It was inevitable. Anytime events around the world create a refugee crisis, those who benefit politically and/or financially begin clamoring for “justice.”
This time it is, of course, Ukraine and its uncounted millions of displaced persons on the one hand, and refugee-happy legislators and NGOs on the other.
This week, 39 U.S. senators, including Sens. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Rob Portman (R-OH), wrote a letter to Joe Biden asking that Ukrainians already in the U.S. be granted Temporary (sic) Protected Status. That means none of them already here have to go home, ever. (“Temporary” in government parlance is a euphemism for “permanent.”) If selected, Ukraine would join El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, and Burma on the TPS list.
The exact number of Ukrainians here is unknown, though 2019 census figures estimated that at that time there were more than a million residents “of Ukrainian ancestry.” Traverse City, Michigan, for example, is said to host a large Ukrainian community.
Anxious not to let any crisis go to waste, other lawmakers have joined their Senate colleagues. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted: “We also must work with our allies to prepare for a refugee crisis on a massive scale.” Her “squad” partner, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) said, “The United States should lead by example, and begin to resettle refugees here as soon as it becomes necessary.”
And, of course, the proposal is being backed by agencies that stand to gain financially. A spokesman for one such group, the Catholic Relief Services, said, “The U.S. has a moral responsibility to provide temporary humanitarian protection to Ukrainian nationals presently in the U.S.”
As part of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Relief Services is one of the nine refugee contractors known as “voluntary agencies,” or volags, that makes billions off the refugee racket, as we discussed here in January. Another volag is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), whose spokesman declared, regarding Ukrainian refugees still in Europe:
If these refugees can’t go home, the US and the international community need to support them in the region. And if the region, in the long term, can’t absorb the refugees, countries like the United States and others need to talk about resettlement.
The NY Post reported in 2019 that, in particular, the Catholic Church, with its myriad charities, had pulled down a whopping 1.6 billion dollars in the previous seven years, from its contracts with 57 separate government agencies. That sum is chicken feed, however, when compared to the boon that the Afghan collapse created last year, with $13 billion spent so far on that resettlement and no end in sight. With a million out of Ukraine in only seven days and potentially millions more yet to come, one can only imagine the price tag there.
No one discounts the suffering that wars and national collapses bring to innocent civilians. But such events as are occurring around the world under Joe Biden’s watch are music to the ears of politicians and refugee hucksters alike. You can almost hear that cash register cha-ching reverberating around the globe. Taiwan anyone?
For more, see the National Catholic Register.