More Senate Republicans are getting behind a plan that would give green cards to tens of thousands of Afghans brought to the United States by President Joe Biden’s administration amid allegations of widespread vetting failures.
In the hopes of cramming the green card plan into a year-end spending bill, Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Roger Wicker (R-MS) joined Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) this week in backing the Afghan Adjustment Act, which is already sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Roy Blunt (R-MO), as well as Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
Following the United States Armed Forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Biden opened a refugee pipeline that has resettled more than 86,000 Afghans in American communities — many without having been screened or interviewed in person beforehand.
The plan would allow Biden’s Afghan arrivals to secure green cards after having only lived in the U.S. for a year. While awaiting green cards, the Afghan applicants would be able to keep their work permits and be shielded from deportation.
Already, on multiple occasions now, Republicans and Democrats have attempted but failed to include the plan in various spending measures. Most recently, lawmakers failed to sneak the plan into a year-end military funding bill.
The effort to include the plan in a year-end funding bill comes as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), recently passed this month, allows federal agencies to further investigate whether the Biden administration resettled unvetted Afghans across the U.S.
For over a year, federal probes have revealed widespread vetting failures.
In September, the DHS Inspector General issued a bombshell report detailing how Biden brought Afghans to the U.S. who were “not fully vetted” and may “pose a risk to national security.”
Similarly, in February 2022, a Department of Defense (DOD) Inspector General report revealed that Biden’s agencies failed to properly vet Afghans arriving in the U.S., and that about 50 Afghans were flagged for “significant security concerns” after their resettlement.
Most of the unvetted Afghans flagged for possible terrorism ties, the DOD Inspector General report states, have since disappeared into American communities. The report noted that as of September 17, 2021, only three of 31 Afghans flagged with specific “derogatory information” could be located.
Independent whistleblower reports have come to the same conclusions.
In August, Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) detailed allegations from a whistleblower who claims that the Biden administration knowingly resettled almost 400 Afghans in the U.S. who were listed as “potential threats” in federal databases and urged staff to cut corners in the vetting process.
A Project Veritas report alleges that the Biden administration resettled Afghans listed on the federal government’s “Terrorism Watch List” in communities across America.
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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