Twenty years ago, the United States justly and correctly invaded Afghanistan, targeting the Al Qaeda terrorist organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. We still have an interest in making sure Afghanistan does not once again become a sanctuary for terrorists seeking to attack this country.
GOP Rep. Hice: Afghanistan a ‘Gigantic Disaster of Unmitigated Proportion’
During a Tuesday interview on FNC’s “Fox & Friends First,” Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) reacted to the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s takeover.
Hice lamented that President Joe Biden’s administration “has been largely missing in action” and doesn’t even know how many Americans are stranded in Afghanistan. He described the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan as a”gigantic disaster of unmitigated proportion.”
“Americans are stranded. Thousands and thousands of people are stranded there. Our office has been working feverishly day after day after day and virtually 24/7 over the weekend trying to help individuals get out of Afghanistan,” Hice advised. “Unfortunately, our State Department has been largely missing in action. We have had extreme difficulty working with our own government and our office, although we have had some. I don’t want to throw all of them under the bus, but it’s been extremely difficult working with our State Department. We have had to work through NGOs and different organizations who are on the ground, different individuals trying to get some people out of Afghanistan right now. It is a total disaster.”
“This administration does not even know how many Americans are over there,” he continued. “They don’t even know how many Americans they have evacuated. And, yet, they are trying to give assurance to us that not a single individual is going to be left behind. This is an unmitigated disaster of gigantic proportions, and there are thousands of Americans and others that must be evacuated. And this administration seems clueless as to who those are or how to accomplish it.”
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Watson Video: The Truth About Afghanistan
Wow, who could have seen this coming?
The mistake America made.
The annual threat assessment that the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence released this April did not present an optimistic vision for the
future of Afghanistan.
"The Taliban is likely to make gains on the battlefield, and the Afghan Government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support," the assessment said.
"Kabul continues to face setbacks on the battlefield," it said, "and the Taliban is confident it can achieve military victory."
Just five days after the ODNI published this assessment, President Joe Biden addressed the nation on his plans for Afghanistan.
"I have concluded that it's time to end America's longest war," Biden said.
He then noted that former President Donald Trump had negotiated an agreement with the Taliban to be out of that country by May 1 of this year.
"So, in keeping with that agreement and with our national interests, the United States will begin our final withdrawal -- begin it on May 1 of this year," Biden said.
"We will not conduct a hasty rush to the exit," said Biden. "We'll do it responsibly, deliberately, and safely."
That is not what transpired.
On April 30, one day before the U.S. withdrawal was set to begin, terrorists attacked a building where Afghan students were staying in Logar Province, which is south of Kabul.
"A truck bomb exploded in front of a guesthouse in which a group of students were preparing for university entrance exams, killing 27 civilians and wounding 107 civilians and three security forces," the New York Times reported. "The explosion was massive, the regional hospital, the guesthouse and many other buildings in the area were damaged."
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who has since fled the country, blamed this attack on the Taliban. "The Taliban have once again shown that they are not only unwilling to resolve the current crisis peacefully and fundamentally, but are complicating the situation and wasting the opportunity for peace," Ghani said in a statement quoted by Agence France Presse.
Eight days later, a car pulled up in front the Sayed ul-Shuhada school in a predominately Shiite neighborhood in Kabul. In the afternoons, this was an all-girls school. The car arrived in the afternoon.
A report published May 8 by the New York Times described what happened then. "Sayed Ahmad Hussaini had arrived to pick up his two daughters and saw a man sitting in a Toyota sedan parked outside the school and shaking from what he thought was nervousness," the Times reported. "Mr. Hussaini said he asked the man what he was doing. 'None of your business,' the man in the car replied. Moments later, the car exploded, Mr. Hussaini said."
Then two more bombs went off.
The National, an English-language news site based in the United Arab Emirates, interviewed the principal of the school. She described a horrendous scene.
"I saw students without limbs, bodies without a head, bodies there were burned," she said. "I saw pieces of my students scattered all around me."
"The two teachers with me who were helping the victims of the first two blasts were also injured in the third explosion," she said.
