President Joe Biden announced today that he intends to significantly increase the annual cap on refugee admissions to the United States. Under former President Trump, the U.S. allowed a record low number of refugees to enter the country each year.
In keeping with his campaign promise, Joe Biden said he intends to set a ceiling of 125,000 refugee admissions as part of the U.S. refugee resettlement program, as opposed to the current 15,000 per year.
He said the United States’ former “moral leadership on refugee issues” has encouraged other countries to open their doors as well, and that “we have provided sanctuary for those fleeing violence or persecution,” so today I am approving an executive order to begin the difficult work of restoring our refugee admissions program to help meet unprecedented global needs.
The executive order “will increase refugee admissions to 125,000 in the first full fiscal year of the Biden/Kamala Harris administration,” Biden said. The U.S. fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 each year.
He said he would task the State Department and the federal House of Representatives with negotiating the “first phase of funding” needed to raise the refugee admissions ceiling as soon as possible. The newly inaugurated U.S. president made his first foreign policy address at the State Department today.
The United Nations estimates that there are 25.9 million refugees worldwide, most of them in developing countries.
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