Tucker: We are living through the biggest influx of refugees in history
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host slams politicians advocating for refugees to be prioritized at the same level as Americans
What a betrayal the war in Afghanistan turned out to be. Above all, it was a betrayal of the American public, the people who for 20 years paid for the occupation. It was a betrayal of the ones who died there, of course, and of the tens of thousands of Americans who will carry the scars from this disaster for the rest of their lives. They were lied to. We were all lied to. And we have a right to feel bitter about that.
But the war in Afghanistan was also, if we're going to be completely honest about it, a betrayal of the Afghan people. Our leaders made promises to them they knew they couldn't keep. Honorable countries don't do that. It's shameful. Imagine being an Afghan employee at Bagram Air Base. You woke up the other morning to find your American patrons gone. They didn't tell you they were leaving. They just left.
So what happens to you now in a country run by the Taliban? It's hard to think about that. And yet tonight many Americans are thinking about it and they're feeling distressed as they do. Americans are kind people and generous. They're quicker and more eager to help strangers than anyone else in the world. We haven't seen polling on it, but we bet if you asked one hundred people, should we try to help Afghans who are facing persecution for helping us, most Americans would say, of course, we should. And we should be glad that they say that you should be happy you live in a country where your neighbors love children and dogs and want to help refugees. We are generous and empathetic people and we should be proud.
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Unfortunately, there are many in our ruling class who are anxious to take advantage of that, anxious, to take advantage of our best qualities. They see our decency and our weakness, and they exploit those things and they do it relentlessly. Let's try to save our loyal Afghan interpreters, we tell them. Perfect, they think. We'll open the borders and change the demographic balance of this country. Of course, that's exactly what they're doing right now on our southern border, naturally in the name of human rights and compassion. And they would like to do the very same thing with the disaster unfolding in Afghanistan, the disaster that they created. Look at what this kid on MSNBC said yesterday, and remember, as you watch, that he is regarded with total seriousness in Washington as a foreign policy expert and that his fellow foreign policy experts wholeheartedly agree with him.
SPENCER ACKERMAN: We’re talking about an evacuation of people who helped the wars, and that’s an obligation of the United States but it's sort of a moral floor that’s functioning as a moral ceiling. The Bush administration, I’m sorry the Biden administration, pardon me, isn’t doing things necessary like increasing TPS access and letting in refugees by the millions to escape their certain fate at the hands of the Taliban.
So we must "let in refugees by the millions," said the mustachioed foreign policy expert. The millions. Millions is not a handful of loyal Afghan interpreters. That's not even a fleet of cargo planes full of loyal Afghan interpreters. Millions is a good chunk of the entire population of Afghanistan, brought to our country at our expense to live in your neighborhood at the very moment our national fabric is fraying, in case you haven't noticed, and the United States is becoming unmistakably poorer.
And that's not just one man's eccentric opinion on MSNBC. You should know all the clever people are saying exactly the same thing. "The US should take as many Afghan refugees as it can" demands a recent headline in New York Magazine. As many refugees as we can. How many refugees is that? And is it really a good idea to do that for us? Don't ask. You're not allowed to ask that question because asking is racist.
NICOLLE WALLACE: The notion that their sort of horrific fearmongering and racism don’t carve out the men and women in Afghanistan who kept our soldiers alive for two decades is a new level of reprehensible.
DON LEMON: So, right-wing personality is using the crisis in Afghanistan to push an anti-refugee sentiment.
CHRIS CUOMO: They're getting caught up in what I call the "Brown Menace," which is this Trumper right-wing fear of people coming into the country from Central and South America. These people seem to be getting swept up into that xenophobia.
FAREED ZAKARIA: Stephen Miller's response to the collapse of Afghanistan, the fall of Kabul, the takeover of the Taliban was "Look at Biden, he's trying to - he's trying to get Brown people to come into the country." It's sickening, and it's pathetic.
It's hilarious, is what it is, the right-wing hates Brown people. The only problem is that most Afghans are not Brown. Your average green-eyed Pashtun is as pale as anyone sitting on the set right now. Essentially, they're bearded White guys. Do the dummies on cable television know that? It's possible they don't know it. From their perspective, anyone who doesn't have access to the New York City subway must be a foreigner. And all foreigners are Brown. We know that. They just are. So maybe they really think that more likely, though, they know the truth. They know that calling you a racist is the fastest way to make you obey.
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Do we really need millions of Afghan refugees in Phoenix, you ask? Shut up. Racist. OK, go ahead and do it. That's how the process typically works. In fact, that's pretty much how it always works with everything now. At this point, fighting racism is the universal justification for every bad idea. Tear down our statues. OK. Stop teaching math. OK. Get rid of standardized testing. All right. Defund the police, move millions of Afghan refugees to swing states to help the Democratic Party. OK. Oppose any of it, and you're a racist. So in the end, it always happens. And in this case, it may happen. It probably will.
