Following the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous handling of the situation in Afghanistan, the pro-mass-migration left is not allowing “a serious crisis to go to waste.” The radical leftists, including members of the so-called “Squad” – always the cheerleaders of unchecked mass migration regardless of circumstances – are taking advantage of the Afghanistan crisis to virtue signal and call for bringing in as many Afghans, and other nationals as well, into the U.S. as possible.
In an August 26 letter to President Biden, 66 congressional Democrats called for the administration to raise the Fiscal Year 2022 refugee admissions cap to “no less than 200,000.” The signatories include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Barbara Lee of California, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia of Illinois, and Joaquin Castro of Texas. The letter also urges the White House to “expand humanitarian parole to provide refuge to vulnerable Afghans who are in grave danger following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.”
Moreover, the representatives mention Ethiopia, Lebanon, Haiti, and “climate change,” demonstrating that Afghanistan is serving as a pretext to a larger importation of refugees from all over the world. And, characteristically, the radical leftist members of Congress dismiss any skepticism towards their plan as “racist, virulent anti-refugee and anti-immigrant sentiment,” and argue that the best response is to “double down on our efforts.”
Predictably, the letter also fails to mention Biden’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, but rather argues that America must take in as many refugees/evacuees as possible because of “a 20-year U.S. military intervention and 40 years of U.S. involvement in the war.” The Democratic representatives thus ignore the fact that our presence in Afghanistan did not materialize out of nothing, but, rather, was the direct result of the Taliban’s hosting of the radical Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda, responsible for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Subsequently, the U.S. was not an occupying power in Afghanistan, but was assisting the Afghans against the Taliban. They also seem unaware that U.S. “involvement” during the 1980s consisted of helping Afghan anti-communist insurgents resist a Soviet invasion. But why delve into historical context when it is easier to simply blame America and use moral blackmail to justify the mass migration agenda?
The following day, Representative Omar also published an op-ed on CNN, which emphasized the same points, but from a more personal perspective. The Somalia-born Omar, who originally came to the U.S. with her family as a child refugee, urges that “[m]uch like we did in the wake of Vietnam, we must allow Afghan citizens to emigrate here immediately using national interest waivers and humanitarian parole,” and that “[w]e should not let paperwork and bureaucracy be a death sentence,” thereby seemingly suggesting that we allow in as many Afghans as possible without doing the proper and necessary vetting. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
To Rep. Omar’s credit, she calls upon “our NATO allies and neighboring countries to do their part,” but she makes it clear that the U.S. must play the primary role in hosting Afghan refugees and evacuees. But wait, there’s more, because “Afghanistan is not the only test. Central America, Haiti, Syria, Libya, and countries around the world are currently facing large-scale human rights crises and need our help.” And, of course, there are also “climate migrants.” She then asserts that “[w]e should be leading a global migration compact, which would provide global funding to address the migrant crisis and establish clear benchmarks for each nation to take in refugees.” In other words, Ms. Omar wants to arm-twist sovereign nations into kowtowing to the mass migration agenda.
But perhaps the most ironic part of her op-ed is that Omar, a politician who has been accused of anti-Semitism, is framing skepticism towards mass migration and large-scale refugee resettlement as a repeat of “the nativism and hate that sentenced thousands of people to death in the run-up to the Holocaust.” Of course, this is not surprising because the pro-mass-migration lobby routinely resorts to similar strawman attacks to distract from the radicalism of their own proposals.
The two above pieces – the letter signed by 66 congressional Democrats and the Omar op-ed – are a prime example of the “let them all in” left’s attempts to mislead the American public by framing the issue in binary terms: either allow hundreds of thousands of people in the United States or you are heartless and do not care about refugees. This is a false dichotomy. There is no question that we should help certain Afghans who assisted us during our presence in the Central Asian country. Those who fought against the Taliban alongside us should receive the Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) they were promised. Others, including those who provided some kind of material support to us, or would simply prefer not to live under the Taliban, ought to be helped closer to their home. Thus, we should negotiate with countries in the region to host Afghan refugees while we – and our NATO allies – offer logistical and financial assistance. That is the way to go if we want to help as many people as possible rather than simply virtue signal or exploit the crisis to promote the mass migration agenda.