-year old abandoned on the highway by his father with whom he was traveling. According to the mother, the toddler would make it easier for his father to get across the border – “‘they were going through like this with minors…”’ 

2-year old abandoned by his father and the coyote; toddlers (parents in the U.S.) dropped over the wall

While Tennessee’s state legislators can’t do much about the first scenario, they do have the authority to address the situation (like the toddlers) where someone in Tennessee facilitates the smuggling of a child who will cross the border illegally as a UAC and eventually reunite with a family member or sponsor in the state.

During the General Assembly’s first Joint Study Committee on June 18, 2021, Rep. Ryan Williams (R-  Cookeville), raised an important issue relative to the UAC arrivals in Tennessee. In fact, Tennessee’s GOP Congressional delegation should also pay attention to what Rep. Williams had to say.

Williams talked about his constituent who had travelled to another state to pick up his adoptive child. But before he was able to legally bring his child home to Tennessee, he needed Williams to help him get the paperwork required by the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children corrected. This paperwork creates additional hurdles that must be satisfied before being able to legally bring a minor child across state lines and if not followed to the letter of the law, it can jeopardize the adoption.

BTW, Williams came through for this family.

So here’s the point – an illegal alien living in Tennessee can facilitate the smuggling of a child to the U.S. border without any penalty – federal or state. But a U.S. citizen or legal immigrant  can be penalized if paperwork is faulty? The issue has nothing to do with whether there is a biological connection between the adoptive parent and the child or the smuggling facilitator and the child. It’s about complying with the law.

It’s important to note that smuggling is not the same as trafficking. Human smuggling is defined as:

“the importation of people into the United States involving deliberate evasion of immigration laws. This offense includes bringing illegal aliens into the United States as well as the unlawful transportation and harboring of aliens already in the United States.”

Trafficking on the other hand, is about the exploitation of people using force, fraud or coercion for a sought after objective. It can include for example, sex trafficking, debt bondage and involuntary servitude.

Lt. Gov. McNally and Speaker Sexton are so concerned about Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) being ferried into Tennessee, that they authorized a joint legislative committee to look into the issue; presumably with some intent to determine legislative options in response.

The committee has already held one meeting and has another scheduled for July 13th providing a platform for Blackburn and Hagerty’s offices to wave their consultation bill around and yack about the importance of “transparency”. 

Blackburn’s been in Congress long enough to know that bringing home a “transparency” bill with the laughable “consultation” provision which is legislator talk-speak for sounds good, doesn’t really do anything of consequence to address the problem at home. Shows you how little Hagerty understands that he just obediently tags along after Marsha. 

And like Mark Green’s new UAC bill, Blackburn and Hagerty appear to be unwilling to take on the child smuggling problem. Green’s bill allows a child smuggled over the border to override the governor’s veto regarding UAC placements in Tennessee. And the “biological relative” in his bill can also be an illegal alien.

Sen. Bo Watson (R-Hixson), who is on the Joint Study Committee, has said he doesn’t want the Chattanooga facility to reopen or any other facility like it to open in Tennessee. Sen. Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga), who is also on the Joint Committee, has made it clear that he wants more of these children brought to Tennessee so they can be reunited with “loved ones”. As it turns out, UAC smuggling is more often than not, financed by the parents who themselves are in the U.S. in violation of the immigration laws.

Only time will tell whether the Joint Study Committee is a pro forma or whether state legislators are serious about trying to address the problem. If instead they insist that “immigration is a federal issue” then remind them that 2022 is just around the corner and it looks like that four of the Senate members on the Joint Committee could potentially face a primary if necessary.

Posted on

Useless Bills on UACs Arriving in Tennessee

There’s the Bill who as the chief executive of the state government either doesn’t have a clue what is going on in his administration or what his politically appointed commissioner is doing to facilitate the welcoming of the arrival of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) who were smuggled into the U.S. illegally more often than not, by parents who are also here illegally. But more than likely, and from all indications, he’s actually known all along.

Haslam feigned the same surprise about UAC arrivals during the 2014 surge. And we all know that Haslam was okay with illegal immigration going so far as to try finishing his run as governor by giving illegal alien students the parting gift of in-state college tuition.

