U.S. Representative Matt Rosendale stopped by Yellowstone County News last week for a visit, before heading back to Washington. Rosendale is passionate about reaching out to his constituents, getting to know them, asking questions, as well as sharing his concerns for the future of Montanans.
Rosendale said, “We’ve got six big issues. We’ve got the refugees coming in from Afghanistan; we’ve got over 200,000 illegals a month coming across the southern border. Already, this year they can account for 1.3 million illegals that have come across our southern border, that’s how many they know of; there are a lot more of the criminal element sneaking in from other areas. That is larger than the entire population of Montana coming across our southern border, having been distributed around the country. The fact that they’re trying to federalize the elections whether it’s HR1, HR4 or SR1, the Democrats are trying to federalize our elections, that is a big problem. This out-of-control spending, that is a big problem.
The fact that the Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State have completely mismanaged because of the direction of President Biden the whole Afghanistan withdraw, that’s a big problem. I mean we’ve got a lot of really big problems that we’re facing. I go up there every week trying to fight as best as I can on each one of those issues, if nothing else; sometimes, my only option is to slow down their process so that they can’t pass more of this destructive agenda.”
The Afghan refugees have somehow miraculously been expedited through what is normally a standard 14-step vetting process in order to get to Missoula at record speed. When asked what parts of the 14-step vetting process is missing, Rosendale responded, “The problem is we don’t know what steps are missing. When they originally established the SIV (Special Immigrant Visas) process, there was a 14-step process which took approximately 18-24 months and these were the people that we had already received information about that we sent through that process. (Background investigation.) Now we have in excess of 100,000 people; I warned of this before the withdraw began, that government officials were going to create an emergency, pulling all of these refugees out resulting in this process suddenly becoming extremely condensed, shortened or eliminated. We weren’t going to know who was going to come into our country, and it’s my personal opinion that now we don’t know who is coming in because while the government officials are pushing this, say they have biometrics that they are depending on, eye scans, finger prints, and that can tell you who that individual is, but what they don’t have are the records, the documentation to say what they have done. You don’t know what they did a week ago, a year ago, ten years ago….Documentation was destroyed when we withdrew from Afghanistan; most of the documentation in the Embassy was destroyed; therefore, we simply don’t have the information to verify who these individuals are, as evidenced by the fact that they had an individual who arrived in Germany from Afghanistan–one of the refugees was getting ready to be airlifted from Germany to one of the military bases here in the United States–when they opened his bag up, they found blasting caps and fuses. Clearly, that is someone we don’t want roaming around in our country,” said, Rosendale.
There are four basic categories of people leaving Afghanistan for the U.S.: American citizens and green card holders; Special Immigrant Visa applicants, including interpreters and others who aided the U.S.; Afghans who helped the U.S. or worked for the U.S. based NGO’s or news organizations who qualify for a “new refugee” category; other vulnerable Afghans who manage to flee the country and receive refugee resettlement in the U.S. down the road.
Rosendale has deep concerns regarding eliminating portions of the vetting process as mentioned, “If somebody wants to explain to me how this 18–24-month process that we used to utilize in order to vet our translators, all of the sudden we’ve been able to erase this.? I just don’t understand and also keep in mind the reason that we did this is we had translators, that were assisting American troops while we were trying to train Afghan troops. We were over there helping them. So when these translators became assistants to us, we found out on many occasions that they would work with us for a while, it might be six months, it might one month, it might be a year, they have cases where they worked with us, imbedded with the American troops for a year, eating , drinking, sleeping with American troops while translating for them, and then when the time was right, they turned and gave information to the Taliban on where our American troops were and actually were not loyal to American troops whatsoever and caused the death of a lot of our soldiers, so just because somebody helped us for a period of time… “One good deed does not make you an ally. And THAT is why we have to have a thorough vetting process. 99% of Muslims that occupy Afghanistan still completely embrace and believe in Sharia Law, and Sharia Law does not align with our constitution; it does not align with our legal system.”
Rosendale has come out very publicly and vocally saying that the vaccine should be readily available for anyone that wants to take a vaccine, but if anyone chooses not to take a vaccine, that is their right and that should be kept private. “I am absolutely against any mandate…” HIPAA Laws were enacted to protect individuals regarding their health. “If someone has been vaccinated, it’s their business, and they shouldn’t have to disclose that. It’s a violation of your civil liberties,” exclaimed Rosendale.
Rosendale’s concern for inflation it evident as it’s already begun; however, he predicts that it’s going to become ‘severe’….”It’s starting to escalate so when we see that inflation going up, we’re going to end up having interest rates increase in order to get that under control, and at the same time, all that is taking place as part of that reconciliation package, the Democrats are proposing tax increases on everyone across the country, and it is an absolute lie, not just a twist of words, it is a lie that they are not going to tax everyone who makes less than 400k because they are going to allow the tax cuts and Jobs Act to expire which will immediately increase taxes on everybody in the land, everybody!”
Increasing taxes and interest rates are going to have to go up, hurting the economy severely; however, we’ve got to get through that before we can start talking about funding the government, and if we focused on funding the government through a regular budgetary system that was put into place many many years ago, we could do that. Democrats will not because they want to have another emergency, another crisis so they can force through whatever type of spending they want, and I am not going to be intimidated by that.”
If that’s not a tad bit depressing, Rosendale does see a “… light at the end of the tunnel! I do believe that we are going to win back the House in 2022. I do believe because this has been such a radical agenda that we may very well win back the Senate in 2022. If we have the House and the Senate, then we can actually start our rebuilding process right then, because the Biden administration will have to work with the House and the Senate to get something done, but worst-case scenario it basically just stops them from passing this destructive agenda, and in 2024 we will win back the White House again.”