The U.S. government pointed to ISIS -- not the Taliban -- as the perpetrators of this attack.
"ISIS remains a potent force here -- that is among many reasons why we continue to provide security and counter-terrorism assistance to the Afghan authorities," Ross Wilson, the State Department's charge d'affaires in Afghanistan, told Agence France Presse on May 19.
"The school bombing and the mosque bombing that took place a few days later pretty clearly appeared to be the work of the so-called Islamic State," he said.
"That's not to give anybody a pass -- certainly not to give the Taliban a pass on the violence that they are directly involved in, or for the kind of ecosystem of terrorism and violence in which they are deeply, deeply, deeply complicit," Wilson said.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, reiterated this conclusion in testimony he presented on May 20 to the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on National Security.
"I want to take a moment to acknowledge the tremendous loss following the recent attacks on a girl school near Kabul," Khalilzad told the committee. "This was a deeply shocking incident; it appears that ISIS was responsible. But ultimately, it is the ongoing violence and chaos that makes such attacks possible."
The Congressional Research Service on Aug. 17 updated its report on "Terrorists Groups in Afghanistan." One of these is "Islamic State-Khorasan Province," or "ISKP."
"In addition to attacks against government targets, ISKP has claimed numerous large-scale bombings against civilians, mainly targeting Afghanistan's Shia minority, including its May 2021 bombing of a girls' school in Kabul," the report said.
Twenty years ago, the United States justly and correctly invaded Afghanistan, targeting the Al Qaeda terrorist organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. We still have an interest in making sure Afghanistan does not once again become a sanctuary for terrorists seeking to attack this country.
But it was a mistake to think the United States could remake Afghanistan.
Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor in chief of CNSnews.com.
Taliban Tells Women: Stay Home Until We Train Jihadis ‘How to Deal’ with You
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters in a press conference Tuesday that the terrorist organization is urging all women in Afghanistan to stay home for their safety, as the group has not yet taught its own terrorists “how to deal with women.”
Mujahid emphasized safety dangers for women under Taliban rule while repeating the jihadists’ promise that they would allow women to work in full-time jobs and leave the house without a burqa, or full-body covering – rights that the Taliban denied on a national level when it last controlled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001.
The Taliban became the de facto government of Afghanistan on August 15 after surrounding the nation’s capital, Kabul, prompting former President Ashraf Ghani to flee. It currently has no formal recognition as a legitimate government but has endeavored to place its spokesmen in front of as many cameras as possible, promising the creation of an “inclusive” government that respects women’s rights.
Widespread reports of Taliban activity on the ground in Afghanistan over the past week suggest that terrorists engaging with civilians are ignoring their leadership’s messaging, torturing and killing civilians. Afghans have circulated gruesome videos of Taliban executions, denounced extreme torture (particularly against women), and reported multiple disappearances of former Afghan government workers and officials. The Pentagon confirmed last week that Taliban thugs have beaten U.S. citizens on their way to Kabul’s international airport.
A Taliban fighter walks past a beauty salon with images of women defaced using spray paint in Shar-e-Naw in Kabul on August 18, 2021. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
During his press conference Tuesday, Mujahid claimed the Taliban had not received a single report of a killing, beating, or torture. “There is no danger for you,” he promised Afghan citizens desperate to flee the terrorist organization’s rule.
Mujahid appeared only to be referring to Afghan men in his promise of safety, as he shortly thereafter urged all women to stay home indefinitely because they may face violence from Taliban fighters.
“We are asking women to stay home at the moment,” Mujahid reportedly said, adding that not all Taliban jihadists know “how to deal with women” as per the rules the leadership has imposed, which he implied were far less repressive than the Taliban’s historic approach to women and girls. Mujahid said Taliban leaders would allow women out of their homes as soon as they could guarantee security, presumably from their own jihadis. Officials at the highest levels of the Taliban, he added, were working on a formal plan to ensure women would return to their full-time jobs safely.
“There are security concerns and once we have that under control, our sisters will be able to return to work,” Mujahid said, according to the BBC.
