UN Refugee Summit Supports U.S. Plan to Admit More Refugees
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

President Obama hosted a Leaders’ Summit on the Global Refugee Crisis on September 20, which was held on the margins of the 71st Regular Session of the UN General Assembly. The State Department had announced in advance of the summit that one of its purposes was to garner support for admitting more refugees to the United States.

That event followed the September 19 UN General Assembly’s “Summit for Refugees and Migrants” — an all-day even with the stated goal of strengthening “governance of international migration and a unique opportunity for creating a more responsible, predictable system for responding to large movements of refugees and migrants.” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was among the speakers at the plenary meetings of that summit.

As we noted in a September 13 article about the summit, “According to the U.S. State Department’s Web page about the upcoming event, the purpose of President Obama’s Leaders’ Summit is “to galvanize significant new global commitments to: 1) increase funding to humanitarian appeals and international organizations, 2) admit more refugees through resettlement or other legal pathways, and 3) increase refugees’ self-reliance and inclusion through opportunities for education and legal work.” (Emphasis added.)

The Obama-supported effort to make the UN part of what should be a U.S. domestic immigration policy decision mirrors what is happening at the regional level in Europe. An outstanding example of the effort by the EU’s administrators to push the resettlement of Middle Eastern refugees on EU nations occurred on September 9, 2015, when Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission (the executive branch of the European Union), asked EU members to accept 160,000 migrants.

The top-down push by EU leaders to force member states to accept refugees met with resistance, however. Just two days before Juncker made his proposal, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán criticized efforts by European Union leaders to impose immigration quotas before the continent’s borders were made secure. (Juncker has continued his anti-sovereignty agenda more recently, stating during a talk at the Alpbach Media Academy in Austria on August 22, “Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians.”)

Just days after Juncker asked EU members to accept 160,000 migrants, the November 13 terrorist attacks took place in Paris, causing many Europeans to become more wary than ever of resettling refugees from areas were terrorist activity was rampant, in their midst.

Despite this reluctance, the EU did not stop the pressure on its member nations to take more refugees. Furthermore, the EU is not the only supra-national body that has pressured European nations to do so. Multiple agencies of the UN — that granddaddy of all supranational bodies — issued a warning on November 17 to European leaders who might respond to the Paris killings by supporting anti-migrant policies. Among these was UN refugee agency (UNHCR) spokeswoman Melissa Fleming, who said, “We are concerned about the reactions from some states to end [refugee] programs being put in place, backtracking from commitments made to manage the refugee crisis.”

“Refugees should not be turned into scapegoats and must not become the secondary victims of these most tragic events,” Fleming added.

The same people responsible for promoting the admission to the EU of refugees who have not been properly vetted to eliminate possible terrorists are also at work to repeat such activity in the United States. William F. Jasper, The New American’s senior editor, noted in his September 13 article:

One of the principal groups convening the Civil Society Action Committee (CSAC) is the Migration and Development Civil Society Network (MADE), which is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, and, according to its own website is “cofunded by the European Commission (EC).” Yes, that is correct; the “Action Committee” claiming to represent “civil society” is being run and funded by the same people who have forced the migration disaster on Europe….

The migration disaster in Europe may soon come to the United States. As we noted last November, a State Department spokeswoman said in a November 6 statement that the United States planned to open a refugee settlement processing center in Erbil, Iraq, before the end of 2015, and would also resume refugee processing in Lebanon in early 2016. We also noted that Secretary of State John Kerry revealed during a press appearance a year ago that the Obama administration planned to drastically increase the flow of refugees into the United States, mentioning specifically refugees from Syria. “I’m pleased to announce today that the United States will significantly increase our numbers for refugee resettlement in the course of this next year and the year after,” Kerry said. “Last year I think we were at 70,000,” he noted, referring to number of refugees the United States accepted from around the world.

“We are now going to go up to 85,000 with at least, and I underscore the ‘at least’ — it is not a ceiling, it’s a floor — of 10,000 over the next year from Syria specifically even as we also receive more refugees from other areas. And in the next fiscal year, we’ll target 100,000, and if it’s possible to do more, we’ll do [more],” Kerry continued.

In addition to his role in hosting the Leaders’ Summit, Obama addressed the full UN General Assembly on September 20 for his final time as president, observing: “Around the world, refugees flow across borders in flight from brutal conflict.” Continuing, he stated that, “we have to open our hearts and do more to help refugees who are desperate for a home.” While those statements sound fairly humanitarian and innocuous, as the president continued he revealed more of his agenda: “And we should all understand that, ultimately, our world will be more secure if we are prepared to help those in need and the nations who are carrying the largest burden with respect to accommodating these refugees.”

While the word “accommodating” might mean many things, the Obama administration’s ongoing immigration policies plainly indicate that it can only mean accepting more migrants from around the world, with little regard for where they come from or what security threats their presence might present.

On the same day that Obama was addressing the General Assembly, the White House press office posted a fact sheet announcing that 51 American companies have made commitments to aid refugees in the United States and around the world in response to the president’s June Call to Action. 

Almost immediately after the article was posted by the White House, globalist billionaire George Soros, the chairman and founder of the Open Society Foundations, pledged up to $500 million of his own private capital to aid the program.

The article linked to another White House webpage talking about yesterday’s UN Leaders’ Summit on the Global Refugee Crisis, where the White House said member states would commit to

• Increase funding to UN humanitarian agencies, appeals, and international humanitarian organizations;

• Admit additional refugees through resettlement or other legal pathways; and

• Increase refugees’ ability to access education and lawful work.

The article could not have been more transparent in stating the administration’s objective: President Obama announced that the United States will welcome more refugees from around the world, increasing the number of people we receive by 40 percent over the next two years, to 100,000 in 2017.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaking in an interview on Fox & Friends on September 19, criticized Obama’s goal to admit what he said would be 110,000 refugees from around the world to the United States during the 2017 fiscal year — an increase from the 85,000 goal for the 2016 fiscal year.

“They can’t be properly vetted,” Trump said. “I spoke to law enforcement, the best people in law enforcement. They think there’s no way of vetting these people.”

 Photo of President Barack Obama speaking at UN Leaders Summit on Refugees: AP Images

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