The other useless bills are the ones being filed by Tennessee’s U.S. Congressmen who also have no clue what’s going on in the state they represent .

Blackburn, Hagerty and Fleischmann are giving each other high fives for quickly filing a bill that makes it look like they are doing something to address the arrival of the UACs.

Maybe someday the “Migrant Resettlement Transparency Act” will get yet another untimely after-the-fact federal report published but their bill is both unlikely to see the light of day and is highly unlikely to stop federal dumping of illegal aliens in Tennessee. Tim Burchett is a co-sponsor of Fleischmann’s bill.

The trio insist that before the federal government transports more UAC illegal aliens into Tennessee, details about the kids must be disclosed and that the “Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security consult with governors and mayors of affected jurisdictions before any federally directed, administered or funded resettlement, transportation, or relocation of illegal aliens”. 

Consult ? A completely meaningless standard. Consult is the same requirement in the Refugee Act of 1980, which simply means that the federal government tells the state what the federal government intends to do but the state has no option to stop the federal government from doing what they told the state they would do. Consult means like when the Biden administration asked Bill Lee’s office if Tennessee would open an emergency shelter for UACs and Lee said no, but not to worry, because his administration had already approved the Baptiste Group in Chattanooga to take care of the problem.

Let’s imagine the consultation with comrades Nashville Mayor John Cooper and Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon:

Feds: Buenos días mayor. Have you talked to the parents who want their children brought to them? Do you have the list and can you tell us how many children we will be transporting? Are the parents all paid up with the coyotes or are you covering the cost?

Mayors: We are all set to go here! We assured the parents that it doesn’t matter if they are also here illegally because we at least can say we are good Christians and that always trumps lawbreaking.

Then there’s Mark Green’s new bill which he’s using to try and recover from his first UAC bill disaster. In a recent interview, Green still insists that UACs are refugees even though the law is clear that UACS don’t magically get converted into refugees just because the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement takes custody.

“Making those guys be classified as migrants keeps the legal status in a way that the federal government can’t force them on Tennessee.”

What is Green talking about? The UACs already have a status and it’s called illegal. The federal code, as in U.S. law, clearly states that UACs have “no lawful immigration status in the United States” – they are illegal aliens! There is no “automatic refugee status” as Green claims. Even funnier is that a Tennessean reporter gets that as Green admits, his bill still lets DHS house UACs in HHS contracted facilities like the one run by Baptiste Group in Chattanooga.

So while Hagerty, Blackburn, Fleischmann and Green try to out-UAC each other, they continue to ignore the growing adult worker illegal alien population in Tennessee which is a MUCH BIGGER PROBLEM. Just take a look at the numbers reported by Customs & Border Protection and see how much cheap labor Republicans protect for their big dollar cronies. 

And why aren’t they talking about what Biden and his DOJ are doing to make asylum more easily and more widely available? Shortly after taking office Biden issued an executive order directing the new Attorney General Garland to put new regulations in place to undo the multiple ways in which the Trump administration tightened some of the vaguest and most flexible standards for getting asylum including based on domestic violence and family relationships. So now, “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” can once again be used as a reason to be granted asylum.

As Julie Kirchner who writes the Immigration Journal points out, the “dramatic” asylum changes are coming at the same time that the Biden administration will be rescinding the Title 42 public health authority which the Trump administration used to turn people back from the border. Once Biden pushes these and other changes through, loosening and opening all avenues to enable pretty much any illegal alien to enter and stay in the U.S., all this GOP yakking about transparency and reclassifying UACs, will prove meaningless. Check out these numbers from CBP:

 

Posted on

Is Mark Green Conflating Illegal Aliens With Refugees?

It’s anybody’s best guess why Green’s explanation of his bill, H.R.3500, doesn’t match what he’s telling folks it’s supposed to do.

Green’s press release about his new bill, “Leads Fight to Block Refugee Resettlement Without State Consent” states in part:

“Last week, in the dead of night, unaccompanied migrant children were flown into Tennessee without our approval or consent. I am alarmed that the Biden Administration would use taxpayer resources to transport refugees into Tennessee without transparency or coordination with state authorities. This overreach and secrecy has to stop.”

In a recent interview with WRCBtv Chattanooga, Green said that he drafted the bill in response to what happened in Chattanooga and that “this bill would mandate permission of the state before they move illegal migrants to Tennessee.”

