“While the administration stokes fear about Afghan immigrants, data paint another picture. A 2019 study from the Cato Institute showed that the incarceration rate for Afghans between 18 and 54 was 127 per 100,000, a stark comparison to the 1,477 per 100,000 for native-born Americans.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) reported that, according to a 2024 Department of Health and Human Services study, refugees brought a $123.8 billion net fiscal benefit to the U.S. between 2005 and 2019, contributing $581 billion in taxes while receiving $457.1 billion in government support. This combats the Trump administration’s objections based on the net cost of admitting refugees to the U.S.
While refugees’ earnings may be limited on arrival, IRC says they “increase significantly” with time. A median household income of $30,500 in a refugee’s first five years in the U.S. becomes a median income of $71,400 after being here for 20 years. That number exceeds the national median income by nearly $4,000.
IRC also reported that more refugees become entrepreneurs (13 percent) than their U.S.-born counterparts (9 percent), benefitting their communities.
…
The administration is using an isolated act of violence to justify sweeping crackdowns on refugees and wartime allies who were already thoroughly vetted.”
“Trump has halted all asylum decisions and paused visas for Afghan passport holders. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has announced that the government is “actively re-examining” all Afghan nationals who entered the country under President Joseph Biden. CBS reports that the administration is thinking of expanding its travel ban from 19 to 30 countries.
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New data leaked to and analyzed by David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, show that of the people taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody since October 1, 73 percent had no criminal conviction. Nearly half had no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges; about a quarter had no conviction but did have pending charges. Of those with a criminal conviction, the majority had vice, immigration, or traffic violations. Only 5 percent had a violent criminal conviction.
Since January, the number of individuals arrested by ICE without a criminal record or criminal charge has grown by 1,500 percent.
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Since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021, nearly 200,000 Afghan nationals have migrated to the U.S. as part of Operation Allies Welcome and its successor, Operation Enduring Welcome—programs designed to resettle Afghans who aided the U.S. during the two-decade Afghanistan War. Another 260,000 Afghans are still waiting to come to the U.S., according to Shawn VanDiver, the president of #AfghanEvac and a proponent of the Afghan refugee programs.
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Sharif Aly, president of the International Refugee Assistance Project, told the Associated Press that refugees are “already the most highly vetted immigrants in the United States.” Revetting and reinterviewing the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees peacefully living in the U.S. is not only cruel, Aly argues, but a “tremendous waste of government resources.”
Unfortunately, legal limbo is nothing new for Afghan refugees. Many of them legitimately fear for their lives if they return to Afghanistan after aiding the U.S. Now they face an even more uncertain future.”
Initially, and for some time, the Biden administration didn’t know what to do with the flood of people coming across the border. There was not clear leadership on the issue, and some hoped it would die down on its own. Then the administration wanted Congress to pass something to help them solve the issue without using executive force on its own. Trump convinced Republican Congressmen to not vote for that bill even though it moved policy closer to what they agreed with. Then, Biden used executive authority and successfully stopped the flow. Politically, this was too late for him to get credit.
“Despite Trump promising to stand “with the good people of Cuba and Venezuela,” his administration has fast-tracked deportations for victims of communism.”
“M.A.R. is just one of “hundreds of thousands of noncitizens…paroled into the United States in recent years after inspection at a port of entry and who now face the threat of removal under highly truncated procedures that have rarely, if ever, been applied at any scale to parolees””
Trump is dismissive of refugees, but then actively supports these South African refugees. Why? One obvious difference is that these refugees are white. Or maybe this is just Musk’s influence who has a personal interest in South Africans because he is from there? Maybe it’s because of the relative wealth and/or skills of these refugees? Is it about ease of assimilation? Does focusing on South Africa stoke fears about potentially anti-white policies in the U.S., increasing fervor and support for Trump and those like him?
The South African government is not taking land from white farmers. They have an offer to buy their land for redistributive purposes, but there is no forced land takings by the government. There is a law that could be read as allowing the government to take land from whites, but it has not been used like this so far, and it could just be similar to eminent domain laws in the United States.
There have been robberies and murders of white land owners, but there is a lot of crime in South Africa, and this is a small minority of it. It’s not clear that there is a focused crime attack on white farmers. What is clear, is that South Africa has a lot of crime in general.
“There is a real issue with South African farmers being killed or violently attacked, experts told us. But most of the violent acts are committed during robberies in a country where most of the wealth and land post-apartheid is still owned by a relatively small white minority.
“Yes, white farmers are being killed in South Africa,” political scientist Jean-Yves Camus, co-director of the Observatory of Political Radicalism at the Jean Jaurès Foundation in Paris, told us via email. “However, there is nothing like a ‘white genocide.’ And the issue needs to be seen in the broader context of a country plagued by crime and gang activity.”
Although police statistics are imprecise on the issue, there have been about 50 farm murders per year over the last several years. That’s less than 1% of all murders in the country.
“Murder victimization is far more correlated to class, gender and location than race,” Lizette Lancaster of the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa, told us via email.
“Farm attacks, including murders, do occur in South Africa, and many are undeniably brutal,” Anthony Kaziboni, a political and critical sociologist at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Social Development in Africa, told us via email. “However, South Africa must be understood in its broader socio-economic and historical context.” South Africa has “extreme inequality, with approximately 10% of the population (largely white) owning over 80% of the wealth. It also has a deeply violent past, and the country’s structural violence persists today alongside physical violence, economic violence, and many other forms of violence.”
“Violent crime affects all sectors of society, not just farmers,” Kaziboni said.”
“A group of 49 white South Africans departed their homeland Sunday for the United States on a private charter plane having been offered refugee status by the Trump administration under a new program announced in February.
The group, which included families and small children, was due to arrive at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on Monday morning local time, according to Collen Msibi, a spokesperson for South Africa’s transport ministry.
They are the first Afrikaners — a white minority group in South Africa — to be relocated after U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Feb. 7 accusing South Africa’s Black-led government of racial discrimination against them and announcing a program to offer them relocation to America.
The South African government said it is “completely false” that Afrikaners are being persecuted.”