Mark Krikorian: Why Refugee Resettlement Is Immoral

Posted: November 17, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Global, Health and Social Issues, Terrorism, Think Tank, War Room | Tags: American Community Survey, Bashar al-Assad, Center for Immigration Studies, Commonwealth of Independent States, Demographics of the United States, Foreign born, Illegal immigration, Immigration, Pew Research Center, RUSSIA, Syria, United States, United States Census Bureau, Vladimir Putin |Leave a comment

“Each refugee we bring to the United States means that eleven others are not being helped with that money.”

Mark Krikorian writes:

…Sure, welcoming refugees here makes us feel good. Newspapers run heart-warming stories of overcoming adversity; churches embrace the objects of their charity; politicians can wax nostalgic about their grandparents.

“it costs twelve times as much to resettle a refugee in the United States as it does to care for the same refugee in a neighboring country in the Middle East.”

But the goal of refugee assistance is not to make us feel good. It is to assist as many people as possible with the resources available. And resettling a relative handful of them here to help us bask in our own righteousness means we are sacrificing the much larger number who could have been helped with the same resources.

“The five-year cost to American taxpayers of resettling a single Middle Eastern refugee in the United States is conservatively estimated to be more than $64,000, compared with U.N. figures that indicate it costs about $5,300 to provide for that same refugee for five years in his native region.”

[Read the full text here, at National Review Online]

The difference in cost is enormous. The Center for Immigration Studies, which I head, recently calculated that it costs twelve times as much to resettle a refugee in the United States as it does to care for the same refugee in a neighboring country in the Middle East.

“The goal of refugee assistance is not to make us feel good. It is to assist as many people as possible with the resources available. And resettling a relative handful of them here to help us bask in our own righteousness means we are sacrificing the much larger number who could have been helped with the same resources.”

The five-year cost to American taxpayers of resettling a single Middle Eastern refugee in the United States is conservatively estimated to be more than $64,000, compared with U.N. figures that indicate it costs about $5,300 to provide for that same refugee for five years in his native region.

[Obama On ISIS: I’m Not Interested In ‘America Winning’]

If Obama isn’t interested in “American leadership” as a slogan, why is it the title of his 2015 Natsec Strategy? https://t.co/viErGJpfrw

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) November 16, 2015

In other words, each refugee we bring to the United States means that eleven others are not being helped with that money. Faced with twelve drowning people, only a monster would send them a luxurious one-man boat rather than twelve life jackets. And yet, with the best of intentions, that is exactly what we are doing when we choose one lucky winner to resettle here…..(read more)

Source: National Review Online

— Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.