As a candidate for president, Donald Trump advocated a restrictive U.S. policy toward refugee resettlement and other forms of legal immigration.

In his speech accepting the Republican nomination for president, Trump said he would suspend immigration from countries that are “compromised by terrorism.”

Trump, when he assumes office in January, will find that he has significant authority to fulfill his pledge.

“He can decide how many refugees we take and from what regions of the world we take them,” said Kevin Appleby, senior director of international migration policy at the Center for Migration Studies in New York, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “He has a pretty broad brush to pick and choose who he thinks is worthy of admission to the United States.”

Trump has not clarified his position on refugees since becoming president-elect.

But throughout his campaign, Trump targeted the U.S. refugee resettlement program, arguing the government’s vetting system needed to be tougher, especially for Syrians fleeing war and terrorism.

The Obama administration says the current vetting process for Syrian refugees is the most stringent screening for any category of legal immigrant. The process can take up to two years and involves in-person interviews, health tests, and other security checks with multiple government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.

About 14,500 Syrians have been resettled in the U.S. since last October. There is no known case of a Syrian refugee being involved in a terror plot in the U.S. In January, the U.S. government arrested two men on terrorism-related charges who came to the U.S. as refugees from Iraq.

In September, the Obama administration announced that it wants to resettle 110,000 refugees from around the world—including a substantial number of Syrians—for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. That’s up from 85,000 refugees last year.

The Refugee Act of 1980 gives the U.S. president unilateral power over how many refugees the country admits each fiscal year, and where they come from.

Congress is only consulted in the process and does not get an up or down vote on the numbers.

Traditionally, the refugee resettlement gets broad bipartisan support, but this year, many Republicans protested President Barack Obama’s pledge to raise the number admitted to the U.S.

“This has become a politically correct program where we are led to believe that we have to take refugees from all over the world no matter how dangerous the threat is,” said Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “We are out here trying to keep Americans safe. That is our No. 1 duty we have as elected officials.”

Babin has sponsored legislation pausing refugee resettlement from “terrorism hot spots” to the U.S.

He was among 37 Republicans who tried, but failed, to attach language to a must-pass spending bill passed in September that would have blocked federal funding to refugees from Syria, other countries in the Middle East, and North Africa until national security officials could guarantee that terrorists cannot infiltrate the screening process.

“Trump has the authority to do what we in Congress could not do, and suspend this program immediately, particularly from Islamic terrorist hot spots,” Babin said. “I urge him to follow through on his campaign promise.”

Refugee and immigration experts say Trump can indeed use his executive powers immediately to keep Obama’s 110,000 refugee target number for this fiscal year, or reduce it. He can even pause the program completely, or restrict refugees from specific countries.

“Trump has the authority to resettle 110,000 like Obama or zero refugees,” said Matthew La Corte, an immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen Center. “That is his decision with consultation with Congress and the State Department.”

Trump can also limit other forms of legal immigration to the U.S., as he and his incoming administration have hinted they may try and do.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” this weekend, Reince Priebus, the incoming White House chief of staff, said, “We’re going to temporarily suspend immigration from [certain countries or regions] until a better vetting system is put in place.”

Under U.S. law, the president has authority to use a proclamation to suspend the entry of “any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States [who] would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Over six decades ago, Congress, worried that communists would try and enter the U.S., authorized this executive authority as part of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.

Obama used this power in 2011 when he issued a presidential proclamation suspending the entry of “any alien who planned, ordered, assisted, aided, and abetted, committed or otherwise participated in” war crimes or other violations of humanitarian law.

But immigration experts say the power has not been applied as broadly as Trump has proposed.

For example, early in his campaign, Trump called for “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the U.S.” He later removed the reference to religion and instead proposed barring people from regions of the world with a “proven history of terrorism” against the U.S. and the West.

“The statutory authority is clearly there for Trump to do what he said he would do,” said William Stock, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “But the power under the law has usually been used in a case-by-case manner, impacting narrow classes of people. The broader the assertion of the authority, the more likely a successful court challenge against it.”

Opponents of Trump’s proposals, including refugee advocates and national security experts, say that limiting U.S. assistance to the most vulnerable of immigrants is detrimental to the fight against terrorism.

They say that such a withdrawal from the world makes the case for terrorist groups such as the Islamic State that seek to turn Muslims against the West.

