They are called Special Immigrant Visa holders (SIVs for short) and they supposedly helped the US in some way (or they could have helped an NGO!), sometimes as interpreters. They and their immediate family members are welcomed to the US and treated with the same package of goodies refugees receive.
Also, we are told that the resettlement contractors are paid (by you) to place them as well, and those funds we’ve heard are helping to keep the contractors from completely going belly-up!
(See my post yesterday about the number of regular refugees admitted this fiscal year, the number is relatively low, but the SIV number is not! 2,196 Muslims were admitted as regular refugees, but add to that 9,166 Afghan Muslims in the last 11 months!)
I’ve reported on these numbers previously, see here. And, I told you here that supposedly the Pentagon is fighting to keep the number high so they can offer tickets to America as incentives for ‘helping’ us as interpreters etc. In fact, some are not even at the interpreter level!
Know that since FY07, we have admitted 9,884 regular refugees from Afghanistan, but a whopping 51,507 were admitted in addition via the Special Immigrant Visa program.
Here are some partial screenshots of the data. Unfortunately I don’t know how to get it all on one page. Go here (then click on Cumulative Arrivals by State for Refugee and SIV – Afghan FY07 -FY17 as of August 27, 2018 ) and see the whole table which tells how many went to each state. (BTW, I think that should read FY07-FY18.)
California, Texas and Virginia!
California tops the list with 20,487 Afghans placed there. Texas is second with 8,327 and surprisingly Virginia is third with 7,840. Those numbers include both refugees and SIVs from FY07 to August 27th (FY18).
Top of the chart since FY14:
Bottom of the chart since FY14:
Will it ever end???
How long do we need to referee the various Islamic factions who can’t get along with each other???