On Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the State Department is partnering with Welcome.US to facilitate the resettlement of refugees from Afghanistan. The effort is supported by Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, as well as their wives, former First Ladies Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama.
The partnership is part of the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome, which involves the processing and resettlement of the more than 65,000 Afghans evacuated during the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“This initiative aims to catalyze support from Americans from all walks of life to support newly arriving Afghans, engaging a range of private sector actors,” Blinken said in a statement.
“The generosity displayed by the American people in welcoming newly arrived Afghans as part of Operation Allies Welcome has been nothing short of remarkable and is a clear demonstration of our values as a nation of immigrants that welcomes refugees and vulnerable populations from across the world,” he added.
The first batch includes 37,000 Afghan refugees and they’ll be settling in all but four states (Hawaii, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming). Still there are wide disparities. Alabama and Mississippi are slated to receive 10 refugees each, while Texas is getting 4,500. Idaho will host 420, while neighboring Montana will only host seventy-five.
Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana is not being generous or welcoming. He thinks seventy-five is far too many. He’d prefer if no Muslims entered the country, let alone his state. He couches his criticism in concern about the adequacy of vetting, but he makes it clear that the primary problem is that he doesn’t like their values or their culture.
I don’t think Rosendale’s position here should surprise anyone. He’s a leader in a white supremacist movement. That’s what the Republican Party has developed into, and he’s representing that culture and those values with perfect fidelity. I think everyone can agree that it’s important to vet refugees arriving from a civil war zone. That’s not the issue.
I don’t know if the Afghans will enjoy Montana or not. Much like their homeland, Montana is landlocked, mountainous and heavily agricultural, so that seems like a good fit. But they shouldn’t expect their House representative in Washington DC to be of much assistance. He’s a fascist.
Part of the problem in countries like Afghanistan is that decades ago, Westerners drew lines designating nations rather arbitrarily, assuming that everyone in the area “shared values and cultures.” White supremacist ignorance lives on in people like Rosendale.
Can you imagine what type of person you have to be to walk into a voting booth and pull the lever for a guy that looks, thinks, & talks like that. He really looks like he is being sworn in to run the local concentration camp.
Like it or not, 30 percent of Americans still think like that lughead. Fox news and hate radio make it worse as do politicians who play on fear, hate, resentment and division. Odd that people like that call themselves Christian with no sense of irony.