“We are at a pivotal moment in our country,” Appleby said. “If we start closing our doors, pulling up the drawbridge will undermine our national interests. It gives the extremists more power to demonize us and use it as a propaganda tool. We are looked at as a humanitarian leader, and if we withdraw that commitment, the rest of the world will follow and then we will really have a crisis on our hands.” (For more from the author of “How Trump Can Reshape US Policy Toward Refugees” please click HERE)

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When it comes to loathsome political figures, there isn’t a person serving at any level of government than Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. (F, 2%). He’s just awful, and the Senate will be a better place now that he is leaving. That said, one of those most conniving, back-stabbing Senators will be taking his place.

New York Senator Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. (F, 2%) is a career politician through and through. Schumer was elected to office in 1974, soon after graduating from Harvard Law School. Schumer passed the New York State Bar Exam but never practiced. He’s never worked a single day in the private sector. He is also fond of using the word “bipartisan” when he engages in some of the most partisan nonsense of anybody in the entire Congress.

Schumer was on Fox News Sunday this week. When asked by Chris Wallace about the Supreme Court and Donald Trump, Schumer said the following:

WALLACE: Let’s talk about an issue where you won’t agree and that is that Donald Trump intends to name a conservative, a real conservative, to the Supreme Court.

SCHUMER: Right.

WALLACE: If you think that it’s the wrong person, are you prepared — and will Democrats be prepared to filibuster that nomination, which has only happened once in the history of the Senate.

SCHUMER: I would hope first and foremost that President Trump nominates a mainstream nominee capable of getting bipartisan support.

If he does, then we’ll give it just a very, very thorough vetting, but we won’t ipso facto say no.

If it’s out of the mainstream, yes, we’re going to fight that nominee tooth and nail. And let’s remember two things. Let’s —

WALLACE: But wait. Fight — does that mean filibuster?

SCHUMER: Let me say two things.

First, we — when we had power, we changed the rules, but I argued with Harry Reid not to change it for Supreme Court, because it should get that bipartisan support.

So, it’s still 60 votes. We didn’t change the rules. If they, you know, I hope our Republicans won’t.

And second, when our Republican colleagues say, “Let’s do this quickly, without filibuster,” they don’t come here with clear, clean hands. After what they did to Merrick Garland and held him up for a whole year, a bipartisan nominee who Senator Hatch, conservative Republican, Utah, former head of Judiciary, said would be a very good nominee.

So, let’s — let’s try to get a mainstream nominee, but let’s not jump to conclusions, because what the Republicans did, past is sometimes prologue.

To get straight to the point: A “mainstream” nominee is one Schumer supports. In 2010, Schumer had the audacity to say about Sonia Sotomayor, “…no one questioned that she was out of the mainstream.” Not even Politifact bought this and rated the claim “false” showing some Republicans said she was out of the mainstream.

Schumer’s blather about bipartisanship and the treatment of Merrick Garland is ridiculous considering he gave a speech in 2007 imploring Democrats to reject any Supreme Court nominee by President George W. Bush in the wake of the confirmations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Schumer said:

We should reverse the presumption of confirmation. The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts; or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.

Given the track record of this President and the experience of obfuscation at the hearings, with respect to the Supreme Court, at least: I will recommend to my colleagues that we should not confirm a Supreme Court nominee except in extraordinary circumstances.

There are a few things to consider. First, the Republicans did not engage in any poor treatment of Garland. When Justice Scalia died, the GOP immediately informed President Obama they would not consider a Supreme Court nominee during an election year. Obama went ahead and nominated Garland anyway, arguing the Senate had some constitutional obligation to consider him, even though no such legal edict exists.

Secondly, Schumer’s complaints about a one year wait for Garland are hypocritical given there were 543 days left in Bush’s administration when he gave this speech. Schumer was perfectly fine with filibustering a nominee for nearly 18 months.

Finally, exactly what obfuscation is Schumer talking about? He not only voted against Roberts and Alito, but he also worked with then-Senator Obama to filibuster Alito’s nomination. Is Senator Schumer arguing his Democratic colleagues are not smart enough to see they were being hoodwinked? Also, if he’s so concerned about obfuscation, where was his denouncement of Elana Kagan who ruled to affirm same-sex marriage is a constitutionally protected right when she testified to the exact opposite during her confirmation hearings?

Donald Trump submitted a list of very well qualified people to nominate to the Supreme Court. Charles Schumer will no doubt argue all of them are out of the “mainstream.” It’s going to be up to President Trump to tell Schumer he doesn’t get to make a choice. His role is to take part in the hearings and then put it to an up or down vote. (For more from the author of “Donald Trump Shouldn’t Trust Anything Chuck Schumer Says on Supreme Court Nominees” please click HERE)

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