Joe Biden recently announced that he would keep the U.S.'s cap on refugee admissions at 125,000 for the 2023 fiscal year budget. This decision provoked outcries from mass-migration advocates who demanded that the President raise the cap even higher, dubiously arguing that the U.S. fell short on resettlement promises this fiscal year.
For context, the refugee admissions cap was set to at 15,000 in President Trump's last year in office. Upon his inauguration, Biden immediately quadrupled the cap. However, mass-migration advocates who wish to abuse America's refugee resettlement program dubiously claim that America has admitted few fewer than the set cap. NBC News reports:
The 125,000 target "is justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest," Biden stated in his presidential determination. Historically, the average has been 95,000 under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
While their claim is partially valid, as the nation has resettled fewer than 20,000 legally defined refugees in fiscal year 2022, advocates leave out the fact that approximately 100,000 Afghan evacuees, 80,000 Ukraine evacuees, 920,000 illegal border-crossers, and 319,000 TPS holders have been paroled, released, or allowed to stay in the U.S. in fiscal year 2022.
Most of the aforementioned migrants paroled and released into the U.S. are done so on a "temporary basis," however, legally defined refugees are given an automatic pathway to legal permanent residence. Additionally, resettlement agencies' and NGOs' federal funding is determined by the number of people they resettle in a given year.
Breaking it down, Biden earmarked 5,000 more refugee slots for people from Europe and Central Asia to accommodate those fleeing the war in Ukraine; additionally, 40,000 were set aside for refugees from Africa, 35,000 from South Asia, and 15,000 each from East Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
The head of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, said "the Biden administration must act now to improve the refugee program with the United Nations reporting a record 100 million people being displaced from their homes," reports NBC. She added in a statement:
[The Administration] must ramp up and streamline overseas processing of refugee applications if this lifesaving program is to remain relevant amid an unprecedented global displacement crisis.
It remains unclear just how many of the 100,000,000 potential refugees, a group equivalent to nearly one-third of the current U.S. population, Ms. O'Mara Vignarajah hopes to resettle in the U.S.
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