With their departure almost 75,000 Afghan’s sought and received transportation out of their country due to Freas for their safety…
Time and the media marches on….
The Washington Post and NY Times has sent people to check on the progress of the resettlement program and the money Congress has set aside to get things done….
JOINT BASE McGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. — Sana Khairi, an 18-year-old Afghan with wide brown eyes, knew precisely how long she had been living in a temporary encampment on a New Jersey military base: 47 days.
After fleeing Afghanistan as the Taliban seized power, she and her mother and four siblings were routed through Germany before arriving at what has become known as Liberty Village, a community that swelled nearly overnight to hold a population larger than half the towns in New Jersey.
There are 11,000 people living there now — more evacuees than on any of the six other U.S. bases still hosting families evacuated from Afghanistan as America’s 20-year war in the country reached its chaotic end in late August.
It is the only location still accepting new Afghan arrivals from overseas, according to the Department of Homeland Security. It is likely to be among the last sites to shut down, based on its housing capacity and proximity to Philadelphia, the main U.S. port of entry for the new arrivals, officials said Thursday as they offered the first media tour of the encampment.
As many as four planeloads of Afghans continue to arrive in New Jersey each week from overseas safe havens where 3,300 people are waiting their turn to enter the United States as part of the largest evacuation of war refugees since Vietnam.
Roughly 37,000 of the approximately 73,000 non-U. S. citizens evacuated from Afghanistan are still waiting to be resettled in cities and towns across the country by refugee agencies struggling with a shortage of affordable housing and the sheer magnitude of the operation.
“One of the biggest challenges is the pace of arrivals,” said Avigail Ziv, the executive director for New York and New Jersey at the International Rescue Committee, a refugee resettlement organization. “This is a really unprecedented situation.”…..
Money from Congress for the Afghan evacuees futures here in America…
The $7 billion is in addition to $6.3 billion that was provided as part of a September spending bill, bringing the total to $13.3 billion.
According to a summary of the measure released by the House Appropriations Committee, $4.3 billion of the latest round of funding will go to the Defense Department;$1.3 billion will go to the Department of Health and Human Services’s Administration for Children and Families; $1.3 billion will go to the State Department; $147 million will go to the Department of Homeland Security; and $8 million will go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention….
image…Workers and refugees converse in the processing tent of an Afghan refugee camp on Nov. 4, 2021, at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)