WASHINGTON: Catholic bishops sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its abrupt halt to funding of refugee resettlement, calling the action unlawful and harmful to newly arrived refugees and to the nation\u2019s largest private resettlement program.
\nThe US Conference of Catholic Bishops says the administration, by withholding millions even for reimbursements of costs incurred before the sudden cut-off of funding, violates various laws as well as the constitutional provision giving the power of the purse to Congress, which already approved the funding.
\nThe conference\u2019s Migration and Refugee Services has sent layoff notices to 50 workers, more than half its staff, with additional cuts expected in local Catholic Charities offices that partner with the national office, the lawsuit said.
\n\u201cThe Catholic Church always works to uphold the common good of all and promote the dignity of the human person, especially the most vulnerable among us,\u201d said Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the USCCB. \u201cThat includes the unborn, the poor, the stranger, the elderly and infirm, and migrants.\u201d The funding suspension prevents the church from doing so, he said.
\n\u201cThe conference suddenly finds itself unable to sustain its work to care for the thousands of refugees who were welcomed into our country and assigned to the care of the USCCB by the government after being granted legal status,\u201d Broglio said.
\nThe conference is trying to keep the program going, but it\u2019s \u201cfinancially unsustainable,\u201d he said, adding that it\u2019s trying to hold the US government to its \u201cmoral and legal commitments.\u201d
\nThe conference is one of 10 national agencies, most of them faith-based, that serve refugees and that have been sent scrambling since receiving a Jan. 24 State Department letter informing them of an immediate suspension of funding pending a review of foreign-aid programs.
\nThe lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, notes that the resettlement program isn\u2019t even foreign aid. It\u2019s a domestic program to help newly arrived refugees \u2014 who arrive legally after being vetted overseas \u2014 meet initial needs such as housing and job placement.
\n\u201cUSCCB spends more on refugee resettlement each year than it receives in funding from the federal government, but it cannot sustain its programs without the millions in federal funding that provide the foundation of this private-public partnership,\u201d the lawsuit says.
\nThe lawsuit said the government is attempting to \u201cpull the rug out\u201d from under the program, causing it longstanding damage.
\nThe lawsuit names the departments of State and Health and Human Services as well as their respective secretaries, Marco Rubio and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Both departments have roles in delegating resettlement work to the bishops conference.
\nThere was no immediate reply in court from those departments.
\nThe USCCB said it is still awaiting about $13 million in reimbursements for expenses prior to Jan. 24.
\nAs of Jan. 25, it said, there were 6,758 refugees assigned by the government to USCCB\u2019s care that had been in the country less than 90 days, the period of time for which they\u2019re eligible for resettlement aid.
\nThe conference said suspending the resettlement effort will only prolong the time it takes for refugees to find employment and become self-sufficient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: Catholic bishops sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its abrupt halt to funding of refugee resettlement, calling the action unlawful and harmful to newly arrived refugees and to the nation\u2019s largest private resettlement program. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops says the administration, by withholding millions even for reimbursements of costs incurred before …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77297,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77279\/revisions\/77297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}