Even while Democratic politicians in deeply blue areas express their frustration with the migrant crisis and the toll it’s taking on public resources, Joe Biden is pushing ahead with plans to not only continue the massive migrant flow, but aggravate it by admitting more refugees from poor regions of the world.
As The Associated Press reports, the White House published its targets for the number of refugees it plans to admit over the course of the next fiscal year (beginning October 1). The total is 125,000, which is the same as this year.
Thus, the Biden administration does not deem it necessary to scale back the number of refugees being admitted despite places such as New York City saying their capacities for housing and maintaining migrants are totally exhausted.
Just as significant is the notable change in where these refugees will be coming from. The White House said it will admit between 35,000 and 50,000 refugees from Latin America and the Caribbean. By contrast, this year’s goal was just 15,000. To compensate, the administration will cut the number of refugees from Europe and Central Asia from 15,000 to between 2,000 and 3,000.
Speaking about the change, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the globe is in the middle of an “unprecedented global displacement crisis in which record numbers of people have been forced to flee war, persecution, and instability.” He added that, in addition to helping individuals from Latin America and the Caribbean, the U.S. will also focus on “key populations of concern,” including Afghans who assisted America during the military’s involvement in that country.
While the cap is a target for the number of refugees the United States intends to bring in during the year, the government does not necessarily fulfill that number. As of August, for example, only 51,000 of the possible 125,000 were admitted.
Refugee status differs from other forms of protections, such as asylum, in that prospective refugees must be living outside the U.S. and be referred to the State Department by the UN’s refugee agency. They are then vetted and interviewed by U.S. officials abroad. Asylum applicants, meanwhile, must be on American soil.
AP further reports:
For decades, America admitted more refugees each year than all other countries combined, only to fall behind Canada in 2018.
Admissions under the program hit an all-time low of 11,411 in 2021 after dramatic cuts by the Trump administration. But this year has seen a rise in the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. following government efforts to beef up staffing and make more trips to foreign countries to interview prospective refugees.
In short, despite knowing that cities across America are drowning in a tidal wave of migration from Latin America, Biden does not plan on reducing it, but allowing more of it through the new refugee goals.
In one of the latest examples of the drastic measures to which policymakers have turned to deal with the mass movement of people across the southern border, the Biden administration is deliberately stepping over environmental regulations in order to set up a migrant camp of 7,500 adult men at a national park site in the Big Apple.
As The New American previously reported, the National Park Service has now signed an agreement to lease Floyd Bennett Field, a former airport that is part of the Gateway National Recreation Area in Brooklyn and managed by the National Park Service, as the site of a migrant tent city. Officials have candidly admitted that they will not go through the typical environmental protocols mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act to do so.
And not only do government officials lack a plan to provide sufficient policing for a population of 7,500 potentially dangerous adult men who crossed the border illegally (often with help from cartels); the camp doesn’t even have the infrastructure to ensure that that many people have access to basic needs such as water. To make matters worse, the location is a flood plain that was inundated as recently as last weekend, calling into question the site’s suitability.
The dire situation at the border has been punctuated by people such as X owner Elon Musk, who raised awareness of the easy access illegal aliens have to American soil during a recent trip to Texas.
While at the border Thursday with Texas State Rep. Tony Gonzalez, Musk was told that 11,000 people are illegally crossing into the United States daily — amounting to more than the population of some states in just one year’s time. It’s not surprising that the strain on American resources has been astronomical, and the demographic effects of these levels of migration are far-reaching.
What makes matters worse is that these illegal border crossers are not being repatriated; they are being released onto the streets to disappear from the supervision of immigration authorities. The New American has documented this practice taking place at border detention centers in Arizona and California.
