Your tax dollars:
This is the third in a series of posts on the State Department Iraqi Refugee Briefing of February 4, see Part II yesterday.
The exchange that follows occured in the briefing right after the question about exactly how many Iraqi displaced persons are coming in this fiscal year that ends September 30th. We heard it was 12,000 plus maybe(?) an additional 5000 mandated by the newly signed “Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act.”
QUESTION: Speaking of Peter, Paul and payment, how much is this – how much money is being expended on this program currently?
______
AMBASSADOR FOLEY: Which program?
______
QUESTION: The – well, on bringing Iraqi refugees in?
______
MS. RUSCH [Director Office of Admissions, PRM]: It’s hard to specify. It’s on average somewhere between $4,000 and $4,500 per refugee, of any nationality. That’s the cost to the State Department. That doesn’t include DHS costs, and it certainly doesn’t cost – take into account the actually larger contribution from Health and Human Services for refugees once they get here.
_______
QUESTION: So does anybody have a figure of how much the U.S. taxpayer is spending to bring refugees in – bring Iraqi refugees in?
_______
AMBASSADOR FOLEY: We can get that for you, Charlie. We’ll multiply, based on the assumption that we’ll bring in 12,000 this fiscal year.
______
QUESTION: I don’t know about the rest of us, but you’ve lost a – you lost me in some of the numbers. So it would be good to know if there is a number that we’re spending to try and bring Iraq refugees.
[next question]
Hey, Charlie, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for an answer to the question of how much this costs the taxpayer, but if you find out let us and the taxpayers know!
In addition to the number cited above, there are huge costs buried in Department of Health and Human Services for grants to the volags (voluntary agencies), not to mention the cost of the welfare itself. Then there are the costs to the Dept. of Homeland Security to screen the refugees, then we give millions to the United Nations for them to pick refugees for us. There are taxpayer dollars flowing out of the Department of Labor for refugee training and job placement and who knows what else spread throughout the government at federal and state level. Imagine all the goverment workers’ salaries running this program!
Just a little side note if you have been following Parts I and II of my series: Ambassador Foley says they will multiply this magic number when they get it by 12,000, so I guess he is saying they aren’t bringing 12,000 Iraqis plus the Congressionally mandated 5000 afterall.