(San Diego) U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday kept the national refugee admissions threshold at 125,000 for fiscal year 2023 on Tuesday, despite pressure from advocates to raise it further to meet the needs that have been well below that target this year.
Posted at 9:51 p.m.
Refugee advocates have pressured the Biden administration to do more to restore the U.S. refugee admissions program. The program suffered deep cuts under the Trump administration, which reduced admissions to a record low of 15,000.
Mr. Biden has raised the threshold four times higher than that set by Mr. Trump, but so far fewer than 20,000 refugees have been admitted this fiscal year, according to the latest tally in August. The fiscal year ends on September 30.
This figure does not include the approximately 180,000 Ukrainians and Afghans who arrived in the United States through a legal procedure called “humanitarian parole”, which allowed them to enter the country faster than the program of traditional refugees, but which only allows stays of a maximum of two years.
Refugees have a pathway to permanent residency. The number of admissions is set by the president each year, and federal funding for rehabilitation agencies is based on the number of people they successfully rehabilitate in a given year.
Mr Biden argued that the target of 125,000 people was justified by humanitarian concerns or in the national interest. Historically, the average was 95,000 under previous Republican and Democratic administrations.
Mr Biden has earmarked an additional 5,000 places for European and Central Asian nationals for the 2023 fiscal year, to accommodate people fleeing war in Ukraine.
Mr Biden said in his presidential ruling that admissions should be restricted to 40,000 refugees from Africa, 35,000 from South Asia and 15,000 each from East Asia, Europe and America. Latin America.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, head of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said the Biden administration must act now to improve the US refugee program, as the United Nations reports a record number of 100 million people displaced from their homes.
“It must speed up and streamline the processing of refugee applications overseas if this life-saving program is to remain relevant in the context of an unprecedented global displacement crisis,” she said. in a press release.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that “this ambitious goal demonstrates that the United States is committed to rebuilding and strengthening the U.S. refugee admissions program” through various means.
He outlined plans for a pilot project to be launched by the end of the year that will allow Americans to register to help refugees settle in their community.