Mujahid had vowed, during his last press conference a week ago, that the Taliban would allow women to work “within the framework of sharia,” or Islamic law. Taliban jihadis did not allow women to leave their homes alone, much less work, during their first term running the country.
Taliban fighters stand guard at a checkpoint near the U.S. embassy that was previously manned by American troops, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021. The Taliban declared an “amnesty” across Afghanistan and urged women to join their government. (AP Photo)
“The Islamic Emirate is committed to the rights of women within the framework of Sharia. Our sisters, our men have the same rights; they will be able to benefit from their rights,” Mujahid said last week. “They are going to be working with us, shoulder to shoulder with us.”
He suggested the health sector, education, and the legal system as examples of industries that could employ women. Asked about women journalists, Mujahid remained non-commital, claiming Islamic jurists would have to decide.
Afghan women journalists have denounced Taliban jihadis almost immediately banning them from reaching their offices to do their jobs, pressuring them to stay home.
“I wanted to return to work, but unfortunately they did not allow me to work,” Shabnam Khan Dawran, an anchor for Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA), said of the Taliban last week. “They told me that the regime has changed and you cannot work.”
Mujahid notably chose a woman journalist to ask the first question at Tuesday’s press conference, though did not reportedly respond to any specific questions about women’s rights in journalism.
Afghan women in burqas walk on a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
Elsewhere in the press conference, Mujahid emphasized the alleged lack of security concerns when addressing the situation at Kabul’s international airport, where thousands of panicked Afghans have convened in an attempt to get on rescue flights organized by foreign countries.
The chaos has resulted in multiple deaths due to stampedes and uncontrolled live fire situations. Several Afghans reportedly died trying to hold on to the outside of an American aircraft as it took off from the runway.
Mujahid blamed the U.S. government exclusively for any violence at the airport and urged, “please don’t encourage Afghans to leave.
“We are asking Americans, change your policy and please don’t encourage Afghans to leave. Don’t encourage our engineers, our doctors, our military. We need them,” Mujahid emphasized. “We need that talent. Don’t take them out to foreign countries.”
“The Islamic Emirate is really really trying to control the situation,” he continued. “The way to the airport is closed now. Afghans are not allowed to go there. Foreigners are allowed to go.”
The Taliban spokesman said the terrorists had chosen to ban Afghans from leaving the country through the airport because the American handling of the situation was so poor that many could die.
“We will not allow Afghans to go … because there is a danger that people might lose their lives, there might be a stampede … they [the Americans] shoot at people,” Mujahid said. “Come back to your homes, come back to your normal lives, there is no danger for you.”
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U.N. Warns Joe Biden: Executions, Torture Continue as U.S. Readies to Leave Afghanistan
Ongoing “summary executions,” torture, rape and repression of Taliban opposition was cited by the U.N. on Tuesday as evidence of what lies ahead for Afghanistan as President Joe Biden presses ahead with plans to withdraw U.S. forces.
U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet urged the Human Rights Council to monitor the rights situation in Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban’s takeover and the corresponding U.S. departure.
She spoke as more reports emerged of just what lies ahead and those with American connections are targeted.
A G-7 summit hosted by the U.K. on Tuesday will discuss the burgeoning refugee crisis and the collapse of the Afghan government amid wrangling over whether the full U.S. withdrawal of troops could be extended beyond the end of the month, as Breitbart News reported.
U.S. administration officials have refused to be pinned down about whether an extension is likely or even possible given a Taliban spokesman warned Aug. 31 is a “red line” beyond which an American presence would “provoke a reaction.”
AP reports Bachelet cited instances of “summary executions” of civilians and former security forces who were no longer fighting, the recruitment of child soldiers, and restrictions on the rights of women to move around freely and of girls to go to school.
She also pointed to repression of peaceful protests and expressions of dissent.
A Taliban fighter stands guard at a checkpoint in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 22, 2021. A panicked crush of people trying to enter Kabul’s international airport killed several Afghan civilians in the crowds, the British military said Sunday, showing the danger still posed to those trying to flee the Taliban’s takeover of the country. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
Bachelet did not specify what time timeframe she was referring to or the source of her reports.
