February 1, 2017

Refugee Resettlement: Here’s What No One is Saying

This week, with the talk of many in our nation focusing on Trump’s latest executive order, which temporarily halts refugee resettlement, liberals and their funded activists are up in arms and taking to the streets. Even some Republicans are raising concerns over both the content of the EOs and the way in which they were implemented. However, lost in all the turmoil is one aspect of our nation’s refugee program that is seldom discussed but should be of great concern to anyone who has ever worked through a budget, whether in your family or business.

This week, with the talk of many in our nation focusing on Trump’s latest executive order, which temporarily halts refugee resettlement, liberals and their funded activists are up in arms and taking to the streets. Even some Republicans are raising concerns over both the content of the EOs and the way in which they were implemented.

However, lost in all the turmoil is one aspect of our nation’s refugee program that is seldom discussed but should be of great concern to anyone who has ever worked through a budget, whether in your family or business. Here’s one thing we can all agree on: If your budget doesn’t have a surplus or at least balance, then you look closely at the line items of your spending, with an eye towards either reducing your expenses and/or increasing your revenue.

So I thought it might be helpful to understand the fiscal impact of our refugee resettlement program on our nation’s budget. As we look at that cost, we should remember the points made in my previous article about the national debt. Specifically, our nation’s spending is creating over a half-trillion dollar deficit every year. Additionally, in another of my articles, $10 Trillion New Debt, we are projected to average nearly a trillion dollars in deficits every year over the next decade.

Given these alarming multi-trillion dollar deficits, it’s safe to say that America has no excess funds to allocate. PERIOD. This fact should be weighing heavy on the minds of our political leaders. But the truth is that you never, ever, hear them speaking of the fiscal impact of the 85,000 refugees who were brought into our country last year, or the 50,000 whom Trump’s policies would continue to bring in annually.

The Fiscal Impact

There are several reports that I’ve studied about the cost of the refugee program. But the report from the Center for Immigration Studies is in my view the most complete, and the excerpted facts below reveal the disturbing fiscal impact of our nation’s refugee program:

America’s Generosity

America has a long tradition of caring about those beyond our own shores. Whether it’s sacrificing our own young men and women to bring freedoms to some distant land, or offering aid and relief to those less fortunate than us in remote areas of the world, our actions reveal our heart. And ours is a generous one.

But there is a fundamental principle of charity or generosity, and it is that one can only give from what one has. In order to give, one must possess. And to possess, one must be fiscally wise, if not conservative. For too long America has not only been fiscally liberal, but worse, we have been irresponsible and foolish. We have feigned generosity to those less fortunate, both here and abroad. But that “generosity” has come at the expense of enslaving our children, grandchildren and future generations with an indebtedness beyond a level ever known to any prior society throughout history.

Consider for just a moment the example of a family of great wealth. The resources the parents own and manage are significant. But despite their assets and current income, their outflow far exceeds their inflow. But to subsidize their obsessive spending, they begin to mortgage their assets rather than scrutinizing their spending. This continues over the course of many years. Soon, the amount of indebtedness surpasses their own income, future income and even the value of their assets themselves. What was once presented as a tremendous opportunity to pass on a legacy of wealth and good to their children has become a matter of horror and great indebtedness. And why? Because the leaders of this family were unwilling to face the reality that their spending spree over the course of many years completely depleted their resources and enslaved those they loved the most.

America is like the family above. And those “parents” are our political leaders as well as those of us who continue to give those same leaders the reins of our nation, election cycle after election cycle. On this one issue, refugee resettlement, what is meant for good by many is in fact contributing to a reckless cycle, year after year, of mounting more and more debt, to the point that someday it will all come crumbling down. And those refugees whom we intended to help will be enslaved along with our own children to an indebtedness that will burden their lives in such a drastic and oppressive manner.

Were Americans of all political persuasion thinking through this matter logically and without their political biases, these numbers would cause our populace to take to the streets to demand our political leaders put our fiscal house back in order. But I don’t expect such sanity to prevail, given the highly fractured and partisan age we live in along with the apathetic attitude of citizens.

But at least now YOU know that there is another aspect to the refugee crisis that no one is mentioning. And it’s greater than the humanitarian aspect, or at least it should be, given our own fiscal crisis that few are willing to confront.

The only question now is, will you care? Will you demand of your elected officials that they rein in our spending, both in the refugee resettlement program and across all areas of our government? And will you share these facts with others?


Republished from Awake to Freedom.

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