The Biden administration is on track to admit fewer refugees this year than the Trump administration did in 2019, prompting complaints from Democratic politicians and immigrant advocacy groups ahead of the midterm elections.
Last October, President Joe Biden announced that the annual refugee cap would rise to 125,000. With just four weeks until the end of the 2022 fiscal year, the resettlement support centers project that a grand total of 25,000 refugees will arrive in the United States this year, putting the president 100,000 short.
While former President Donald Trump’s refugee admissions were historically low, his administration admitted 29,916 refugees in 2019, more than Biden will admit this year, according to Department of Homeland Security data.
The Biden administration admitted just 11,411 refugees in 2021, far below the revised cap of 62,500 that it upped from the 15,000 that Trump set before leaving office. Trump’s 2018 admissions were 22,405 and 11,840 in 2020, both higher than Biden’s first year in office.
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Unhappy with how the Democratic president has handled the matter, Senate Democrats in late August called Biden out in a letter and implored him to take immediate action and follow through on his campaign promise.
“Through your leadership of this interagency effort, we urge you to rapidly adjudicate refugee cases, in particular family reunification cases; to prioritize the implementation of reforms … and to collaborate substantively with Congress and with the refugee resettlement agencies to increase the pace of this work,” the 11 lawmakers wrote in an Aug. 26 letter.
Biden has faced a number of hurdles in building staff back up at federal agencies that administer the refugee program following Trump’s cuts, Democrats admitted. The coronavirus pandemic prompted U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide to shut down for long periods, barring refugee applicants from undergoing in-person interviews. The airlift of tens of thousands of Afghans in August and September 2021 also placed a burden on the vetting system.
Additionally, Congress gave Biden permission to shift the number of refugees allowed from each continent to other continents if it was unable to fill each regional cap. The government, based on its letting 100,000 refugee slots go unused rather than shift to places where they might have been in demand, did not do so.
Although Biden will not come close to the 125,000 cap, his administration has presided over the most intense illegal migration crisis in national history. The high level of illegal migration has resulted in unprecedented levels of migrants being let into the U.S.
“In effect, the Biden administration has replaced the refugee program, run in close collaboration with the United Nations and state organizations, with our chaotic and dysfunctional asylum system that rewards anyone who makes it to the U.S. border and claims fear of return or arrives with a child, or is a child — regardless of whether they actually face persecution, oppression, or any displacement at all,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the conservative Center for Immigration Studies think tank in Washington. “It’s a free-for-all that is not necessarily benefiting those in the world who most need safe haven.”
Whereas refugees are people outside the U.S. who have been identified by the U.S. government and United Nations as having a valid need for admission prior to their coming to the U.S., asylum-seekers are migrants who seek refuge at the U.S. border. Asylum-seekers may be admitted and later required to show proof that they fled persecution or the threat of persecution, according to Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
It also means that the 86,000 Afghans whom the U.S. and allied nations airlifted out of the country last summer did not count toward the refugee cap because they were not precleared before arriving. Instead, they were granted humanitarian parole, a category reserved for migrants seeking admission that allows them to remain in the country for up to two years.
“With that said, both populations are fleeing persecution and typically wait for years before ultimately receiving legal relief,” O’Mara Vignarajah wrote in an email. “Unlike those who have been admitted through the refugee program, they still have pending immigration cases to determine whether they are eligible to remain in the U.S. They also do not receive formal resettlement assistance that is offered through the refugee program.”
The government prefers that asylum-seekers present themselves at the land ports of entry, but those who do enter illegally between the ports may still seek asylum.
Border Patrol agents are on track to break the 2 million mark for southern border arrests this fiscal year, which would shatter Biden’s record from 2021 of 1.66 million apprehensions. Roughly half of the migrants were expelled under a pandemic public health policy, and more than 1 million were either released into the U.S. or removed from the country, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. The large majority of migrants were released. Claiming asylum is not a prerequisite for release.
Unlike the refugee admission system, the asylum process does not have a cap on how many people may be admitted per year, though it did at one time. Given how many migrants have been released into the country, Vaughan does not think they should count as part of the refugee cap number.
“Instead, most should be sent back to their home countries because they will not qualify for admission in any category,” Vaughan said.
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“The United States actually can help more displaced people, 12 times more refugees and asylum-seekers, by helping fund humanitarian relief programs that are coordinated with international partners that give safe haven to displaced people near where they are,” Vaughan added. “We can help 12 Syrians who are living in fairly sophisticated resettlement camps in Turkey or Jordan for the same money as bringing one Syrian here. International humanitarian relief programs not only help more people, but they make it more likely that the refugees will eventually be able to return home.”