A Norway-based private intelligence group previously said Taliban teams are going door-to-door across Afghanistan looking for people who either worked for NATO forces or the former national government.
A confidential document by RHIPTO Norwegian Center for Global Analyses, a group sourcing intelligence for the U.N., cautioned the Taliban were now targeting “collaborators.”
Several Afghans are in hiding, saying they fear such reprisals will begin as soon as the last U.S. Air Force repatriation flight leaves on August 31.
AP contributed to this story
IF YOU THOUGHT THE JOBS, HOUSING AND HOMELESS CRISIS WILL BE RESOLVED UNDER THE BIDEN REGIME, THINK AGAIN!
President Joe Biden’s pro-migration deputies are importing many unvetted Afghans into Americans’ homeland — and the arrivals will likely get work permits and citizenship, say former officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The Cruelty Is the Point, Folks
President Biden and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear
It's easy to forget that Joe Biden has only been president for seven months. The Biden era is such a whirlwind of cruelty it can be hard to keep track. The unfolding human rights disaster in Afghanistan is merely one of several catastrophes to arise in the month of August alone.
U.S. Border Patrol encounters surged to a 21-year high, further straining the overcrowded immigrant detention facilities that have become breeding grounds for COVID-19. Vice President Kamala Harris, the official tasked with handling the crisis, who repeatedly lied about visiting the border, is off gallivanting in Southeast Asia. Speaking of gallivanting, the VP's stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, was recently spotted partying on a yacht in Saint-Tropez while hardworking American families struggled to make ends meet.
The New York attorney general's office found that Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D., N.Y.) had "sexually harassed multiple women and in doing so violated federal and state law" and received damage control advice from his brother, CNN host Chris Cuomo, and several leading members of the #MeToo movement. Cuomo reluctantly resigned a week later, but not before he denounced his accusers as politically motivated liars. In a final act of sociopathic depravity, the outgoing governor abandoned his dog because he couldn't be bothered to care for it anymore.
These acts of unspeakable Democratic cruelty have, for obvious reasons, been overshadowed by the botched withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the tragic scenes of human suffering outside the airport in Kabul, where toddlers are being trampled to death and tossed over barbed-wire fences to escape the Taliban's reign of terror. "I want to kill myself, and I am not alone, many women in Afghanistan are broken now," a young Afghan woman recently said of the unfolding human rights catastrophe.
President Biden, who has been credibly accused of sexual assault, does not seem to care about the suffering Afghan women will be forced to endure under Taliban rule. Asked if he bore any responsibility for the cruelty Taliban militants plan to inflict upon the country's female population, Biden was unequivocal. "No, I don't," he told Margaret Brennan of CBS News. "Do I bear responsibility? Zero responsibility."
Biden's top aides on the same page. On Monday, for example, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was wheeled out to gaslight the American people. Asked about the situation in Afghanistan, where thousands of Americans remain stranded, Psaki lashed out in Biden's defense. "I think it's irresponsible to say that Americans are stranded in Afghanistan. They are not," Psaki huffed. (They are.) Last week, after French president Emmanuel Macron told Biden the two countries had a "moral responsibility" to evacuate their allies in Afghanistan, the White House scrubbed that language from the official summary of the conversation.
Biden's supporters, the vast majority of whom would likely have identified as hardcore"Cuomosexuals" less than a year ago, are just as callous in the face of Afghan suffering. In fact, they relish it. Former CIA director Michael Hayden suggested it would be a "good idea" to deport "our Taliban" — Americans who disagree with the president — to Afghanistan to be slaughtered and enslaved. One of the president's supporters told a Russian-born journalist to "go back to Russia if you don't like Biden's answers" on Afghanistan. Others have said the quiet part out loud, praising the disaster as "an impressive display of sheer competence," and "the greatest [rescue mission] in history," as though Afghan suffering was the intended outcome.
To paraphrase Adam Serwer, award-winning staff writer at the Atlantic: "It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Biden, in a shared scorn for those they hate and fear." It should come as no surprise that, in the midst of this summer of cruelty, even as Biden's COVID-19 body count surged past 200,000—the equivalent of 67 September 11 attacks—Democrats have been partying together like college freshmen and refusing to use protection.