One really obvious problem is that U.S. law recognizes refugees as legal immigrants who enter the country with express permission of the U.S. government in conformance to specific criteria in U.S. law defining who is a refugee.

The “illegal migrants” Green refers to are Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) who are either dumped at the border by human traffickers or like 16-year old killer Edwin Mejia who was sent to his illegal alien brother in Tennessee, cross the border on their own.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) which refers to itself as Congress’ “think tank” writes, “[u]naccompanied alien children are statutorily defined as children who lack lawful immigration status in the United States, are under age 18, and lack a parent or legal guardian in the United States or a parent or legal guardian in the United States who is available to provide care and physical custody.”

If the UAC is from a contiguous country, meaning Canada or Mexico and is not a victim of trafficking, Customs & Border Patrol (CBP) can send them back. If however, the UAC is from a non-contiguous country, the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) takes custody. These UACs can apply for asylum or other relief like the Special Immigrant Juvenile Visa (SIJV) which allows them to remain in the U.S. and puts them on a path to citizenship.

Unlike refugees who are legally admissible to the U.S. before they arrive, UACs are subject to removal until and only if they end up with a legal immigration status.

Importantly, the transfer to ORR custody does not in any way convert the UAC into a refugee. In 2002, Congress passed the Homeland Security Act which did many things including moving custody of the UACs from the former Immigration & Naturalization Services to ORR. This change evolved from a series of lawsuits and consent decrees but did not magically make UACs refugees.

An April 2021 CRS paper notes that “[a]ccording to CBP data, almost all apprehended UAC originate from Mexico and the ‘Northern Triangle’ countries – Honduras, ElSalvador, and Guatemala” and that up until FY19 most UACs were coming from Mexico but then flipped to 86% coming from the Northern Triangle countries.

This is a very important data point relating to Green’s bill. Whether he realizes it or not, the way he explains his bill’s purpose is precisely what the Obama administration tried to do in 2014, with the Central American Minors (CAM) program to administratively expand U.S. law on refugees and create a refugee resettlement program for this group. Refugees and asylees must show persecution on account of membership in certain groups, such as nationality or race. The CAM program allowed the ill-defined “particular social group” category to be applicable for various new conditions, such as single motherhood. If it were to be applied system-wide to refugee resettlement it would represent the largest expansion of the definition of the term “refugee” ever seen in the history of the resettlement program. 

 As Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry said:

“I am pleased to announce that we have plans to expand the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program in order to help vulnerable families and individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras and offer them a safe and legal alternative to the dangerous journey that many are tempted to begin, making them at that instant easy prey for human smugglers who have no interest but their own profits.”

Trump ended the CAM program in 2017. 

Looking at Obama’s attempt to expand who qualifies as a refugee, Center for Immigration Studies senior researcher Dr. Nayla Rush questioned whether Central American children even meet the legal definition of refugee. She makes the following points :

    • “the UN says most are not refugees” 
    • the Migration Policy Institute* appears to agree that – “…being forced to join a gang or experiencing violence do not generally qualify as a basis for refugee status or fall readily into one the the [U.S. law] refugee definition categories.”
    • out of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world in 2015 (excluding those undergoing a war), four are in the United States: St Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, and New Orleans.25 Latin America, it is true, remains far ahead, with 41 cities included in the ranking. But are children who flee gang violence in St. Louis, Baltimore, or the other American cities that made it into the top of the most dangerous cities chart ‘potential refugees’? No one would even think to make that claim. 

One of the problems with Obama’s CAM program was that the parent had to be in the U.S. legally to obtain the coveted refugee status for  their child in Central America. In fact, many of the parents in the CAM program are themselves illegal aliens. 

In her conclusion Rush lets the real genie out of the bottle – it’s the children who, if they obtain refugee status, offer the route through which parents and siblings may obtain legal status in the U.S.

The libertarian Niskanen Center think tank also acknowledges that UACs are ineligible for refugee status. They argue that UACs could get refugee status if U.S. law would expand to include forced conscription, gang recruitment and gender discrimination.

