We have argued on these pages for years that refugee families should be sponsored privately in the US—as it was in the old days before the whole system was re-ordered by the Refugee Act of 1980 (Kennedy/Biden/Jimmy Carter) that set up this supposed public-private partnership where taxpayers pay “church” groups and others to do the work.
The “charitable” group was supposed to share the cost with the government but now we see refugee contractors, like the ones we wrote about recently in Tennessee and Idaho, here and here, being supported with 95% taxpayer money. It is really an employment service for Leftwing do-gooders who can’t find other work.
In Canada they do have a taxpayer supported refugee program and another privately sponsored program where the “charity” is given freely to the refugees, not taken from a taxpayer and redistributed.
When I saw these numbers today from Canada they told me what I already knew—if the program is run with private charity the number of refugees arriving would be greatly decreased. Why? Because when people have to use their own money for charity, instead of taxpayer money, we learn how charitable people will be.
As a matter of fact, those people collecting signatures in Maryland to try to halt a recently passed law to give in-state tuition to illegal aliens silence critics every time with the simple suggestion—if you want to send an illegal alien to college, open your own wallet and send one! Shuts ’em up every time!
This is the statistic from Canada about ‘putting one’s money where one’s mouth is’ that I found interesting:
In 2010, Canada granted permanent resident status to 24,693 refugees, including 4,833 pledged by church groups and community organizations.
So in the US, where the taxpayer pays for 70,000-80,000 refugees a year, if the refugees were to be privately sponsored then that would drop the number arriving by about about 80% (if we were as charitable as Canada’s “churches” and community groups). But, most importantly the refugees would not place a strain on our welfare system and probably be better assimilated in the end.