Earlier this month, former president Barack Obama flouted safety guidelines—and flaunted his excessive wealth —by throwing himself a massive 60th birthday soirée at his $17.5 million waterfront estate on Martha's Vineyard. The so-called Obama variant of COVID-19 has led to a surge of cases on the island, threatening to overrun its only hospital.
Over the weekend, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) headlined a Democratic fundraiser in Napa Valley, where the servants were masked but the rich donors (who forked over as much as $29,000 to attend) were not. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) boogied with Stephen Colbert and other celebs in Central Park. Biden, meanwhile, lounged at Camp David as the Taliban advanced on Kabul and reluctantly canceled a weekend vacation in Delaware amid intense public criticism.
These brazen displays of élite pomposity are, of course, intended to send a message: That the United States belongs to Biden voters, specifically the rich, powerful, and famous ones who get invited to presidential birthdays and Democratic fundraisers. If you're one of these people, or know enough of them, you won't even lose your job for masturbating in front of your work colleagues. They make the rules, but those rules only apply to rest of us. They denounce cruelty, yet take perverse pleasure in shoving their supremacy down our throats. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is their birthright, and theirs alone.
For decades, Biden's supporters in the media have urged the American people not to take him seriously. We've been told to disregard his blatant lies as charming examples of his propensity for public gaffes. Sure, they concede, he can be a little creepy, or downright gropey at times, but he's perfectly harmless. So are his supporters, they argue, who are united by a shared admiration for his experience and charisma, rather than a shared animus for their political enemies.
Perhaps it's time for all Americans to admit to the obvious: This is who Joe Biden really is. Like most Democrats, he rejects the notion that "moral responsibility" should ever apply to him. It would be foolish to expect a man who praised his segregationist colleagues and refuses to acknowledge the existence of his own grandchild to behave any differently when it comes to ensuring the safety of our Afghan allies, or restoring order at the southern border, or preventing his ill-trained dog from soiling the White House carpets and attacking members of his staff.
It's time to start admitting what we all know to be true about the evil in the hearts of Biden's most ardent supporters and to stop being afraid to say it out loud: The cruelty is the point, folks.
Joe Biden’s Deputies Are Flying Unvetted Afghans to U.S.
President Joe Biden’s pro-migration deputies are importing many unvetted Afghans into Americans’ homeland — and the arrivals will likely get work permits and citizenship, say former officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The inflow of unvetted Afghans was acknowledged by a state department official on August 23, according to Reuters:
Today the first onward flight of SIV [Special Immigrant Visa] applicants took off from Germany to the United States, and we expect those to continue to ramp up,” the official added, in reference to the Special Immigrant Visa, designed for people who worked with the U.S. military. [Emphasis added]
Elsewhere, officials are refusing to state all Afghans will be vetted before they arrive.
At the Pentagon, Major General Hank Taylor told the media on August 21 that “Intelligence, law enforcement, and counterterrorism professionals are conducting screening and security vetting for all SIV applicants and other vulnerable Afghans before they are allowed into the U.S.”
He did not say the vetting would be completed before the migrants are allowed into the U.S.
Afghan refugees arrive at a processing center in Chantilly, Virginia, on August 23, 2021, after arriving on a flight at Dulles International Airport. (OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)
President Joe Joe Biden’s office tweeted a claim on August 23 that “Once screened and cleared, we will welcome Afghans who helped us in the war effort to their new home in the United States of America.” But the tweet did not say that all officials would only welcome Afghans who have completed their vetting.
It is very difficult for U.S. troops in Kabul to vet Afghans who claim to have fought alongside U.S. forces or who claimed to have worked for U.S. projects, said Ken Cuccinelli, who served as the deputy chief of homeland security for President Donald Trump. “It is brutally difficult to get that done with any reliability … It impossible when you no longer have a presence in the area,” said Cuccinelli, who is now a senior fellow of immigration at the Center for Renewing America.
“If [the vetting] is going to happen, it has to happen in these third countries before they get to the United States,” Cucinelli said.
