Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi
The annual refugee resettlement kerfuffle is underway. As usual, on one side are the immigration expansionists: President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, congressional Democrats with, for good measure, the predictable GOP defectors, immigration lawyers who see $$$ in their futures, resettlement agencies who also profit disproportionately and the tirelessly active pro-immigration lobby.
On the other side are American voters who want to see an admission cap that’s consistent with the nation’s ability to absorb refugees, the current economy and, in 2021, the possible consequences from a still-threatening COVID-19 that refugees might carry. Americans also want to maintain the country’s well-deserved image as a compassionate, caring nation.
For decades, refugee admissions have been a political hot potato. Until President Trump set the annual level at 15,000, the previous levels ranged widely. Under former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. resettled an average of 81,000 refugees annually. Then, President Trump gradually cut back to his final 15,000 cap – from 45,000, to 30,000 and to 18,000 during successive fiscal years. Although President Trump set his 2020 cap at 15,000, the administration admitted only 12,000 refugees, a cautionary response to coronavirus. The caps represent an upper limit on how many refugee applications the State Department is willing to review during a fiscal year, and not a mandated goal.
Since Biden entered the White House, however, the refugee debate has taken on another antagonistic dimension: Biden’s waffling. Biden, a co-sponsor with Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) of the Refugee Act of 1979, initially committed to extending former President Trump’s 15,000 cap, a decision he said was “justified by humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest.” But after getting intense blowback from influential Democrats like Illinois’ Dick Durbin, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, immigration lawyers and resettlement profiteers, Biden quickly reversed his course and signed an Executive Order that committed to a 125,000 refugee ceiling in fiscal year 2022.
Biden relented under heavy pressure from Durbin who had sharply reprimanded Biden, calling a 15,000 ceiling “unacceptable.” Biden also came under attack from immigration lawyers who scorned his “cowardly” failure to fulfill his campaign promise to lift President Trump’s annual cap from 15,000 to 125,000. One immigration lawyer questioned why Biden is “perpetuating Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant legacy.”
Most craven among Biden critics were nine taxpayer-funded refugee resettlement agencies: Church World Service, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, International Rescue Committee, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and World Relief Corporation. The International Rescue Committee whole-heartedly endorsed Biden’s Executive Order. The agencies have a keen interest in maximizing resettlement. In 2012, a critical analysis from the General Accounting Office found that agencies’ annual federally-funded budgets are determined by the number of refugees they resettle.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) published a report that quantified for taxpayers precisely how much refugee resettlement costs. FAIR’s study found that the annual cost of resettling refugees is about $1.8 billion per year, with about $867 million representing welfare payments. Other resettling costs include processing, education and housing assistance. That works out, FAIR research found, to a per refugee cost to taxpayers of nearly $75,600 during the refugee’s first five resettled years.
Biden’s backers insist that increasing refugee resettlement will preserve the U.S. position as the world’s most welcoming nation for migrants. But America’s status as the world’s most charitable – with or without admitting more refugees – cannot be challenged. In 2020, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees compiled data that showed that the U.S. was the top 2020 donor to UNHCR’s global refugee activities. The nearly $2 billion in U.S. contributions is about four times the total contributed by the source that ranked second, the entire European Union which gave an aggregate $522 million.
Refugees qualify for immediate work permission. With millions of Americans unemployed, underemployed or COVID-19 furloughed, more employment-authorized refugees create unnecessary competition for increasingly scarce jobs that citizens and lawfully present residents deserve.
Biden’s original reaction – to hold steady at 15,000 refugees for the upcoming fiscal year – was correct. Unfortunately, Biden didn’t have the courage of his convictions, and folded under the pressure Democratic extremists put on him.
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Former VP Biden, the corrupt, senile, old pedophile can’t decide if he wants a plain or chocolate donut for breakfast, much less how many aliens to allow to compete for American jobs.
With no one checking or counting, who knows?
I believe Biden’s official position means that they stop counting at 125,000 – and nothing more.
God help us. And I mean that.
Here’s a wild idea. Ask Americans what they want. Yeah, that’s a laffer.
Low IQ, low skills immigrants with high social service demands and plenty of relatives that will become eligible to immigrate once the anchor gets established. Beautiful.
Just what we need with automation soon to be decimating these same low IQ, low skill jobs. They will be on welfare roles forever. Just like the current inner city fun to be around crowd.
This country has gone f***ing insane.
They did ask us. Once. In California, 1994. We said we didn’t want 20 million Mexicans in California.
Mariana R. Pfaelzer, a Jewish United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California decided that our votes didn’t matter because we had not chosen the Jew-approved option.
We said no and we got 20 million Mexicans, and counting, anyway. Because this fucking Jew had schemed and connived her way into a position where she made decisions that affected society, and she used her position to chisel away at American society in the most destructive manner she could.
Until they revolt… They want it all and you deny them, You will see your house, city and state Burnt to the Ground.
locusts then move on to greener pastures
Cultural replacement. Bringing in socialist border crashers and a new voter base to tip the scales. Since the Presidential election was fraudulently stolen through ballot manipulation and a controlled narrative, why would this matter? Because they need stupid people on the dole to willingly ask for their own enslavement. Natural borns with a brain would never accept what they are pushing so they bring in more 3rd worlders to dilute the vote and the culture. Cornpop is a globalist piece of sh!t!
I believe the Ministry of Truth has stated that the refugee cap has been reduced to 125,000.
Also, now I want waffles.
From what I am told, You no longer have a southern Border. They have mobile phones, They have contacts that guide them and they will be locusts upon your field….. They do carry the Covid-19 but it is OK
The United States of America have never been so divided… Nor so Fooled by Politics.
These are your new Slaves to replace the uppity ones , if your Black your not white enough for Joe, he want Subservient ones and your $hit out of luck if you want a paying job and if your black or Mexican.. new wave is coming, too bad, so sad.
Stimmies have ended now, Porch monkeys!