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Thursday, November 29, 2018

Importing caravan and other refugees costs US taxpayers $8.8 billion, or $80,000 a head

As the caravan camps out in self-induced misery in Tijuana, and the left calls for the entry of more refugees (and asylees) into the U.S., a new report from the Federation for Immigration Reform shows that such imports don't come cheap.
According to the Washington Examiner:
The Federation for American Immigration Reform Monday put the five-year price tag at $8.8 billion in federal and state costs, or nearly $80,000 per refugee. There are some 18 federal and state programs refugees can tap for financial help, including food stamps, child care, public housing and school loans.
On a yearly average, it is $1.8 billion, or $15,900 per refugee.  Included in that are enormous refugee resettlement costs such as $867 million in welfare, housing assistance and education.
For the advocates of bigger government, that's a good thing, given the growing numbers of bureaucrats needed to "service" such clients.  More clients, more costs; more costs, more bureaucrats.  What's more, half of these refugees and asylees (the terms are used interchangeably in the report because refugees come from their home countries, while asylees apply from the U.S.) stay on Medicaid for five years or more, meaning their incomes stay low, either based on their low skill levels and inability to assimilate or because they have high health care costs and keep their incomes low to ensure a free ride.

The Democrats want more of this.  Here's one report calling for it from lefty Quartz just today.
3. Widen the scope of those who qualify for asylum
Nazario says the US also needs to focus on the asylum seekers who are most at risk of violence in their home countries.  In June, then-attorney-general Jeff Sessions said that immigration judges would no longer be able to consider domestic violence or gang violence as general grounds for asylum, reversing an Obama-era precedent.  Sessions described domestic abuse and violence as "personal crimes."  This "reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of domestic violence, harkening back to an era when rape and partner abuse were viewed as private matters as well as of the brutality and scope of gang violence," said the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
It's the usual lefty solution of throwing taxpayer money at a problem instead of going to the root of the problem, which is the problems in the refugees' home countries, as well as the benefit disparity between what's on offer in home countries and first countries of refuge and the vast banquet of benefits available to U.S. refugees and asylees inside the U.S.
Seriously, we could cut the cost in half by handing each refugee a stack of $40,000 in bills in exchange for his staying out of the U.S., which shows just how bad the whole situation is.
President Trump has cut the vast numbers of refugees admitted to the U.S. sharply, but that move has just brought more fury from the left, which sees these refugees and asylees, dependent as they are on government services and unlikely to change that situation, as major sources of new Democrat votes.
Eighty thousand bucks could also do a lot of good in these refugees' home countries or wherever their first countries of refuge are.  Pity it won't get there, given the Democrats' insistence on importing more and more of this poverty – and inability to succeed in the U.S. as their means of virtue-signaling.  It makes no sense.  And the report's conclusion, that the U.S. should step up helping refugees in their home countries and first countries of asylum, makes a lot of sense.


 
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/11/importing_caravan_and_other_refugees_costs_us_taxpayers_88_billion_or_80000_a_head.html

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