“It is not clear that we’re going to be able to vet those people before a decision is made whether to bring them over or not, and that kicks over to the question of how much risk are we willing to absorb in those decisions where we don’t have the ability to prove key elements like confirming identity?” he said.
Migrants are clever and capable of fraud, Cuccinelli warned. Progressives wish to treat “them as if they’re these stupid people barely able to stay alive … [But] they’re quite smart just like most other people.”
Refugees from Afghanistan are escorted to a waiting bus after arriving and being processed at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia on August 23, 2021. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
Once in the United States, migrants who fail the vetting process will not be deported, predicted Rob Law, the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. He continued:
Are you really going to deport the Afghanis back to Afghanistan? No. What are you going to do? Send them to another country? No, you’re just going to cut them loose and probably going to cut them loose with a work permit.
The lax attitudes towards vetting echo progressives’ eagerness to import migrants in the United States, he said. In 2021, for example, Biden’s pro-migration progressives will oversee the inflow of roughly 750,000 legal immigrants, plus at least 800,000 economic migrants through the Mexican border. Overall, the 2021 inflow is equal to almost one migrant for every two American births.
A majority of Americans oppose the resettlement of more than 50,000 Afghans in the United States, according to a survey by Rasmussen Reports. The August 18-19 survey of 1,000 likely voters was taken as Biden appears to be expanding the number of migrants he is flying to the United States, far above the initial predictions of 22,000 Afghans — plus family members — who worked alongside the U.S. soldiers who were supporting Afghanistan’s government.
For progressives, the goal is to get the Afghans into the United States, said Law, who was a senior official in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under Trump. “You have to get them here [in the United States] first in order for them to get immigration benefits that the left so desperately wants to dole out,” he said, adding:
A few of them actually qualify for SIVs [Special Immigrant Visas for translators], but most of them do not. [Once they are in the U.S.], then all sudden, [progressives] will say, “Well, here’s a [legalization] program that we’ll make up of out of thin air and in violation of the law.” Or, once you have a large enough population here, then all of a sudden, [Homeland security secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas slaps Afghanistan with the TPS [Temporary Protected Status] designation, and then they’re here forever.
They’re just going to keep trying to find different avenues to just extract Afghanis and let them stay in the United States permanently.
There’s your “Mission Accomplished,” which is not winning a nation-building war or anything else like that. It’s really just continuing to bring in the world’s poor and give them a permanent place in the United States.
“There’s an opportunistic element to this,” said Cuccinelli. “That cadre of [pro-migration] folks in both parties — although it’s become a bit of a religion on the left whereas on the right, it’s more corporate cronyism — they will seize the opportunity and they’ll, if nothing else, err on the high side.”
Progressives are eager to get many Afghans into the United States, despite the law and security risks, said Law. He added:
It’s just part of the anti-borders mindset that “We’re one world, we’re not the United States, we’re not a sovereign nation, and it’s selfish for the United States with all of its wealth and success to not share that with everybody else.” So you should just bring in the people.
He added:
There are political motivations behind it. If you’re the political party that helps make this happen, then there’s kind of this wink and a nod as to how these people or their subsequent offspring or other family members will vote in subsequent elections.
Businesses have new consumers, and they also have a new cheaper source of labor to employ, to further keep their costs down, and for the [investors] of the world to further maximize their profit margins.
But state legal officials can sue the administration, he said. “Our immigration laws are meant to be generally protective of American workers, and what’s being done here is a complete annihilation of the immigration laws.”
The long-standing federal policy of extraction migration pulls many workers, consumers, and renters from poor countries for use in the U.S. economy. The economic policy inflates the labor supply and boosts consumer spending, so aiding companies and investors.
The White HouseExtraction migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, raises their rents, curbs their productivity, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gaps, and wrecks their democratic, equality-promoting civic culture.
For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.
Poll: Americans Oppose Mass Migration from Afghanistan
A majority of Americans oppose the resettlement of more than 50,000 Afghans in the United States, according to a survey by Rasmussen Reports.
