With control of the White House and Congress, Republicans expected a historic opportunity to carry out an ambitious legislative agenda in 2017. But the party's narrow margins in the Senate slowed progress on a range of priorities. VOA's congressional reporter Katherine Gypson looks back on a consequential, and often unexpected, year for the U.S. Congress.
Less than a year into his presidency, Donald Trump has reshuffled the list of priorities as to who, among the country's refugees, undocumented immigrants and immigrant hopefuls gets to stay in the United States, or enter the country. Few campaign promises have yet to come to fruition, and not without strong opposition and legal challenges. But for the many affected, 2017's decisions and reversals have led to a year of personal upheaval. Ramon Taylor reports.
Before adjourning for the holidays, U.S. lawmakers kept America's federal government funded for four weeks but left key questions unresolved, including the fate of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. VOA's Michael Bowman reports that Democrats did not follow through on threats to shut down the government unless Congress addressed the status of hundreds of thousands of young immigrants but will have another chance when government funding expires January 19.
New U.N. sanctions on North Korea has won rare praise for President Donald Trump from a leading Democrat not known for his kind words for the president.
Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, called the U.S. sponsored resolution toughening sanctions "a good move" and a "major accomplishment."
"I give our team a lot of credit for getting that done," Cardin said on the Fox News Sunday broadcast.
"They're pretty strong additional sanctions to be imposed against North Korea because of their continued testing of ballistic missiles. So, that absolutely was a strong move forward and it was great to see China and Russia join us in that."
Cardin said the next step needs to be diplomacy. He says China and the United States must work with the "same strategy" to ease tensions and get North Korea to change directions.
The resolution that the Security Council passed unanimously Friday puts more limits on the amount of gasoline and diesel North Korea can import.
There will also be tighter inspections of ships suspected of illegally bringing in coal and oil to the North.
The resolution also orders all North Koreans working in foreign countries to return home within two years – a move aimed at cutting off a source of revenue for the Kim Jong Un regime.
His government regularly confiscates at least some of their earnings.
The United States estimates as many as 80,000 North Koreans work in China and at least 30,000 in Russia.
North Korea is calling the latest sanctions an "act of war" and "tantamount to a complete economic blockade."
A statement carried by the official North Korean news agency said Pyongyang "categorically rejects the resolution" and calls it an act of U.S. terror in reaction to the North's successful nuclear and missile programs.
"If the U.S. wishes to live safely, it must abandon its hostile policy...and learn to co-exist with the country that has nuclear weapons," the statement said. It threatened that all nations that back the resolution will "pay a heavy price."
Previous U.N. sanctions on the North have failed to deter it from testing missiles, pursuing nuclear weapons, and bring the North to the bargaining table.
The U.S. has rejected North Korea's offer to freeze its nuclear ambitions if the U.S. suspends military exercises on and near the Korean peninsula.
The Trump administration also wants China, North Korea's biggest ally – to lean more heavily on Pyongyang.
Read More Top Democrat Praises Trump for New UN Sanctions on North Korea : http://ift.tt/2BYJg4H
Two recent incidents have bolstered the Trump administration’s stance against the United States’ family-based immigration system, which the president says threatens national security.
Tyler Houlton, acting press secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement Saturday that his agency could “confirm the suspect involved in a terror attack in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and another suspect arrested on terror-related money-laundering charges were both beneficiaries of extended family chain migration.”
He said both cases “highlight the Trump administration’s concerns with extended family chain migration.”
Pennsylvania case
On Friday, a gunman in Harrisburg, who was an immigrant from Egypt, fired at police and state troopers in several locations before they shot and killed him.
Ahmed Aminamin El-Mofty shot one state trooper, but officials say she is expected to make a full recovery.
A relative of El-Mofty said the family is perplexed by his actions. Ahmed Soweilam told the media that his sister had been married to El-Mofty, but they separated six years ago. He said his brother-in-law had worked as a security guard and had moved back to Egypt, but returned to the U.S. a few months ago.
