OPINION:
The United Nations, to which American taxpayers are the largest donor, is aiding and abetting migrants illegally crossing the U.S. southern border.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, along with the International Organization for Migrants, is providing hard cash, food, shelter, pharmaceuticals, transportation, legal services and asylum coaching for migrants making their journey into the U.S., according to a speech to House lawmakers this month from Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.
American taxpayers ponied up $1.7 billion — or 40% of UNHCR’s revenues in 2019, the last year for which expenditures are fully known, and gave $600 million to the IOM, representing almost 30% of that agency’s budget in 2019, according to an analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Overall, the U.S. contributes about $11 billion annually to the U.N., making it the world’s largest donor, with $5.5 billion of that money going to migration and refugee support activities.
“I found my first clue on a Rio Grande riverbank on the Mexican side: a discarded UNHCR-stamped booklet advising in great detail how migrants can and should travel north with the greatest chance of safety and success,” Mr. Bensman told the House Freedom Caucus on Feb. 1.
“Later, in Reynosa, Mexico, I witnessed the United Nations grantee, the IOM, hand out cash debit cards to migrants in long, snaking lines. The workers handing them out said they give $400 every 15 days to families of four, renewable every two weeks.”
In 2021, migration into the U.S. from the southern border hit an all-time record of nearly 2 million Border Patrol apprehensions in a single year, with an estimated 500,000 or more “got-aways.”
As the border crisis rages on, it is unconscionable the U.S. continues to fund U.N. agencies that are actively undermining our national security by assisting those trying to invade our border.
“The United Nations appear to be working side-by-side with the criminal smuggling organizations on the same mission,” Mr. Bensman told the caucus.
“The U.N. tells me only the most vulnerable get this cash. But in Reynosa and again most recently in Tapachula, Mexico, where I saw the long lines at the UNHCR office, nothing about them indicated acute vulnerability. They were regular family units of the sort crossing by the tens of thousands now. Some showed me their debit cards there, too, and said were it not for this money they might have to leave the migrant trail and go home,” he said.
Not only is the U.N. giving lodging, transportation and cash assistance to these migrants, but it’s also coaching them on how to claim asylum successfully once their journey is complete.
“The manager of a U.N.-funded migrant advocacy center told me a full-time staff of certified psychologists helps these migrants recover ‘repressed memories’ of more-eligible government persecution,” Mr. Bensman explained. “This manager told me his group also trains migrants on the front end of the process how to pass muster with Mexican asylum interviewers the first time around.”
The U.N. migrant advocacy center boasted its coaching operations produce a 90% success rate for thousands of migrants each year.
In his 2021 budget proposal, former President Donald Trump sought to slash aid to the U.N., to align with his administration’s priorities. The cuts were largely rejected by Congress.
In 2018, Mr. Trump cut funding for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, in which European and Gulf donors stepped in to offset that shortfall. It also suspended funding to the U.N. Population Fund in 2017 as it supported and performed abortions abroad, and in 2020 completely withdrew from the World Health Organization over its China ties in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Biden administration has reinstituted funding to all these U.N. entities, rejoined the WHO, and, with the passage of his $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan,” gave an additional $580 million in international multilateral funding, including support to the United Nations, and $500 million for humanitarian response related to migration and refugee assistance.
Congress holds the purse strings.
It’s imperative if Republicans retake the House, they critically evaluate how the U.N. is contributing to our southern border crisis and look to defund specific agencies within the organization that are actively undermining U.S. interests.
American taxpayers don’t want to be funding U.N. coyotes — they want border security. A nation without borders is not sovereign. Perhaps that’s what the U.N. would prefer, but for most Americans, it’s a threat to everything we hold dear.
• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.
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