But what happens then to us? How will this new wave of immigration affect America? Will America be a better country or will it be a little more like Afghanistan, which is to say not really a better country? We can't be sure of what's going to happen. We can't see the future. But for a hint, a glimpse, maybe we ought to pay some attention to what has happened in Europe recently. They just went through this.
So one Saturday night last month, authorities discovered the body of a 13-year-old girl next to a tree in Vienna, Austria. She had been drugged and raped and murdered. It took a few days, but by Monday, authorities announced they had arrested two asylum seekers from Afghanistan for the rape and murder. Shortly after that, the chancellor of Austria identified the problem. The problem is Austria's refugee policy. "I find it intolerable for people to come to us, say they are seeking protection and then commit cruel, barbaric crimes in Austria."
Yeah, but now they're getting used to it because it's been happening with increasing frequency throughout Western Europe for years now, six years. And every honest person knows that. Maybe the dummies on cable news don't know it, but people who live there do. Cheryl Benard knows it. Cheryl Benard, by the way, has been an advocate for refugees for decades. She's not against immigration. She's for it. But over time, she's concluded that the West simply is not capable, not doing a good job, of successfully assimilating many Afghan refugees. Some, but many not at all.
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By every measure, Afghan resettlement in Europe has been an utter failure. Why is that? Maybe we should pay some attention. Afghan refugees. Benard wrote, are notorious for barbaric attacks, attacks that left-wing politicians in Europe frequently cover up for fear of being called racist. For example, "A gang of 50 Afghans who terrorized women in the neighborhood of the Linz train station were brushed off by a government official with the remark that this was an unfortunate consequence of bad weather." You could see that happening here, by the way.
In another instance, just last summer, an Afghan migrant was arrested in Germany for raping an 11-year-old girl. Authorities released him from jail in just a few days. They said he was not dangerous and anyone who disagreed with that was a racist, of course. The migrant then proceeded to rape another girl. This time she was 13 years old.
Statistics show these are not just anecdotes, it happens a lot. Ask anyone who lives there who is honest. Germany's government just conducted a study showing that rates of violent crime in Germany, those rates have been declining for years, by the way, shot up abruptly in 2015. And that was the moment when refugees from Afghanistan and Syria arrived in Germany. More than 90% of the new crimes in Germany, the German government has found, were committed by asylum seekers. More than 90%. This is not a slur. It's not slander. Those are the numbers, and it's not just a problem in Europe. Ever been to Pakistan? One journalist acknowledged that it is happening in places like Iran and Pakistan as well.
NIDA KHAN, INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST: You know, it`s something like 2.8 million refugees in the world are Afghani refugees, basically about one in 10. And let`s remember during the Trump years, we lowered the refugee admission to the lowest possible level that it ever had been and also many European countries had shut their door to refugees and sent them back to places like Afghanistan, and that was before all of this happened. So I cannot even imagine what`s going to take place afterward. In countries, you know neighboring countries like Pakistan have something like 1.4 million Afghani refugees, Iran has about a million, and now you`re seeing a huge influx that`s going to be going there as well too. And you`re talking about destabilizing those countries even further
OK, so Afghan refugees have destabilized countries into which they have moved in large numbers, but we have a moral obligation to take them anyway. Really? Why is that? Why is this our unique moral burden? Isn't the U.S. government's first obligation to its own people? Isn't that the only point of having a government to look out for its citizens? Why else have a government, actually? That would be a good question for Rep. Peter Meyer of Grand Rapids. He's a Republican, but he spent months demanding the Biden administration import as many Afghan refugees as possible. He just sent a letter to the White House, which was signed by dozens of House Republicans, saying it's just as important to evacuate American citizens as it is to accept Afghan refugees and vice versa. He also tweeted that it's "beyond shameful" in response to report that the administration is "prioritizing the evacuation of U.S. personnel from the country."
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So here you have a Republican attacking the Biden administration because they're putting American citizens before foreign nationals, and lots of other Republicans on Capitol Hill agree. And this might be a moment to pause and state the obvious. None of this is the fault of the Afghan refugees. They're desperate to leave. Nobody blames them. Most of them are probably great people.
The fault is ours. It's with people like that. The idea that you can move people from one completely different country with a completely different culture and language and religion and history on the other side of the globe into our country in large numbers and everything will be just fine is insane. It doesn't work. There may be a good way to do that. Nobody has yet figured it out. And until somebody does, maybe we should pause if we care about our own people.
The Biden administration, by the way, is still refusing to guarantee the safety of Americans going to the airport in Afghanistan. Joe Biden's national security adviser, that would be Jake Sullivan, the Rhodes scholar, came out yesterday and suggested it is the fault of the Americans trapped in Afghanistan because they didn't leave sooner. Even though Mark Milley, Joe Biden have been saying for weeks that the Taliban would never take over in three days, couldn't happen.
