The Reagan Building: The Department of State

[Adam Griffin]

Now, obviously the Atlasian Refugee Act of 1980 vests all power in quotas for refugee handling exclusively in the executive branch - namely, in this case, the President - with the notion that refugees processed and accepted are admitted based on the definition of "any person who is outside any country of such person nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion".

Furthermore, since the definition of refugee excludes "any person who ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person on ... account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion", the refugee vetting process will handle any possibilities for organized discrimination of groups based on religion and will exclude anyone falling under this definition from qualifying for refugee status.

The White House is willing and looks forward to working with anyone and everyone on this matter in the coming days and weeks.  

[Adam Griffin]

We appreciate the clarification Mr. President.  To parse that just a little bit further, are we to assume that the quota policy outlined by the Secretary of State is not going to be utilized by the administration?

Until I announce any related plan, it shouldn't be assumed that any other proposed plan forms the basis for what will occur.

[Adam Griffin]

In hindsight, I realize that this was completely my fault. The SoS sent me (and several others) his initial plan several days ago. While I glanced at it, I did not do the due diligence of reading it over in full detail. The holidays have had me a bit helter-skelter and so this misunderstanding falls on my office for not fully reading and providing the necessary input at the time it was initially proposed.

[Adam Griffin]

If I'm not mistaken, the default option is to take 60,000 refugees. The Secretary is increasing that number tremendously. In an alternate universe, we would be fighting over whether to welcome 10,000 more refugees for the entire country.

The default number (assuming we haven't changed it through Atlasian referendum) is 50,000 per year, but that can be increased by the President in "emergency situations".