It is a very real possibility that the Biden administration will like Obama, use administrative actions to expand who qualifies as a refugee. This is precisely how the U.S. refugee admissions program under Obama created the resettlement program for the LGBT refugee. 

Green’s bill and his explanation of its purpose confuse UACs with refugees – precisely what Obama and the open border leftists want and the reason they categorize every illegal alien as a “refugee”. 

Even if Green is trying to “cleverly” pre-empt a move by the Biden administration to recreate an Obamaesque CAM program, the mandate that “States Have a Say” will fall on deaf ears for the majority of Republican governors who turned down President Trump’s refugee resettlement opt out in 2019.

 

The plain language of Green’s bill says it will amend 8 USC 1522 – the section of federal law that addresses refugee admissions and which by reference to another section of the code, defines the legal term “refugee” – a term which does not include Green’s “illegal migrants”.

Even assuming Green is relying on the language of Trump’s presidential determination on refugee admissions for FY2021, UACs would still have to meet specific criteria to qualify as a refugee.

All of the legal mumbo jumbo aside, what Tennessee taxpayers should really be concerned about with Green conflating UACs and  refugee resettlement, is the lessons learned from Tennessee’s 10th Amendment challenge to the federal resettlement program. The big take-aways simply put are:

    • upon arrival to the U.S. refugees are immediately able to access all forms of public assistance  on the same basis as U.S. citizens
    • refugees must adjust their status to legal permanent resident (green card) status at year one after admission
    • the federal government has admitted that it shifts the massive cost of this program to state governments
    • and, BILL LEE HAS PASSIONATELY DEFENDED BRINGING MORE REFUGEES TO TENNESSEE 

If one accepts Green’s explanation of his bill, then any objection voiced by Bill Lee to the UACs should be questioned. When Trump gave Lee the choice to say “no” to continued refugee resettlement in Tennessee, Lee abandoned the state’s sovereignty in favor of his personal agenda regarding refugees. Then when he was challenged on his decision, he doubled down and in contravention of Trump’s Executive Order, claimed he had the authority to consent to refugee resettlement for the entire state.

Tennessee’s Lt. Governor and Speaker of the House have decided to convene a joint study committee prompted by the delivery of UACs to the state. Lt. Gov. McNally’s office issued a press release about the joint study committee and seems to be the lone voice at this time that understands that refugees, migrants and immigrants are not all the same and have different immigration statuses.

As a first, they need to change the name of the study committee from the misnomered “Joint Study Committee on Refugee Issues” to the more accurate “Joint Study Committee on Refugees, Illegal Aliens, Migrants & Immigrants”.

And as seems to have become the norm, the news about what the Lee administration’s role in another mishandled and mangled state government function, is not good. It seems that another one of Lee’s departments may have facilitated the arrival of the UACs. Some reports suggest that Lee’s Department of Children’s Services knew and approved that the Chattanooga facility applying for a state license was “to provide housing, personal care, supervision and monitoring to up to 100 unaccompanied minor children . . . ideally up to 30 days, until they are reunited with a sponsor home or appear at an immigration hearing.”

Sounds just like the set-up to receive and care for UACs.

If this report is accurate, Lee put some big egg on the faces of every Tennessee U.S. and state elected official yelling for transparency.

At the very least, we can only hope that the new joint study committee looks to real experts in the field on these issues. As for Mark Green, he should take a cue from the Lt. Governor and get some help from experts like Dr. Rush and figure out what he’s really trying to do with his bill. 

For starters though, Green should stop advancing the idea that there is a legitimate connection between illegally entering UACs and refugees and would do well to recall the multiple documented instances when MS-13 gang members entered the U.S. as UACs and were then awarded with refugee status – here, here and here. This should be of paramount concern now that under Biden, USCIS will stop asking about gang-related information when evaluating adjustment to legal permanent resident, aka, the green card which UACs who are awarded either asylum or the SIJV status are eligible to apply for.

At the very least, Green’s voters should expect an informed discussion of the issue.

***********************************************

*”The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) is a think tank that produces research and policy analysis advocating for permanent legal residence for undocumented immigrants in the United States and increased legal rights for migrants and refugees worldwide. Migration Policy Institute receives funding from a variety of left-of-center ideological funders, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.”

