Hacked Memo: George Soros Lobbied Obama To Accept 100,000 Refugees Per Year — and Succeeded

TEL AVIV – Hacked documents from George Soros’s Open Society Institute state that the billionaire and his foundation helped to successfully press the Obama administration into increasing to 100,000 the total number of refugees taken in by the U.S. annually, Breitbart Jerusalem has found.

Over the course of several weeks, we, along with our colleagues in the Washington office led by Stephen Rickard, combined to undertake very active efforts to support a request to the Administration to provide a special allocation of an additional 100,000 refugee slots for Syrians and significantly expanded resources for international aid efforts. George Soros made such a request to President Obama in a recent letter, and 18 mayors across America are committed to welcoming refugees to their cities in numbers surpassing the administration’s proposal.
We used the extensive networks we have developed to help engage an array of actors, most of whom were sympathetic to the cause but had not focused on the issue. In part, our active role reflects our observation that the refugee advocacy community, while long-standing and sophisticated in the inner workings of refugee policy, does not have a strong advocacy capacity or deep grassroots ties. In the course of our work, we were able to generate engagement by a group of mayors through Emma Lazarus II Fund grantee Cities United for Immigration Action; the civil rights and immigrant rights community, through long-time grantee the Leadership Council for Civil and Human Rights; liberal and conservative former national security and state department officials with the help of grantee Human Rights First; and some conservative voices, such as evangelical Christians and Southern Baptists through grantee National Immigration Forum. In the face of this pressure, the Obama administration announced Sept. 20 that by 2017, it would raise to 100,000 the total number of refugees the U.S. takes worldwide each year. While we applaud this development, it falls short of the proposed special allocation. We and allied advocates believe the U.S. can and should do more.

As George Soros and the parts of the foundation that focus on the Middle East, Africa, and Europe direct major resources and attention to that crisis, we have moved to press the United States government to respond at a level consistent with the global crisis.
Working in close coordination with our colleagues in the DC Advocacy office, we (in support of George Soros) have pushed for three specific policy objectives: (1) an increase in the worldwide refugee authorization from the pre-existing 70,000 to one commensurate with the need, (2) an increase in resources to the relevant government agencies to expand their ability to process individuals under the existing numbers (noting that the United States has only processed 1,500 Syrians since 2011 even though existing authority allows 10,000 as of now), and (3) an increase in the financing for efforts overseas, recognizing that the United States is and remains the largest funder of support for these efforts. George Soros’ letter to President Obama is included here.