For the first time in 67 years, the United States will not lead the United Nations migration agency. Isaacs is considered to hold opinions which run counter to the purpose of the agency, including his perspectives on Islam and climate change, which both happen to be major factors impacting the migration of peoples around the globe.
In addition, the vote is taking place at a time when Trump has been making waves by imprisoning entire families for crossing the Mexico border after splitting up families at the border, many of whom remain parted at the writing of this article. Therefore, the US is lacking a positive humanitarian like image, which is of at least a little bit of significance when a humanitarian body’s leadership is in question. In his place, a Portuguese diplomat won the vote in Isaacs’s stead, beginning his term in October.
United Press International reports:
June 29 (UPI) — Ken Isaacs, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the United Nations migration agency, was bypassed for the job Friday in a secret ballot vote.
Isaacs finished last among three candidates Thursday at the International Organization for Migration’s Geneva headquarters.
Portuguese diplomat and former deputy prime minister Antonio Vitorino won the vote instead. He will start in October.
The vote marks the first time since 1951 the leader of the 169-nation agency will not be a U.S. representative. Vitorino will replace American William Lacy Swing, who was elected near the end of President George W. Bush’s administration.
The rejection of Isaacs, who now works for the Christian non-profit group Samaritan’s Purse, can be seen as a global rebuke to Trump’s migration policies — and a possible sign of falling U.S. influence in multilateral agencies after Trump recently pulled the United States from the U.N. Humans Rights Council.
Since his nomination in February, Isaacs has also dealt with prior social media posts in which he was critical of Islam, calling it a violent religion, and expressed doubts about climate change. He later apologized.
Isaacs’ defeat at the IOM is “a sad statement on U.S. global credibility,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, former disaster assistance director of the U.S. Agency for International Development. “The world was unlikely to support a U.S. candidate to lead the global migration body under those circumstances.”
Another nail has found itself in the coffin of American international influence, hammered in there by President Donald Trump. Last week, US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, withdrew the US from the United Nations Human Rights Council, just days before a report was to be issued on the growing poverty crisis in America, allegedly over the Council’s bias against Israel. Trump has withdrawn the US from multiple multilateral accords, including the TPP, the Paris Climate Accord, the JCPOA, a G7 declaration, threatened NAFTA on multiple occasions, threatened sanctions against America’s trade partners for not abiding by America’s foreign policy interests, and initiated what is rapidly turning into a global trade war.
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