Posted on

TN State Funds Catholic Charities’ Infrastructure for Refugee Resettlement

In November 2020, Tennessee’s Department of Human Services used the state’s bloated TANF fund to award Catholic Charities of Tennessee (CCTN) a $7.3 million dollar grant. The money will be used to help Catholic Charities expand its operations in Middle Tennessee by establishing family resource centers in ten locations – Montgomery, Maury, Marshall, Bedford, Coffee Grundy, Warren, White, Dekalb and Putnam counties.

Family resource centers in Davidson County are staffed to assist individuals including refugees to access public benefits and services. In fact, one such center specializes in assisting refugees. Last year CCTN moved its South Nashville family resource center into the Conexion Americas Casa Asafran building. It now shares space with the Global Education Center and Metro Public Schools, the American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC), and Justice For Our Neighbors (JFON), an organization which advocates for illegal alien “rights” including Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC)* who are currently being transported and housed in Chattanooga.**

As part of their services, CCTN assists in connecting UACs dropped off at the border, to family members in Tennessee who may have also entered the U.S. in violation of immigration laws like the case of Edwin Mejia in Tennessee.

CCTN’s former State Refugee Coordinator Holly Johnson admitted that her agency helps link UACs to their family members in Tennessee. At the US Conference of Catholic Bishops level, taking custody of the UACs is the “doing well by doing good” business – over $23 million dollars in 2019, quite a haul considering that the UAC numbers were extremely low compared to what the Biden administration has unleashed.

Regarding the resettlement of refugees from overseas, it is no secret that Bill Lee is a passionate supporter  for spreading them throughout the state. He is joined in his support for the federal program by state Sen. Page Walley who works for an organization that makes money providing refugee resettlement services.

Over the years the refugee mileage placement rules have enabled CCTN to place refugees in many of the counties that the $7.3 million dollars in state money is now funding to help CCTN expand and set up more formal operations.

50-100 miles covers almost the whole state

CCTN’s executive director thanked Governor Lee and the DHS for their largesse in giving them the largest grant in the history of the organization assuming of course that the multi-millions received year after year from the federal government, is ignored.

CCTN wears several hats in Tennessee including operating as the State Refugee Coordinator (SRC) overseeing the federal contractors paid to bring refugees to the state. In 2008, then governor Phil Bredesen formally withdrew the state from the federal program after which the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement chose CCTN to continue the state’s refugee resettlement program.

Once Catholic Charities took over the program opening the TN Office for Refugees and employing the State Refugee Coordinator, the number of refugees being brought to the state increased by over 60% even as numbers were declining nationally.

CCTN’s state plan was to increase the number of agencies resettling refugees so they could increase the number of refugees being brought to Tennessee.This federal program has been a cash cow for CCTN and the federal contractors resettling refugees.

Government funding, in particular for work related to refugee resettlement, has dominated CCTN’s work. For example, the last available CCTN report, FY2015-16, shows just under $10 million dollars in refugee resettlement grants which come from the federal government.

The financial breakdown clearly showing the heavy dependence on refugee resettlement funds was available on CCTN’s website until 2018 – it has now been removed making the organization’s operations much less transparent.

However, according to the financials posted on the Tennessee Secretary of State website, CCTN’s budget appears to continue to be heavily dependent on government funding.

None of the resettlement contractors operating in Tennessee, including CCTN and the SRC, consult with or are accountable to the state legislature which is forced to expend state dollars to operationalize the refugee resettlement program.

For this reason alone there are reasonable and legitimate questions about why the Tennessee state government chose CCTN of all organizations, to infuse with big dollars. Asked another way, why hasn’t the state simply taken back the SRC function so the state can control the number of refugees brought to the state and the amount of state dollars used for the federal program?

On April 16th, Biden signed a memo intended to speed up the arrival of refugees but left Trump’s FY21 low cap in place – that was until the religious groups who need to fill their coffers, raised the roof. By the afternoon of the 16th, Biden caved and promised that by mid-May, the cap for the remainder of the fiscal year, would be raised to over 60,000.

Don’t be surprised if the enhanced vetting criteria put in place by Trump goes by the wayside. In 2016, after Obama announced that the U.S. would take 10,000 Syrian refugees, his administration “repeatedly shortened the timeframe” for vetting these refugees in order to get as close to that number as possible. So when refugee contractors claim that refugees are the most thoroughly vetted immigrants to the U.S…..