“He’s not the perfect guy, but he’s not an aggressive person,” Soweilam said.
“The long chain of migration” that led to El-Mofty’s “admission into the United States was initiated years ago by a distant relative of the suspect,” said Homeland Security’s Houlton.
Pakistani woman charged
In a separate incident, a Pakistani woman who entered the U.S. through the family-based immigration system has been accused of laundering bitcoin and wiring money to Islamic State jihadists. Zoobia Shahnaz’s lawyer says her client was trying to help Syrian refugees.
Houlton said family-based migration has “been exploited by terrorists to attack our country.” He said the family-based system makes it “more difficult to keep dangerous people out of the United States and to protect the safety of every American.” He said a merit-based immigration system is “used by nearly all other countries.”
Merit-based immigration
Proponents of merit-based immigration say the current system lowers wages and discourages assimilation.
Supporters say a merit-based system also would help lower immigration rates and ensure that the immigrants who do come are highly skilled and less likely to need public assistance.
Earlier this year, President Trump said, “For decades, the United States was operated and has operated a very low-skill immigration system, issuing record numbers of green cards to low-wage immigrants.”
“This (family-based) policy has placed substantial pressure on American workers, taxpayers and community resources,” Trump added.
Critics of merit-based system
But critics say the American economy also needs low-skilled workers and a merit-based system would hurt industries that rely on them.
A merit-based system would also cost the government more because the government would have to review the applications and pay resettlement costs that are currently covered by sponsoring families.
Critics also see the merit-based system as un-American.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has said the merit-based system “abandons the fundamental respect for family, at the heart of our faith, at the heart of who we are as Americans.”
Read More Trump Administration Decries Family-Based Immigration Policy : http://ift.tt/2BteW16
The year has been a tough one for Puerto Ricans, Floridians, Texans and Californians, and recovery efforts continue for those three areas hit by hurricanes and one, California, struggling to contain wildfires. In a year of disasters, even the Federal Emergency Management Agency is struggling to cope.
At a hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee November 30, FEMA head Brock Long asked lawmakers for supplemental funding to handle its operations after a year studded with natural disasters.
Long told lawmakers that Hurricanes Harvey, which hit Texas, Irma, which targeted Florida, and Maria, which walloped the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, added to the ongoing California fires “have compelled FEMA to push its limits.”
Long noted that about 25.8 million people were affected by the three hurricanes, which took place in rapid succession in August and September. He said that as of November 13, more than 4½ million storm survivors had registered for FEMA assistance. He asked for $23.5 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief fund for fiscal 2018 to help with continuing recovery efforts. He said the agency is “committed to the long-term recovery of all impacted individuals as well as conducting this recovery in a fiscally responsible and prudent manner.”
Puerto Rico response criticized
But FEMA has been criticized for its response to the crisis in the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, Caribbean islands that took a double hit from Irma and Maria within the space of a month. Three months after the second storm, only 65 percent of Puerto Rico has its power restored, thanks to an aging infrastructure and bungled reconstruction deals. The Army Corps of Engineers now estimates that power may not be fully restored to all communities until May.
Puerto Rican newspaper El Nuevo Dia reported that protests broke out in the municipalities of Aguas Buenas and Trujillo Alto Thursday, among frustrated residents who want the lights back on.
Vox News, citing statistics by the research firm Rhodium Group, reports that Puerto Rico is now the site of the longest blackout in U.S. history in terms of lost customer-hours of service.
FEMA has reported that more than 450 people are still living in shelters in Puerto Rico, and it is still distributing tarps, food and water to some communities. More troubling, Florida officials say more than 269,000 people have arrived in Florida from Puerto Rico since the storm, and some 10,000 Puerto Rican children have enrolled in Florida schools.
