The Trump administration is considering effectively shutting down the country’s refugee resettlement program, according to a report, a scheme which has brought more than 3.5 million foreign nationals to the United States since 1980.
According to three sources who spoke to Politico, federal immigration officials at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have suggested that the annual refugee cap be set anywhere between zero or 3,000 to 10,000.
Politico‘s Ted Hesson reported:
The Trump administration is considering a virtual shutdown of refugee admissions next year — cutting the number to nearly zero — according to three people familiar with the plan. [Emphasis added]
During a key meeting of security officials on refugee admissions last week, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services representative who is closely aligned with White House immigration adviser Stephen Miller suggested setting a cap at zero, the people said. Homeland Security Department officials at the meeting later floated making the level anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000, according to one of the people. [Emphasis added]
The halt to refugees being admitted to the U.S. would be a pause after nearly four decades of the country admitting thousands of foreign nationals through the resettlement program.
Already, the Trump administration has set the lowest annual refugee cap, 30,000 admissions a goal, since 1980. This total is merely a numerical limit and not a goal.
The U.S., thanks exclusively to Trump’s reforms, helped lower the total number of foreign refugees to less than 23,000 admissions last year. This is a 76 percent decrease in foreign refugee resettlement from President Obama’s 2016 totals that reached almost 100,000 admissions. Specifically, Trump has cut the Syria-to-U.S. pipeline of refugees — started by Obama — by more than 60 percent thus far.
Trump’s reforms of the refugee resettlement program, as well as his travel ban that has nearly ended all immigration from eight terrorist-sponsoring countries, have been widely effective compared to the administration’s stalemate on legal immigration reforms and stopping illegal immigration.
Refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers about $1.8 billion a year and about $8.8 billion over the course of five years, research by the Federation for American Immigration Reform has revealed.
Story cited here.
