By Todd Bensman on January 26, 2023
AUSTIN, Texas — U.S. Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) and a group of House Republicans have reintroduced a bill that would require the United States to defund United Nations agencies — and recoup past contributions — on grounds that the agencies are financing a historic mass migration event now beginning its third year.
Gooden and a dozen co-sponsors in the House are reposting the 2022 “No Tax Dollars for the United Nation’s Immigration Invasion Act” after “it was confirmed” in early January that the UN intends to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it U.S. taxpayer contributions, in the form of legal counseling, transportation, housing, and direct cash assistance to facilitate migrants’ journeys to the United States, Gooden said.
The bill’s reintroduction comes on the heels of a January 9 Center for Immigration Studies report (”United Nations to Hand Out Hundreds of Millions in Cash to U.S.-Bound Immigrants in 2023”) that detailed needs-based budget projections for handing out an estimated $450 million to more than 600,000 immigrants scattered along established migrant routes leading to the southern border. “Cash working groups” made up of more than 50 non-profit immigrant advocate organizations would distribute the money as cash and voucher or multipurpose cash assistance this year to migrants moving in 17 countries, including for long-distance transportation, lodging, and as cash cards, CIS reported.
“The United Nations is using our own tax dollars against us, and U.S. policymakers can no longer stand by while elites in the UN and Davos actively finance an invasion of our sovereign territory,” Gooden said in a prepared statement reflective of some of his past objections. “It’s time to say enough and cut off funding to these corrupt globalist institutions until respect for our territorial integrity and appreciation for our generosity is restored.”
Since other CIS reporting detailing how UN cash is handed out on the migrant trails in 2021 and 2022, Gooden has stood at the forefront of Republican lawmakers who have increasingly expressed outrage over U.S. contributions to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
For instance, in late 2021, CIS reported that some immigrants in Reynosa, Mexico, were receiving up to $800 a month on cash cards, which Gooden said was “facilitating an invasion of our country”. In January 2022, CIS reported that UN money was supporting psychologists who helped economic immigrants who were rejected for Mexican asylum harvest “repressed memories” of oppression stories that would work more effectively in legal appeals so that the migrants could get Mexican residency cards enabling them to travel to the American border.
The reintroduced bill calls for an immediate end to any planned U.S. contributions to the UN, but also includes a new claw-back provision that calls for government studies of how much American funding has already gone to the UN agencies and to force repayment.
Chances for the bill to advance beyond the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate are low, but this bill’s introduction and other similar bills put forward in recent weeks indicate that House Republicans plan to elevate the UN funding issue to a place of higher public visibility that likely will include investigations and hearings drawing broader attention to it.
The United Nations has explained to the Center for Immigration Studies that it sees its cash program as a means to ensure that immigrants who felt compelled to travel would not fall unnecessary prey to hunger and disease, and that only the most vulnerable get aid in the form of cash.