President Biden to lift Refugee Cap by 15th May 2021

Listen to this article

The White House has confirmed that President Joe Biden has planned to lift his predecessor’s historically low cap on refugees next month. On Friday, Biden signed an emergency determination. It stated the admission of more than 15 thousand refugees set by former President Donald Trump this year remains justified by humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest. But, a presidential determination may be issued to raise the ceiling if the cap is reached before the end of the current budget year and the emergency refugee situation persists. The White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that President Biden is expected to increase the refugee Cap by 15^th May. She said, “Biden has been consulting with his advisers to determine what number of refugees could realistically be admitted to the United States between now and 1^st October, the end of the fiscal year”.

Psaki added, “Given the decimated refugee admissions program we inherited. It is now unlikely Biden will be able to boost that number to 62,500, as he had proposed in his plan to Congress 2 months ago. But, Biden was urged by advisers to take immediate action to reverse the Trump policy that banned refugees from many key regions, to enable flights from those regions to begin within days; today’s order did that”. Point to be noted that the new allocations provide more slots for refugees from Africa, the Middle East, and Central America. It would lift Trump’s restrictions on resettlements from Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Critics from both political parties had alleged the president of bowing to political pressure that has been mounting over the record pace of unaccompanied migrants crossing the US-Mexico border.

A key architect of Trump’s immigration policies, Stephen Miller tweeted that keeping Trump’s cap reflects Team Biden’s awareness that the border flood will cause record midterm losses. It is noteworthy that the White House indicated the border situation was partly why Biden had not acted before now, even though migrants at the border do not go through the same vetting process as refugees. Senator Richard Blumenthal said, “This cruel policy is no more acceptable now than it was during the Trump Administration. To be clear: the asylum process at the southern border and the refugee process are completely separate immigration systems. Conflating the two constitutes caving to the politics of fear”. Refugee resettlement agencies said that admissions go higher even if it’s not possible to meet the target to send a message that America will be a leader again in offering safe haven to the world.