On thing is for certain – when the call comes that refugees are ready to come to Tennessee, CCTN will be ready!

 

*in line with the Biden administration’s unconstitutional rewrite of U.S. immigration law and erase the illegal immigration status of UACs, they are now referred to simply as “UC” – unaccompanied children.
**once UACs are released to sponsors in Tennessee, they are entitled to attend public school.

Posted on

You Pay for Tennessee House Members’ Misfeasance on Illegal Immigration

“Misfeasance” as applied to a politician, is defined as “the performance of an official duty in an improper or unlawful manner or with an improper or corrupt motive.”

Conflict-of-interest driven voting on public policy likely qualifies as misfeasance. It’s especially egregious and harmful knowing that Tennessee is not immune from the crush of illegal alien economic migrants being ferried into the U.S. by the Biden administration.

In addition to the 67,000 illegal alien “essential workers” in Tennessee, and the 31,000 illegal aliens reported to be living and working in Davidson County, and the 135,000 estimated by FAIR, and the $793.4 million dollars illegal immigration costs Tennessee taxpayers, there is the issue of the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) arriving in the state.

Over the past six years, just under 7,500 UACs have been routed to Tennessee. The overwhelming majority, 72%, are between 15 – 17 years old and predominantly male. Recent estimates expect at least 184,000 UACs to arrive in the U.S. this year.

Illegal immigration hurts low-skilled American workers and according to the Project 21 Black Leadership Network, “especially Black Americans who often share the same communities and services as illegal immigrants –[and should] not be forced to subsidize people who are not in the United States legally.’”

Two leading examples of legislators who make it easier for illegal aliens to find work in Tennessee are Rep. John Holsclaw and Rep. Clark Boyd.

Holsclaw is from Elizabethton and represents Unicoi and parts of Carter Counties. He’s been in the state legislature since 2015. Boyd is from Lebanon and represents Cannon County and parts of Wilson and DeKalb counties. He’s been in the state legislature since 2017.

In the 2019-2020 session these two derailed Rep. Bruce Griffey’s bill that would have made it more difficult for businesses to hire illegal aliens. During this session Holsclaw chaired the subcommittee and Boyd chaired the full committee which handled Griffey’s bill.

In fact, Boyd, with agreement from the NFIB and the TN Chamber of Commerce, drafted the amendment that essentially nullified the effect of Griffey’s bill. Griffey’s bill originally required employers with 6 or more employees to use E-verify; Boyd’s amendment increased that to 25 employees. Freshman legislator Griffey probably desperate to pass a bill, swallowed the RINO “incrementalist” approach to policy and accepted a bad amendment.

It is common knowledge that the 25 employee threshold would not apply to the vast majority of small businesses in Tennessee.

As an aside, during the committee discussion, Rep. Mike Sparks (R-Smyrna) expressed worry about the fines levied on businesses that get caught hiring illegal alien workers. WAAAH! And Rep. Rush Bricken (R-Tullahoma) then and now continues to wring his hands trying to figure out how to avoid taking any action against illegal immigration in Tennessee.

After beating back Griffey’s original bill, Holsclaw and Boyd both received the “coveted” NFIB “Guardian of Small Business” award and of course, NFIB campaign donations.

NFIB and Holsclaw

While the Senate never moved the companion bill, Griffey’s bill with the non-effective 25 threshold passed the House making its supporters look as if they were taking meaningful action against illegal immigration in Tennessee.

NFIB and Boyd

Even with an ineffective bill, decepticon Republicans Pat Marsh, Patsy Hazlewood, Kent Calfee, Charlie Baum, Sam Whitson, and Mark White voted against the bill. Even more anemic Republicans Michael Curcio, Curtis Johnson, Jerome Moon, Brandon Ogles, Iris Rudder, Kevin Vaughan, and Ryan Williams, didn’t bother to vote.

It should be remembered that several of these legislators are among the worst illegal immigration protectionists in the Tennessee legislature. Patsy Hazlewood went so far as to try to kill the sanctuary city bill so she could help protect illegal aliens who commit crimes in Tennessee.

