Horowitz: As ordinary citizen life grinds to halt, government still flying in refugees from around the world

Just how much of a religion is open-borders immigration? Evidently refugee resettlement from around the world, at least as of last week, was continuing.

The great American shutdown has grown so severe that in my community, all funerals have been canceled. Graveside funerals are the only way to burry our dead. New Jersey has already instituted a curfew with business closures at 8:00 p.m. One would think that shutting off international travel and immigration – the very first line of defense that directly addresses the source of importing diseases – would have long been shut down before we begin infringing upon domestic liberties. Not so. If this country shuts down completely, mass migration will continue, at least on some level.

It’s now self-evident that had we shut off international travel earlier and had we suspended all immigration, visas, and travel from China and Iran in December, this problem would be much more manageable. Yet, in Orwellian fashion, it looks like elements of immigration might be the last activity standing in this county. Ann Corcoran of the Refugee Resettlement Blog observes today that, at least as of last week, the State Department was bringing in refugees at the same clip as before and the Office of Refugee Resettlement was still settling them in our communities.

According to Corcoran, 1,768 refugees arrived in the U.S. between February 15 and yesterday. She noted that 488 have arrived even over the last seven days; 109 were brought in on Thursday. Those numbers might not sound like a lot, but remember Trump had already curtailed the numbers in general. One has to wonder if we’d continue the normal pace had Trump not reduced the numbers for other reasons. The existing pace has not slowed down at all.

A search of the State Department database shows the following countries as the largest sources of refugees over the past 30 days: Congo (728) followed by Ukraine (278), Burma(136), Iraq, (130) and Pakistan (50).

Shockingly, Washington state is the second most common destination of resettlement over the past month. That is the hardest-hit state by coronavirus, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the national fatalities from the virus.

Even if the government is more carefully screening refugees for health concerns, why would we strain our services and create a logistical problem to bring in more immigrants at a time when we are shutting down many aspects of ordinary life for Americans?

"Consider that right now we are bringing in the largest numbers of refugees being processed through Ukraine and through Malaysia, which has seen a recent spike in coronavirus cases,” said Corcoran in an interview with CR. “Those refugees, including the large numbers coming in through Africa, are traveling through airports on three continents. American volunteers working for resettlement agencies are then contractually required to meet the arriving refugees in airports across the country and take them to their new apartment, thus exposing even more Americans to possible contact with the COVID-19 virus. Seems insane to me as the government is telling us to put our lives on hold and stay home."

As Corcoran pointed out in her blog post, Malaysia is one of the largest processing countries for the refugees we admit from Burma and other countries. Just this Sunday, there were nearly 200 more coronavirus cases reported after 16,000 people congregated in a mosque near Kuala Lumpur.

It's also shocking how one of the biggest sources of refugee resettlement over the past year is Congo, a country that only this week finally shut down the deadly Ebola outbreak.

Meanwhile, as of last week, we were still processing asylum claims at our border, including for Chinese nationals, rather than turning them around. One has to wonder if, absent the Supreme Court stay on the Ninth Circuit’s order to bring in caravans, the DHS would blithely have brought them in.

Orwell could not have written a script like this.

It appears that the religion of open borders is contagious throughout the world. Evidently, according to the Jerusalem Post, Germany didn’t suspend flights even from hard-hit Iran until today, after the public voiced outrage! Ezra Levant, the head of Rebel News in Canada, has been tracking flights in real time still arriving in Vancouver from China itself! Finally, in this eleventh hour, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has shut off travel – several months too late.

It is self-evident that with any “coronavirus response” from Congress, we need legislation requiring the president to immediately shut off all travel and visas from other countries as soon as our government is aware of a contagious and deadly outbreak. We should also suspend all elective immigration, such as refugee and asylum, from any country until the epidemic has subsided.

In early January, I called for a suspension of all travel from countries with coronavirus cases. I often saw responses on Twitter suggesting that such action would be too disruptive. Well, now we are going to learn the hard way what real disruption looks like. Meanwhile, refugee and asylum immigration might never be disrupted.