President Joe Biden’s massive Afghan resettlement operation, with no end date, has been funded by Congress to the sum of more than $13 billion thanks to 19 Senate Republicans who helped advance the plan.
Late Thursday evening, House Democrats and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) passed a government funding bill that will keep the federal government operating through mid-February. In the bill is more than $7 billion in funding for the Biden administration to resettle an unlimited number of Afghans across the United States.
In the Senate, 19 Senate Republicans joined Senate Democrats to send the bill to Biden’s desk — now authorizing, in total, $13.3 billion for the administration to resettle Afghans after 49 House and Senate Republicans voted in September to fund the resettlement operation $6.4 billion.
These 19 Senate Republicans who backed the bill are:
- Roy Blunt (R-MO)
- Richard Burr (R-NC)
- Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
- Susan Collins (R-ME)
- John Cornyn (R-TX)
- Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
- Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS)
- John Kennedy (R-LA)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Jerry Moran (R-KS)
- Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
- Rob Portman (R-OH)
- Mike Rounds (R-SD)
- Marco Rubio (R-FL)
- Richard Shelby (R-AL)
- Thom Tillis (R-NC)
- Roger Wicker (R-MS)
- Todd Young (R-IN)
In the bill, Afghans and other foreign nationals are identified as “individuals at risk” who can take part in “relocations” to the U.S. “as a result of the situation in Afghanistan.”
Senate Republican support for Biden’s Afghan resettlement operation comes even as Republican voters are deeply opposed to the plan, multiple polls have shown. The latest Pew Research Center survey shows that 63 percent of GOP voters oppose the plan.
In addition, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has admitted that “not all” Afghans are being vetted through standard in-person interview procedures.
“We are not conducting in-person, refugee interviews of 100 percent individuals,” Mayorkas told lawmakers last month during a hearing.
Afghans are being temporarily housed across various U.S. military bases in Texas, New Jersey, Virginia, Wisconsin, Indiana, and New Mexico. From there, they are resettled across 46 states, at a rate of about 4,000 resettled every day, as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) help to secure them jobs.
The nation’s Afghan population has exploded since former President George W. Bush started the Afghanistan War in 2001. The number of Afghans living in the U.S., for instance, has shot up to 133,000 in 2019 — more than three times the 44,000 Afghans who lived in the U.S. before the start of the war.
The data revealed also that most Afghan arrivals in the U.S. live on welfare.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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