The August 18-19 survey of 1,000 likely voters was taken as President Joe Biden appears to be expanding the number of migrants he is flying to the United States, far above the initial predictions of 22,000 Afghans — plus family members — who worked alongside the U.S. soldiers who were supporting Afghanistan’s government.
“Enormous numbers of [Afghan] people are trying to jam themselves into that [airlift] funnel right now,” said Ken Cuccinelli, who served as the deputy chief of homeland security for President Donald Trump. Even if President Joe Biden does not want to raise the inflow, Cuccinelli added, “there are plenty of people in this country, of both parties, who would be more than happy to use this excuse to just grab another 50,000 or 100,000 immigrants through this unusual pipeline at this deadly moment.”
WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 22: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room on the continuing situation in Afghanistan and the developments of Hurricane Henri at the White House on August 22, 2021 in Washington, DC. The White House announced earlier that in a 24 hour period starting on August 21st that US military flights evacuated approximately 3,900 personnel and 35 coalition aircraft evacuated approximately 3,900 personnel. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Biden’s liberal base strongly supports massive resettlement, regardless of the damage to Americans’ wages, rents, and civic society. Thirty-five percent of liberals want Biden to deliver more than 100,000 Afghans, and another 20 percent want between 50,000 and 100,000.
The airlift numbers suggest that “this is going to be basically a mass importation of Afghans, most of whom do not actually qualify” for U.S. visas, said Rob Law, the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.
“It is absolutely reckless with a profound disregard for what the [immigration] laws actually are … [because] they are substituting their own moral judgment for the laws that have been passed by Congress and signed into law by former presidents,” said Law, who worked at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency for Trump.
The Rasmussen poll shows that Republicans and independents want small-scale settlements. For example. 68 percent of Republicans want the resettlement of fewer than 50,000 Afghans, and only 16 percent want more than 50,000.
U.S soldiers stand guard inside the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 16, 2021. Thousands of Afghans have rushed onto the tarmac at the airport, some so desperate to escape the Taliban capture of their country that they held onto the American military jet as it took off and plunged to death. (AP Photo/Shekib Rahmani)
The response from black Americans matched the views of GOP supporters: 39 percent of black respondents supported just 10,000 migrants, and only 21 percent supported the resettlement of more than 50,000 Afghans. The matching numbers for Republican respondents were 39 percent and 16 percent.
Similarly, 51 percent of independents want fewer than 50,000 Afghans. Only 22 percent favor more than 50,000.
A large share of Americans contacted by Rasmussen declared they were “not sure” about the numbers. Overall, 23 percent of registered voters and 28 percent of independents said they were “not sure.”
The “not sure” score is very high for a survey, but it likely reflects Americans’ longstanding ambivalence about migration. Multiple polls show that Americans want to be seen liking immigration and immigrants — but also lopsided majorities of Americans oppose the inflow of migrants to fill jobs needed by Americans.
The poll helps to explain conflicting U.S. attitudes towards the airlift.
Strong majorities of Americans favor the extraction of “military translators” and others who worked alongside U.S. soldiers. For example, 81 percent of Americans agreed that the U.S. government should help “military translators” get out, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey of 2,142 U.S. adults interviewed between August 18-20, 2021.
Similarly, the Rasmussen poll showed that 50 percent of Americans believe that it is “very important” that the U.S. government help “Afghanistan refugees who want to escape the Taliban” — even as 52 percent also want fewer than 50,000 migrants.
Protesters display placards as they demonstrate to support the Afghan people on August 22, 2021 in front of the Chancellery in Berlin. (Photo by John MACDOUGALL / AFP) (Photo by JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP via Getty Images)
The public’s ambivalence is an opportunity for progressives and their business backers to extract more migrants to serve as workers, consumers, and renters into the U.S. economy, observers noted.
“There’s an opportunistic element to this,” said Cuccinelli:
That cadre of folks in both parties — although it’s become a bit of a religion on the left whereas on the right, it’s more corporate cronyism — they will seize the opportunity and they’ll, if nothing else, err on the high side.
