The Afghan population in the United States has exploded in the last 20 years, with the majority living on at least one major form of welfare, funded by taxpayers.
News analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reveals 133,000 Afghans lived in the United States in 2019 – more than three times the 44,000 Afghans living in the U.S. before the Afghanistan War in 2001.
The largest Afghan population in the U.S resides in California, with about 54,000, while 24,000 call Virginia home and 10,000 live in Texas.
“We also found that a large faction, by no means all, struggle in the United States,” CIS Director of Research Steven Camarota said in remarks.
Camarota’s research found that more than 65 percent of Afghan immigrant households use at least one major form of welfare: food stamps, cash assistance, or Medicaid. If other welfare forms were included in this tally, like free school lunch and public housing, “these high rates of welfare use would almost certainly be much higher,” Camarota notes.
When Afghan immigrant’s welfare rates were compared to native-born Americans, less than 25 percent of native-born American households used one major form of welfare.
Afghan immigrant households use more than three times the food stamps as native-born American households. In 2010, roughly 19 percent of Afghan immigrant households used food stamps. However, in 2019 the number rose to 35 percent.
The number of Afghan immigrant households that live in or near the U.S. poverty line is 51 percent. At the same time, 27 percent of native-born Americans live in or near poverty.
Looking closer, about 1 out of 4 Afghan immigrant households live in poverty compared to 2 out of 16 native-born American households. The number of children in Afghan homes living in poverty is more than double of the children living in American homes.
Is it unlikely for Afghans to hold a bachelor’s degree as the Afghan population has increased in the U.S. For example, the number of Afghan immigrants with at least one bachelor’s degree was about the same as the number of native-born Americans with at least one bachelor’s degree in 2005, roughly 29 percent.
By 2019, the gap has expanded. Today only 26 percent of Afghan immigrants hold at least one bachelor’s degree, and 35 percent of native-born Americans have one bachelor’s degree.
The number of Afghan immigrants that drop out of high school is 22 percent, compared to native-born Americans with less than 7 percent.
Afghan immigrants excel in birth rates. In 2019, native-born American women had about 56 births per 1,000 compared to Afghan immigrant women, who had 155 births per 1,000.
Afghan women have nearly three times the birth rate of native-born American women.
This research comes as President Biden is executing a massive resettlement by bringing Afghans to the U.S. Biden hopes to permanently resettle 95,000 Afghans across the U.S. at the cost of at least $6.4 billion to taxpayers.
Biden brought more than 48,000 Afghans to the U.S. in 21 days from August to September.