President Joe Biden issued an executive order on Thursday to increase refugee admissions and allow the U.S. to set a goal of providing safe haven to 125,000 people around the world fleeing violence, conflict and persecution during his first full fiscal year in office.
According to a report by cbsnews.com, President Biden in the order called for an expansion of the decades-old U.S. refugee program, which was gutted by former President Trump, who frequently portrayed refugees as economic and security risks. After former President Obama set a 110,000-person ceiling before leaving office, Mr. Trump slashed it every fiscal year, allocating a historically low 15,000 spots in 2020.
During a speech at the State Department earlier Thursday, Mr. Biden said the objective is to set a 125,000-person cap for fiscal year 2022, which starts in October. Mr. Biden also said he directed the State Department to consult with Congress “about making a down payment on that commitment as soon as possible,” hinting that he may move to raise the 15,000 cap for the current fiscal year.
“It’s going to take time to rebuild what has been so badly damaged, but that’s precisely what we’re going to do,” Mr. Biden said during his remarks, noting that refugee resettlement has historically enjoyed bipartisan support.
Last week, the United Nations refugee agency reported that countries around the globe received fewer than 23,000 refugees in 2020, the lowest number in nearly two decades, in part due to travel restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic. The agency said that out of the more than 20 million refugees it is assisting in different countries, 1.44 million are in urgent need of resettlement.
The U.S. admitted less than 12,000 refugees in fiscal year 2020 and received nearly 1,000 between October and December, according to the latest State Department data.
The modern U.S. refugee program, established in 1980, is designed to offer protection to people abroad who have faced persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group, like the LGBT community.
In his order Thursday, Mr. Biden declared that his administration would prioritize the resettlement of women, children and others facing persecution because of their gender or sexual orientation. He also instructed an interagency examination of ways to help people displaced by climate change, including by resettling them in the U.S.