President Joe Biden stated that he intended to restore the United States’ ‘moral leadership’ and announced that he is raising the cap on the number of refugees in the country to 125,000 for the fiscal year beginning this fall.
According to the White House, Biden also plans to work with Congress to override the limit for this fiscal year, set at just 15,000 by his predecessor.
But it would be hard to hit a higher target right away, even without a pandemic. During the Trump years, more than a third of resettlement offices in the US were closed and their accompanying staff let go, the Associated Press reported – capacity that must be restored before admissions can be ramped up.
The president acknowledged this in a speech to the US Department of State on Thursday. “It will take time to rebuild what has been so badly damaged, but that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” said Biden. Accordingly, “I order the State Department to consult Congress on making a down payment for that pledge as soon as possible.”
Although a big increase – and the highest limit since 1993 – the new cap of 125,000 refugees is still well below the number the US accepted years ago. In 1980, the US resettled more than 207,000 people fleeing violence, poverty and oppression; in the 2020 financial year that number fell to less than 12,000.
In President Barack Obama’s last year in office, the US accepted just under 85,000 refugees.
Building capacity to resettle refugees is not only necessary within the government itself. There are nine national agencies working with the State Department to find homes for displaced people; they, too, have experienced staff reductions as a result of declining need for their services.
“Rebuilding the significantly dismantled refugee resettlement system will require a great deal of effort and advocacy,” Tim Breene, CEO of the Christian humanitarian group World Relief, said in a statement. He urged the Biden government not to delay accepting more refugees, and called on the president to lift the current annual limit on admission and remove “other policies that restrict access to asylum.”
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