Wyoming is The Only State NOT Receiving Afghan Evacuees

Afghan refugees are still circulating around the globe. They can't go home. Who will take them? 

Bob Fenton, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is overseeing the inter-agency Afghan resettlement effort. He called it the largest government operation of its kind.

“I’ve worked for FEMA for 25 years, going to disasters,” Fenton told CBS News. “This is, by far, the largest, most complex event I’ve been involved in, from evacuating 85,000 people from more than halfway around the world into 10 military bases in the Mideast and Europe, and then to eight bases here in the United States.”

There are more than 67,000 Afghans being processed at domestic bases. Half of them have been settled across America. That's about. 35,128 so far.

So far resettlement states include Texas, California, Virginia, Washington, Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, and Arizona, according to unpublished government statistics obtained by CBS News.

Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, Oklahoma, Missouri, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Kentucky have received 21,331 evacuees, resettling more than 1,000 each. (CBS).

Some states have taken far fewer. But those states are smaller in population and have fewer recourses to handle the influx. South Dakota, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Hawaii have all resettled 22 Afghans combined.

Wyoming is the only state that is not expected to receive any evacuees.

Was it because Wyoming has the lowest state population in the nation, therefore not much to work with? That is not known at this time.

According to officials, it's not that American's are opposed to helping these people.

“I think the biggest lesson for the administration to take away from this operation is that the American public is overwhelmingly in support of immigrants and refugees being a part of their communities,” Ali Noorani, president of the National Immigration Forum, told CBS News.

Somewhere around 36,000 evacuees lack a pathway to permanent status. That leaves them in legal limbo unless they qualify for asylum or Congress legalizes them.

Most of these people will never be able to go home. They would be killed by the Taliban if they did. They are looking for a place on planet Earth to start a new life.