The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at City University of New York says the exodus is likely not over. It estimates that 470,335 Puerto Ricans will leave the island by the end of 2019, driven out by poor services and slow recovery. Experts fear that many of the displaced may not return to the island; as full U.S. citizens, they are legally able to move anywhere within the United States.
Virgin Islands overshadowed
In the nearby U.S. Virgin Islands, often overshadowed by its more populous neighbor, conditions are similar. The San Juan Daily Star reports about half of electrical customers remain without power, and about one quarter of the tourism-reliant island still lacks mobile phone service.
FEMA reported Thursday that more than $870 million in federal funds have been provided to survivors of Irma and Maria in U.S. territories, including grants, low-interest loans, and flood insurance claims.
But the tough times may get tougher before they ease: FEMA’s voucher program for displaced storm victims expires January 15.
Death toll
One more major point on which U.S. officials have been criticized is the storm-related death toll in Puerto Rico. The official total was placed at 64, but both Vox news and the New York Times published analyses in the past week comparing historic death rates from September and October with the death tolls from this year. They both found more than 1,000 more deaths occurred this year than in previous years, and both publications attributed the higher tolls to the stresses of storm recovery.
Read More U.S. Territories — and Emergency Agency — Struggle to Recover from Disasters : http://ift.tt/2D78D3BA federal judge in Seattle on Saturday partly lifted a Trump administration ban on certain refugees after two groups argued that the policy prevented people from some mostly Muslim countries from reuniting with family living legally in the United States.
U.S. District Judge James Robart heard arguments Thursday in lawsuits from the American Civil Liberties Union and Jewish Family Service, which said the ban was causing irreparable harm and put some people at risk. Government lawyers argued that the ban was needed to protect national security.
Robart ordered the federal government to process certain refugee applications but said his directive did not apply to people without a "bona fide relationship'' to a person or entity in the United States.
President Donald Trump restarted the refugee program in October "with enhanced vetting capabilities.''
Agency chiefs' memo
The day before his executive order, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke and Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats sent a memo to Trump saying certain refugees had to be banned unless additional security measures were implemented.
It applied to the spouses and minor children of refugees who had already settled in the U.S. and suspended the refugee program for people coming from 11 countries, nine of which are mostly Muslim.
In his decision, Robart wrote that "former officials detailed concretely how the agency memo will harm the United States' national security and foreign policy interests.''
Robart said his order restored refugee procedures in programs to what they were before the memo and noted that this already included very thorough vetting of individuals.
The ACLU argued the memo provided no evidence for why additional security was needed and didn't specify a time frame for implementing the changes. The groups said the process for imposing the policy violated a federal law.
August Flentje, a Justice Department attorney, told the judge that the ban was temporary and "was a reasonable and appropriate way for agency heads to tackle gaps'' in the screening process.
Lawsuits consolidated
The lawsuits from the two groups were consolidated; they represent refugees who have been blocked from entering the country.
The ACLU represents a Somali man living in Washington state who is trying to bring his family to the U.S. They have gone through extensive vetting, have passed security and medical clearances, and just need travel papers, but those were denied after the ban.
Lisa Nowlin, staff attorney for the ACLU of Washington, said in a statement they were happy that their client, "who has not yet had the opportunity to celebrate a single birthday with his younger son in person, will soon have the opportunity to hold his children, hug his wife in the very near future, and be together again as a family for the first time in four years.''
Two other refugees included in the Jewish Family Service lawsuit are former Iraqi interpreters for the U.S. Army whose lives are at risk because of their service.
Another is a transgender woman in Egypt "living in such extremely dangerous circumstances that the U.S. government itself had expedited her case until the ban came down,'' said Mariko Hirose, a lawyer with the Jewish Family Service case.
Yet another is a single woman in Iraq, Hirose said. Her husband divorced her after she was kidnapped and raped by militants because she worked with an American company. Her family is in the U.S. but she's stranded by the ban, Hirose said.
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