So instead of rescuing those Americans still stuck there, we are saving Afghans. A CNN reporter, Natasha Bertrand, just reported that in fact, we are relocating more non-citizens than Americans out of Afghanistan. Around 330 U.S. citizens left Kabul yesterday, Bertrand wrote, along with "about 770 non-American family members."
So Joe Biden hasn't answered any questions about this. Today he walked away from reporters once again without even addressing it. Meanwhile, American citizens remain trapped. Reporter Phil Wegmann from Real Clear Politics says he just got off the phone with Sen. Bill Hagerty's office, who represents Tennessee, and is getting reports of Americans and safe houses near the Karzai airport who are "trying to figure out when they can run for it." Run for it. That's what Americans have been left to do. Afghans are certainly doing that.
Just look at a picture of hundreds of Afghans crammed into a C-17 cargo plane. This was the air traffic controller's reaction when he saw the flight lift off.
CONTROLLER: OK, how many people do you think are on your jet? 800 people on your jet? Holy f---. Holy cow.
So every one of those 800, according to Rep. Peter Meyer, who's like 33 years old, quote, risked their lives to help protect American troops. Really, Peter Meyer, how do you know that? Well, you don't know that. You're just making it up. You don't know their names, you don't know their backgrounds. You don't know squat. But he claims it anyway.
Steven Law, who's one of Mitch McConnell's chief political operatives, also wants you to know that every one of those Afghans on that plane is a hero, unlike you. No need for vetting. In fact, Steven Law wants every one of them in his neighborhood immediately. We know that because he has said so in social media. Right. But not in his neighborhood, actually.
So it's pretty easy for people like Steven Law to encourage unlimited migration of refugees because in the end they're not actually going to his neighborhood. They're going mostly to Republican states like Texas, where they'll be settled in places where the Democratic Party needs help.
So big picture, you've got to wonder, how long will Republican voters tolerate leaders who so clearly don't care at all about them? As you may have noticed, we have problems here. We have a housing crisis, by the way, a big one. Do you have kids? Ask them. According to The Wall Street Journal, the amount of available entry-level housing in the United States, and that's defined as homes up to 1,400 square feet, is at a five-decade low.
So when the supply shrinks, the cost rises, the median value of a home in California is rose above $800,000. First time in history. Less than 40% of the millennial generation will own a home by the age of 34. They're all renting and rent is going up to a lot. The growth in median rent outpaces the growth in median renter income in nearly every state between 2001 and 2019. That's a disaster. That's a terrible development for American citizens.
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So why is it happening? Well, lots of reasons. But one reason it's happening is America is becoming a lot more crowded than it ever was. And one of the reasons for that is that we're now living through the biggest influx of refugees in American history. We are on pace for at least two million illegal immigrants arriving in America this year alone. That's far more than the number of asylum applicants who arrived in Europe in 2015. That was over one million, just over one million. That totally changed Europe forever.
So how many of the Afghans that we accept that Steven Law and Peter Meyer demanding we accept, are going to bring family members with them? Well, the vast majority, it turns out. It's not just the translators. Roughly 70% of the special immigrant visas that we have given out in recent years have gone to relatives. More than 70%. So in general, chain migration like this has been a huge driver of our population growth. It's not Americans having more children. It's chain migration.
Recent data show that each new immigrant sponsored an average of 3.45 additional immigrants, getting a lot more than you thought you were. Between 2005 and 2016, 9.3 million foreign nationals were able to resettle in our country for no other reason, except they had extended family members who already lived here.
Oh, so it's much more than they're telling you. How many of these Afghans and their family members, you have to wonder, are excited about coming to America? Huh. It's interesting, maybe you should ask that question, maybe you should ask Ilhan Omar. Her position is the only reason that American citizens might object to being flooded with millions of new refugees from Afghanistan is that Americans, people who are born here and built this country are actually mediocre and insecure.
ILHAN OMAR: And then you've got these crazy people on the right doing what they always do with their fear-mongering and their hateful rhetoric, and I know what some of these people are worried about is that they're worried that refugees like myself when they come to this country, will outshine them.
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So the obvious response to that is to attack poor Ilhan Omar, but we're not going to do that. The truth is, this is our fault. It is our fault. Ilhan Omar is living proof that we are not very good at resettling refugees. She was saved from a refugee camp in Kenya as a child by the kindness and generosity of America. And yet she has grown to hate America and the people who live here.
Where did she learn those attitudes? Well, of course, in college, our colleges, we taught her to hate our country. She became worse after she got here. We ought to pause before we do that again, to anyone, even if they've been translators.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the August 18, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
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