For ordinary Americans, that has both costs in our tax dollars and in lower wages and less economic opportunity for our poor people. But for all of us that national security level it also has the potential for negative security consequences. This is an easy opportunity to sneak militant Islamic jihadists into this country — it’s a no-brainer for them. All you have to do is be the needle in the haystack — the bigger the haystack, the more of those needles you can hide … We set up whatever we’re going to do, and they’ll game it.
Biden’s pro-migration deputies will likely bring roughly 1.5 million legal immigrants and illegal migrants — plus many guest workers — into Americans’ economy and society in 2021 via a wide variety of large and small doorways. The huge migration is adding one migrant for every three Americans born during the year.
TOPSHOT – Afghans gather on a roadside near the military part of the airport in Kabul on August 20, 2021, hoping to flee from the country after the Taliban’s military takeover of Afghanistan. (Photo by Wakil KOHSAR / AFP) (Photo by WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
So far, Biden has zig-zagged on the airlift numbers, partly because any signal of welcome for economic migrants from Afghanistan would further clog the municipal airport now being used for the airlift. On Friday, Biden said:
The fact is that more and more of the groups we urgently want to get out of Afghanistan, starting with American citizens and the folks who worked in the embassies, and personnel with our allies, as well as the Afghans who help them and worked in those embassies, as well as those who helped them on the battlefield as well. We are working diligently to make sure we’ve increased the ability to get them out.
“The estimate we’re giving is somewhere between 50,000 and 65,000 folks total, counting their families,” he told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos on August 19.
But his progressive allies want to bring in more Afghans, regardless of Americans’ preferences.
“We should bring as many as possible here,” said New York Times op-ed writer Michelle Goldberg. She continued:
Canada, which is about one-ninth the size of the United States, has announced its intention to take more than 20,000 fleeing Afghans. There is no way to justify America accepting fewer on a per capita basis; 180,000 should be the absolute floor.
This is likely to be unpopular; polls showed a majority of Americans opposed the comparatively tiny Syrian refugee resettlement program. But there is no moral argument against vastly expanded refugee admissions.
“They need to ensure safe passage not just for the people at the airport, not just for interpreters who worked for the U.S. military, but for anyone who wants to leave,” said Heather Barr, the associate director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch.
“If ever there were a situation where the refugee system should be expanded rapidly to account for larger numbers of people facing death, this is it,” said an August 16 report by the Cato Institute, which opposes most curbs on the inflow of foreign workers into Americans’ national labor market. The report said:
It would not be out of the realm of possibility for 2–5 percent of the population to flee in the next year or two, or about 800,000 to 2 million. Most will go to neighboring countries with large Afghan resident populations, such as Iran or Pakistan, but many will also try to go to Europe.
“Letting in Afghan refugees poses no danger to the livelihoods of Americans … the people who want to abandon America’s allies to take their chances under the Taliban have no economic arguments on their side,” said Noah Smith, a pro-migration writer at Bloomberg.com who rejects the massive and growing evidence that migration moves money from ordinary Americans’ wages over to the stocks owned by coastal investors and to the rental checks paid by new migrants.
Afghan citizens pack inside a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III, as they are transported from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021. The Taliban on Sunday swept into Kabul, the Afghan capital, after capturing most of Afghanistan. (Capt. Chris Herbert/U.S. Air Force via AP)
Establishment Republicans — including many governors — are also supporting a large-scale airlift, usually without separating economic migrants from the smaller number of Afghans who fought alongside U.S. troops.
“There are 32 million Afghans, we’re talking about 60[ooo] to 80,000 people,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) told Fox News Sunday. He continued:
So the first thing to say is, the American people need to understand who we’re talking about. We’re talking about heroes, who fought with us to take the fight to al Qaeda and the Taliban … When you fought on behalf of Americans to protect our people, you’re welcome in my neighborhood.
The long-standing federal policy of extraction migration pulls many workers, consumers, and renters from poor countries for use in the U.S. economy. The economic policy inflates the labor supply and boosts consumer spending, so aiding companies and investors.
The migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, raises their rents, curbs their productivity, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gaps, and wrecks their democratic, equality-promoting civic culture.
For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.
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