We used to find the good ones and fund them and hope something would come up during the course of the year so that we could pay for them all. It is tough to take money from one remarkable segment of society and put it somewhere else. The reason why the moneys were left in by the White House is that there is a feeling that there will be a surplus of some $30 million which might not be required for refugee admissions. but the principal use of the money and one of the significant things is the support of the Afghanistan refugees in Pakistan. Roughly 150.000 refugees per month are coming into Pakistan from Afghanistan. When I visited with the U.S. High Commissioner about 2 months ago. he said that Pakistan had about 1.5 million refugees and now they have almost 2 million refugees. Money is desperately needed to feed those refugees. to insure that Pakistan will keep taking them. By having this flow. it assists us greatly in the rebel situation in Afghanistan and protects the stability of our Pakistani friends. Pakistan is now funding half the bill for all these refugees and is not asking anyone to take them for resettlement. But they have told the international community that they need this assistance in paying the bill for this remaining half. and we have led them to believe to this point that we will pick up 30 pertient to 35 percent of the balance. If they close the border to the refugees or we have further stability problems because of the financial burden. it will have a severe and adverse foreign policy impact for us. because we now consider Pakistan to be an important partner in that sphere of the world. It is very important to our interests in Southwest Asia. Another possibility is that this will remove our ability to provide for Soviet Jewry immigration. Those things have been brought up. This is a test of priorities.
Keywords matched
immigration refugee refugees