This year, when Griffey again tried to lower the E-verify employee threshold to to 6 employees, Boyd and Kevin Vaughn led the pack to kill the bill in subcommittee. Speaker Cameron Sexton subsequently abused his authority to prevent further discussion related to the problem of illegal immigration in the state as a way to protect his Republican caucus from being accountable to legal Tennessee voters and legal Tennessee workers.

Shamefully, Tennessee’s RINO approach to illegal immigration is at odds with a recent NYTimes opinion piece written by the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. He puts it bluntly, in The Real Reason for the Border Crisis, is that “no one is holding American employers to account for their willingness to hire millions of unauthorized immigrants.”

The “no one” includes Tennessee’s Republican legislators.

 

 

Posted on

67,000 Illegal Aliens Taking Jobs From Tennesseans

Tennessee’s Governor and legislators are asleep on illegal alien employment in the state – you need to wake them up because the only defense against Biden and the left running our federal government, is action at the state and local level.

Why don’t they know what we know?????

According to the Center for Migration Studies NY (CMS), a Soros-funded think tank, legal immigrants and illegal aliens are the “essential workers” saving the lives of lazy Tennessee citizens during the COVID pandemic.

In May 2020, the CMS estimated that in Tennessee, 41,200 legal immigrants and 66,900 illegal aliens are working “often at great risk to their health and lives – to keep Americans safe, healthy, fed and poised for economic recovery.”

Tennessee can expect a dramatic change in these numbers given the Biden administration open border approach to immigration.

Illegal alien workers in Tennessee are protected by the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and NFIB, the small business lobby which beat back an effort by some Tennessee legislators to pass a mandatory E-verify bill to be used by every business in the state regardless of the number of employees.

Tennessee has its own illegal alien protectionist legislators as well, the two worst being Rep. Patsy Hazlewood and Rep. Bob Ramsey.

CMS says illegal alien workers which they misleadingly label “undocumented”, make up 54% of the foreign-born farm and agriculture workers and 40% in disinfection services. Consistent with Tennessee-specific data, illegal aliens are working in construction and manufacturing.

The same emphasis on the criticality of the foreign-born workforce, especially during COVID, is mimicked by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), another Soros-funded advocate for open borders and mass migration to the U.S.

The CMS report predictably criticized the Trump administration’s restrictionist approach to immigration without giving any recognition for the wage benefits to American workers, particularly low-skilled workers, from a tightened supply of workers. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has confirmed this effect. Negative economic impact is also at play for middle-class earners and recent college graduates.

CMS is a member of the Scalabrini International Migration Network which is a network of hundreds of shelters and “welcoming centers” which supports every category of migrant “on the move a vital chance to rest and refuel before continuing their journeys.” Scalabrini is a “child organization of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).”

The USCCB Migration Services are predominantly financed by federal taxpayer dollars. Between 2018 – 2019, the USCCB received over $52 million federal dollars to fund their “charitable” works. Almost half, $23 million dollars was received for USCCB handling of the unaccompanied alien children (UAC) population.

The USCCB is paid by the federal government to take temporary custody of UACs apprehended at the border. The predicted current surge of UACs at the border spurred by Biden’s executive orders on immigration, and his agenda on amnesty which would also let DACA grantees become citizens. So as far as USCCB is concerned, the more the merrier!

When the Obama administration created the same border crisis, MS-13 gang members, entered with UAC status. The same concern about human trafficking then is re-emerging. Tennessee has a slew of strong anti-human trafficking laws so why are the supposed anti-illegal immigration state legislators and governor, silent?

The crush at the border now has the federal government paying to transport illegal border crossers to locations far from the southern border.

Tennessee has previously received thousands of UACs and is likely to continue receiving arrivals. As of December 2020, among arriving UACs, 35% have tested positive for COVID.

In April 2020, the Nashville government issued a report documenting that 31,000 illegal aliens are living and working in Davidson County. The TN Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition testified in state legislative committee hearings that the Mexican mobile consular visits Nashville monthly to issue matricula consular cards which TIRRC said are needed by people here illegally so that they have some form of identification. TIRRC also told the committee that they were working with the Metro Nashville Police Department to accept the matricula card as valid identification – that is, treat illegal alien offenders stopped by police, as if they were here with some form of legal status.