The Obama administration is on track to meet its goal of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States by the end of September. In the rush to flood American communities with Muslim migrants from the war-torn nation, officials have disregarded any concern for the cost to taxpayers.

Thus far, approximately 8,000 Syrian refugees have been resettled into the United States, government officials confirmed earlier in August. Of those Syrians, 99 percent of them are Muslims.

“Some of the detachment isn’t unconscious. Some of it is sheer and clever self-protection,” Noonan wrote.

“We are very confident we will welcome at least 10,000 refugees from Syria by the end of this fiscal year,” Anne Richard, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, told reporters in a briefing.

Despite the administration’s sluggish start to the resettlement initiative this year, ramping up the numbers of screening and security personnel has aided in increasing the flow. During the first six months of the initiative, only 1,200 refugees were admitted. But in July alone, roughly 2,340 refugees arrived, according to The Associated Press.

The ramp-up cost taxpayers dearly. According to a June study from the Center for Immigration Studies, the cost of resettling all 10,000 Syrians would total $644 million during their first five years of asylum in the U.S., a figure CIS experts have since suggested was actually too low.

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And the massive cost impact of the refugees doesn’t stop with resettlement.

As LifeZette reported in June, a recent government report showed that refugees, who immediately qualify for government benefits, enroll in welfare programs at a much higher rate than others. Those who had been settled in the country for five years as of December 2014 lagged behind their American counterparts, with an unemployment rate of 8.9 percent. This rate was 2.7 points higher than the general U.S. unemployment rate at the time.

The administration is also resettling refugees without regard to the local impact on the often-poor communities where they are placed.

Virginia offers a prime example of the disconnect between the administration, elites who favor the rush of refugee resettlement, and the poorer Americans in dealing with the influx of refugees. Of the 121 Syrian refugees placed in Virginia thus far, approximately 112 were placed in communities that existed at least 100 miles away from Washington, D.C. Of those refugees, 105 were distributed in cities where the median household incomes fell below the state average, according to an analysis reported in The Daily Caller. Only nine Syrians were placed in or near Fairfax, Loudoun, and Arlington counties in Virginia near D.C. — three of the United States’ wealthiest counties.

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“Some of the detachment isn’t unconscious. Some of it is sheer and clever self-protection. At least on some level they can take care of their own,” Peggy Noonan, a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, wrote Thursday. “This is about distance, and detachment, and a kind of historic decoupling between the top and the bottom in the West that did not, in more moderate recent times, exist.”

In her column, Noonan wrote of the consequences German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing for her decision to welcome 800,000 refugees into her country. Warning of the consequences the U.S. could face if it continues to slide in Germany’s direction, Noonan explored the divide between the ruling elite and the common folk.

“Ms. Merkel had put the entire burden of a huge cultural change, not on herself and those like her, but on regular people who live closer to the edge, who do not have the resources to meet the burden, who have no particular protection or money or connections,” Noonan wrote. “Ms. Merkel, her cabinet and government, the media and cultural apparatus that lauded her decision were not in the least affected by it and likely never would be.”

And this is a problem the U.S. now faces as increasing numbers of refugees arrive on American soil.