White House pressures State Department over refugee costs: sources
Source: Reuters
Two studies President Donald Trump hopes will buttress his case to cut the number of refugees are at the heart of a fight between senior White House adviser Stephen Miller and career U.S. government officials over immigration policy, four current and former officials said.
Trump in March ordered the U.S. State Department and other agencies to tally only the costs of resettling refugees but not the benefits that policy experts said refugees can also bring, including tax revenues, professional skills and job creation.
A current official said Miller had convened meetings with State Department staffers to discuss the refugee cost reports. When department specialists proposed including refugees' economic contributions in the studies to produce a more balanced assessment, Miller rebuffed the idea, one current and one former U.S. official said.
The White House said Miller did not hold meetings on the specific subject of the cost reports and that Trump's overall fiscal year 2018 budget proposal sought to "make transparent the net budgetary effects of immigration programs and policy."
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-refugees-idUSKBN19C2JB
POLITICS | Wed Jun 21, 2017 | 4:54pm EDT
By Warren Strobel and Arshad Mohammed | WASHINGTON
