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Washington DC – President Joe Biden officially fulfilled his campaign promise last week Announce The United States will allow up to 125,000 refugees to enter the country in this fiscal year—twice the limit last year.
However, the immigration agency said that due to the continuing backlog, reduced capacity and restrictions on refugee eligibility imposed by the previous Trump administration, it is uncertain whether the United States can meet this newly raised ceiling.
“Reaching 125,000 people will be a real challenge,” said Melanie Nezer, senior vice president of public affairs at HIAS, one of the nine refugee settlement agencies in the United States.
According to data from the State Department, in fiscal 2021, only 11,411 refugees will be resettled in the U.S.—far less than 62,500 cap The Biden government was established in May.
This also marks the lowest refugee resettlement figure since the program was created in 1980. The refugee agency stated that during previous administrations, the United States had settled an average of 95,000 refugees each year.
To date, approximately 53,000 Afghans have been transferred to eight U.S. military bases across the country [Andrew Harnik/AP Photo]The Biden administration said it is working to rebuild the system, which has been severely weakened under the leadership of former President Donald Trump, and he has made reducing immigration one of his top goals. Trump set the refugee resettlement ceiling for the 2020 fiscal year at 15,000-the lowest point in history.
Officials also blamed the coronavirus pandemic, saying it restricts travel and the ability to safely interview resettlement applicants.
A State Department spokesperson told Al Jazeera in an email: “We are working quickly to rebuild the processing capacity for the next fiscal year and plan to vigorously resume interviews through a combination of face-to-face and video tours.”
“We are still restricted by COVID, but we have made adjustments and we expect that the number of arrivals will continue to reflect our efforts.”
‘Exhausted pipeline’
Experts pointed out that the Trump administration introduced additional reviews in 2017, called “extreme reviews,” which forced applicants to provide additional documents and included social media reviews, which was part of the reason for the delay in processing applications.
JC Hendrickson, Senior Director of Refugee and Asylum Policy and Advocacy of the International Rescue Committee, said: “In addition to continuously setting historical minimums, the previous government has also adopted measures such as’extreme scrutiny’ to greatly slow down the process.” IRC), another resettlement mechanism.
Hendrickson said: “When the Biden administration took office, it was faced with an exhausted pipeline-they were not refugees who passed this process at a speed that could achieve higher goals.”
According to the New York-based International Refugee Assistance Project, these measures have had a particularly serious impact on Muslim refugees, whose applications have been trapped in the security check portion of the process for months or even years. Muslim applicants have also been affected by “discretionary rejection”, which hinders their resettlement.
President Joe Biden’s government calls for US$1.7 billion for refugee resettlement in 2022, up from US$966 million last year [File: Evan Vucci/AP Photo]Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, President and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, another resettlement agency, stated that under the leadership of the Trump administration, the entire resettlement More than 100 offices in the network are closed. The organization is now working with the State Department to reopen them and re-employ dismissed employees.
“Although the refugee resettlement infrastructure inherited by the Biden administration has been destroyed, the responsibility is now borne by the new government,” said Omara Wignaraja.
The total number of refugees allowed to enter the United States each year, as well as the number of places reserved for refugees from five regions of the world, are determined by the President in consultation with Congress.
According to the 2022 allocation, 40,000 places will be allocated to people from Africa; 35,000 to the Near East and South Asia; 15,000 to Latin America and the Caribbean; 15,000 to East Asia; 10,000 to Central Asia, with 10,000 reserved for emergencies.
In a report submitted to Congress, the Biden administration stated that individuals from Central America, Afghans with links to the United States, LGBTQI+ refugees, Uighurs, Myanmar dissidents and Hong Kong activists are priorities for resettlement. According to the report, the government is requesting USD 1.7 billion for refugee resettlement in 2022, up from USD 966 million last year.
Discretionary standard
But despite the promise to resettle more refugees this year — the Biden administration’s ceiling is 15,000 people higher than the 2016 ceiling set by the Obama administration — and efforts to resettle particularly vulnerable groups, critics say the Biden administration has been Try to solve the problem. Formulate an overall consistent immigration policy.
In April, Biden signed an order to retain Trump’s 15,000 resettlement limit, stating that it is “still reasonable for humanitarian considerations, otherwise it is in the national interest”. After strong opposition from refugee advocates and some Democratic officials, he raised the limit a month later.
In September, Congress approved $6.3 billion in emergency aid to help resettle Afghans [Barbara Davidson/Pool Photo via AP]Last month, when the number of immigrants arriving at the southern U.S. border with Mexico reached the highest level in 20 years, nearly 15,000 Haitians Gathered under a bridge in southern Texas, hoping to obtain asylum. In response, the United States emptied camps and deported more than 7,000 people to Haiti, a country that was shaky by poverty, gang violence, and political instability.
Rapid deportation is caused by Heading 42, A health order in the Trump era, which mentioned the need to protect the country from the spread of the coronavirus to effectively prevent asylum at the border.Although immigration advocates have repeatedly called for the removal of the measure, which they believe is illegal and put people at risk, the Biden administration retained Article 42 and continued Expel the vast majority Those who arrived at the border.
Asylum seekers arriving at the border and refugees from abroad arrive in the United States according to different plans.But observers say that the treatment of immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border differ greatly Judging from the treatment received in August by Afghans who fled to the Taliban during the fall of Kabul, this runs counter to the overall promise of resettling more refugees in the United States.
“At the border, they try to prevent people from applying for asylum, claiming that we cannot accept them into our system due to COVID and resource constraints,” said Teresa Cardinal Brown, managing director of the Department of Immigration and Affairs. The cross-border policy of the bipartisan policy center of the Washington, DC think tank.
“However, we have taken in 50,000-60,000 Afghans who have not been tested for COVID and increased resources to bring them into the United States and process them,” Cardinal Brown told Al Jazeera. “Obviously, there is capacity somewhere in the system, but they chose to allocate it to some places rather than others.”
In the end, Cardinal Brown stated that the 125,000 refugee cap was “ideal”, and was intended to demonstrate the government’s commitment to refugees and increase resettlement funding.
Last year, the United States resettled 11,411 refugees-the lowest level since the establishment of the Refugee Resettlement Program in 1980 [File: Hussein Malla/AP Photo]‘A real opportunity’
For her part, Nezer of HIAS stated that the fact that Afghan immigrants are already waiting for processing at US military bases highlights the urgency of establishing an innovative and efficient system and may “launch” a refugee resettlement program.
Many of the 53,000 Afghans who were transferred to eight U.S. military bases arrived on emergency flights as the United States hurriedly withdrew its troops from Afghanistan. They entered the United States on “humanitarian parole,” which is the discretionary standard used by the United States in emergency situations. Another 18,000 people are currently at U.S. military bases overseas.
Approved by Congress in September $6.3 billion Emergency assistance to help resettle Afghans who are also eligible for some of the same benefits as refugees, such as housing assistance and help finding a job.
“This is a real opportunity,” Nezer said, adding that the message from leaders on what refugee resettlement is and its importance is also crucial.
“We want to see President Biden and others in the government really clarify the reasons for refugee resettlement: saving lives, building communities, and enriching our own communities by resilient and hardworking people from all over the world.”
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