House Democrats approved $6.4 billion in American taxpayer money to resettle 95,000 Afghans, being flown into the United States by President Joe Biden’s administration, across the nation.
On Tuesday evening, all 220 House Democrats voted in support of a funding bill that will spend billions in taxpayer money to resettle tens of thousands of Afghans in 46 states. None of the 211 House Republicans voted in favor of the bill.
Already, refugee resettlement costs taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years. Over the course of a lifetime, taxpayers pay about $133,000 per refugee and within five years of resettlement, roughly 16 percent will need taxpayer-funded housing assistance.
The billions will go toward providing Afghans with housing assistance, covering medical costs, welfare, and driver’s licenses.
Refugee contractors, funded by taxpayer money to annually resettle refugees, will also be awarded $1.7 billion to “provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services, including wrap-around services during temporary housing and after resettlement, housing assistance, medical assistance, legal assistance, and case management assistance.”
While 18 Republican governors and a number of House and Senate Republicans have pledged their support for Biden’s resettlement operation, lawmakers like Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) have called for a halt to the effort.
“I won’t be silenced,” Rosendale told Politico. “It would be better for these folks to be settled in nations around them — Uzbekistan, Tajikistan — where they do share their culture where they do share the religion, and everybody involved would be happier.”
Others like Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) are supporting resettlement of some Afghans arriving in the U.S., ones that “love America” and helped the U.S. in the war effort in Afghanistan. Daines also said, regarding vetted Afghans who did help the United States, that it is Americans’ “duty to ensure that they are allowed a way to get away from the Taliban.”
“It’s fully vetted refugees that were instrumental in helping U.S. forces in Afghanistan,” Daines said in a statement this week.
In a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Daines warned that “there is significant concern with admitting large numbers of immigrants from a war-torn country like Afghanistan,” asking how long the vetting process typically takes and if it is fully conducted overseas.
Though Biden has pitched the resettlement as a commitment to the nation’s allies in the Afghanistan War, the overwhelming majority of Afghans arriving in the U.S. do not qualify for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) or even P-2 visas. Those visa programs are reserved only for Afghans and their families who worked directly for the U.S. Armed Forces.
Instead, the majority of Afghans are arriving on “humanitarian parole” and some are coming on refugee status. An estimated 50,000 Afghans will be brought to the U.S. as parolees where they will stay at a number of U.S. military bases and receive one-time $1,250 payments.
In a 21-day period from August to September, Biden brought more than 48,000 Afghans to the U.S. for resettlement — a population more than four times that of Jackson, Wyoming.
Afghans are being extracted from Afghanistan and flown to third safe countries like Germany, Spain, and Qatar before they eventually are flown into Dulles International Airport in Virginia and Philadelphia International Airport in Pennsylvania.
Most Afghans arriving in the U.S. have not completed their immigration processing.
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.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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