President Joe Biden’s administration is planning to bring about 50,000 Afghans to the United States who do not have visas and who have not completed their immigration processing.
According to three officials who spoke to Bloomberg News, Biden will use the little-known “humanitarian parole” tool to bring roughly 50,000 Afghans to the U.S. The plan is a last-minute effort to bring as many Afghans to the U.S. as possible, as this group does not have Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), P-2 visas, or refugee status.
Instead, Afghans on humanitarian parole will arrive in the U.S. without having first secured visas and completing their immigration processing. After having humanitarian parole for a year or so, the thousands of Afghans would be able to adjust their status. Many are likely to take advantage of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to remain in the U.S.
It is unclear how many Afghans the Biden administration has already paroled into the U.S.
The massive expansion of the Biden administration’s operation that is fast-tracking Afghans into the U.S. interior comes after a group of Senate Democrats as well as Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) begged Biden to resettle more Afghans.
“We strongly urge you to create a humanitarian parole category specifically for women leaders, activists, human rights defenders, judges, parliamentarians, journalists, and members of the Female Tactical Platoon of the Afghan Special Security Forces,” the Senators wrote.
Before evacuating all American citizens from Afghanistan, the Biden administration is increasing the inflow of Afghans to the U.S. for permanent resettlement. A Pentagon spokesman this week said 25,000 Afghans applying for SIVs are likely to be resettled in the U.S. along with thousands more of their family members.
The week before, the Pentagon said the total was 22,000 SIV applicants.
Over the last 20 years, nearly a million refugees have been resettled in the nation — more than double that of residents living in Miami, Florida, and it would be the equivalent of annually adding the population of Pensacola, Florida.
Refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years, according to research, and each refugee costs taxpayers about $133,000 over the course of their lifetime. Within 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. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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