After a year of record illegal immigration and a high baseline of third-world legal immigration, Republican governors are now pushing for even more refugee resettlement.

In September, President Trump gave veto power to governors and county officials to halt refugee resettlement in their respective jurisdictions with the full understanding that at least the Republican officials would follow his campaign promises of putting American taxpayers first. Instead, not a single Republican governor has publicly exercised this prerogative, while several of them have given their affirmative support to this travesty.

Governor Doug Ducey, R-Ariz., leads a state that has been beleaguered by illegal immigration with an enormous cost to taxpayers, financially as well as in education, culture, drugs, and crime. Yet earlier this year, he agreed to implement in-state tuition discounts for illegal aliens. Evidently, dealing with the entirety of Central America at Arizona’s international border and in the local communities is not enough for him. He has now agreed to allow refugee resettlement contract groups to engage in more resettlement in the Grand Canyon State.

“Throughout our nation’s history, the United States has been a refuge for individuals fleeing religious and political persecution in their homeland,” Ducey wrote Friday in a formal letter to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo consenting to resettlement. “And Arizona has historically been one of the most welcoming states in terms of the number of refugees resettled here.”

Local Democrat congressmen and state officials expressed satisfaction with Ducey’s agreement with their position. He also has the support of state House Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa. When it comes to the real issues that matter to our future, both parties are on the same page, representing the special interests and not the voiceless taxpayers.

Do the people of Arizona not factor into Ducey’s virtue-signaling? Moreover, is Ducey unaware that much religious strife has actually ceased to be an issue in the modern era, with most of the conflict now involving warring Islamic factions, not persecuted minorities? We are bringing in an equal number of Sunnis and Shiites from places like Iraq, with no understanding of how they will live harmoniously with each other, much less with Americans. Why should his state’s population be on the hook for the language and cultural problems in the schools? Who else will pay for it?

Also, the fact that Arizona has taken in so many refugees in the past, in addition to shouldering one of the heaviest burdens of illegal immigration in the nation, is a reason to slow down the process and allow for more assimilation and give taxpayers a reprieve. It’s not a reason to step on the gas pedal with more open-borders policies.

It’s not just large cities like Phoenix that are being transformed. A quick search of the WRAPS State Department database indicates that Glendale, Arizona, has become the new hot spot for resettlement in recent years. A midsized suburb of Phoenix, Glendale has received 2,700 refugees over the past four fiscal years. Most of them originate from Islamic countries or places with dramatically different countries and volatile tribal divisions, such as Iraq, Somalia, Burma, Syria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Who is looking out for the security concerns, especially when so many Somali refugees have been known to bring their intra-clan violence to our shores, dividing along the same gang structures they had in their home countries?

Last year, Ahmad Suhad Ahmad, an Iraqi refugee living in Tucson, was arrested for an elaborate bomb plot after he was caught making two explosive devices in Las Vegas. Also last year, Mohamed Abdirahman Osman and Zeinab Abdirahman Mohamed, a refugee couple living in Tucson, were indicted after they were found to have been members of Al-Shabab. The FBI believes that Osman sustained permanent injuries from his time handling explosives for the terror group. I’m sure Doug Ducey will personally vet these people to ensure all of them will love America.

But these are the Republicans we are electing. They are indistinguishable from Democrats on this and many other issues.