A new campaign ad for President Trump notes Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden’s plan to hike refugee resettlement to the United States by 700 percent during the Chinese coronavirus crisis.
“When COVID struck, President Trump took action, cut off travel from China — the source of the virus,” the ad states. “Joe Biden criticized, politicized, attacked President Trump’s leadership.”
“And what does Biden now propose while the pandemic still smolders around the globe? Increasing refugees by 700 percent from the most unstable, vulnerable, dangerous parts of the world. America can’t afford a weak Joe Biden,” the ad continues.
Biden’s plan to overhaul the nation’s immigration system includes a reversal of Trump’s reforms to the State Department’s refugee resettlement program.
Trump, in recent years, has reduced the annual cap of refugees to 18,000 admissions for Fiscal Year 2020. The cap is merely a numerical limit and not a goal federal officials are supposed to reach.
The reduction of refugees is the lowest level of resettlement since the program’s inception in 1980, accounting for an 80 percent reduction compared to the Obama-Biden years. Likewise, Trump has sought to allow states and localities to have a say in whether or not they want to resettle refugees in their communities.
Biden has vowed to increase the refugee resettlement program by 700 percent, setting the annual cap at 125,000, with plans to raise that cap every year for at least four years.
Over the last 19 years, more than 985,000 refugees have been admitted to the country. This is a number more than double that of residents living in Miami, Florida, and would be the equivalent of adding the population of Pensacola, Florida, to the country every year.
Refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years, according to the latest research. Over the course of five years, an estimated 16 percent of all refugees admitted will need housing assistance paid for by taxpayers.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.