President Joe Biden is planning to increase the maximum number of refugees allowed in the United States in the next fiscal year to 125,000 starting in October, after years of cuts by the previous government.
“It will take time to rebuild what has been so damaged,” said Biden in a speech on Thursday, “but that is exactly what we are going to do.”
The plan to drastically raise the limit comes after former President Donald Trump decimated the country’s refugee program, designed to welcome people fleeing dangerous conditions, and forced U.S.-based aid organizations to lay off employees and close offices. The ceiling for the current fiscal year ending in September, which was set by Trump, is 15,000, the lowest since the United States started the program in 1980. But the White House has signaled that Biden also intended to increase that number.
Biden’s order, according to a White House statement on Thursday, will also rescind Trump-era policies that required “excessive vetoing” of refugee candidates, expand the US ability to assess refugee requests and improve access for those who are vulnerable around the world, including women, children and people at risk due to their gender identity or sexual orientation, the statement added.
The Biden government will try to rebuild this program, although advocates, officials and experts believe the process will be slow and needs to include more funding for organizations that receive refugees, as well as reinforcements for workers who process cases.
Matthew Soerens, director of church mobilization at World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization, agreed that it will take time to rebuild the program, including processing abroad, “but it is vital that we begin this reconstruction process.”
“One hundred and twenty-five thousand is a good and reasonable goal for [fiscal year] 2022, a dramatic increase in recent years, but not without historical precedents ”, he added.
Soerens said the government’s processing of refugees, which includes extensive interviews and background checks, takes significant time. World Relief, he added, would not be able to receive large numbers of refugees if the limit were raised to 125,000 immediately.
“Since resettlement agencies like World Relief are funded through a combination of public and private funding, and our public funding is tied to a State Department refugee grant, all nine resettlement agencies have had to make significant cuts the number of resettlements has decreased by around 85% in the last four years, ”he said. “World Relief closed eight offices and suspended new resettlements in several other locations, while reducing our US-based staff by about a third.”
The United Nations, which reported in December that 80 million people worldwide were homeless in mid-2020, also praised the measure.
“We applaud the restoration of the US resettlement program,” said Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees. “Despite the challenges of the pandemic, we remind countries of the life-threatening circumstances that refugees face and encourage them to continue to expand their resettlement programs.”
In 2018, the Trump administration limited the number of new refugees to 30,000 before reducing it further the following year to 18,000 – far less than the 110,000 allowed in the Obama administration’s last year.
The limit serves only as a ceiling and does not necessarily mean that immigration officials will actually admit the maximum number of refugees. American officials feared that the program would be totally ruled out by the Trump administration. One said the Biden government should hire more officers, allow virtual interviews with refugees abroad and increase resources for those who are closely involved in the process.
“It is very encouraging; The police are extremely anxious to get started and we appreciate the tone that this government is setting so far, ”said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Even with the reduction of the refugee program, certain groups are feeling the impact more than others. Researchers at the Migration Policy Institute found that admissions of Muslims through the program fell 87% from 2016 until last year. Trump called for a ban on all Muslims from entering the United States when he was a candidate for public office in 2015.