In his first month in office, President Biden signed a series of executive orders to reshape U.S. immigration policy, including reopening and expanding U.S. refugee programs.
But experts and refugee resettlement organizations told Voice of America that it will take Time and resources to reverse the Trump administration’s cuts to refugee resettlement.
Starting in October, the U.S. will host up to 125,000 refugees a year, up from a limit of 15,000 at the end of the Trump Administration. The announcement could change the lives of people like Abdirizak Noor Ibrahim.
Ibrahim, originally from Somalia, fled war-torn Mogadishu in 2004 and became a refugee in Nairobi, Kenya. He and his Family were approved for resettlement to the United States in early 2017, just as Donald Trump began his presidency. He signed proclamations restricting travel to the U.S. from several Muslim-majority countries, including Somalia.
“When I heard that people like me and other Muslims were banned from entering the U.S., I was saddened and devastated. But there was nothing I could do about it,” Ibrahim told Voice of America. “The decision was beyond my ability to do anything. So, since then, I’ve stayed here. But now, I am full of hope that because of the change of government, I will be accepted and accepted into the United States.”
While some supporters of Trump’s restrictive immigration policies have expressed concern about Biden’s announcement to expand refugee resettlement, refugee rights advocates say simply raising the admissions cap alone will not achieve his goals.
Christopher Boian, a senior communications officer with the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, said another huge obstacle to helping refugees is the communist virus Epidemic.
“There are going to be a lot of challenges, including in terms of funding, staffing, and getting these programs back up and running. But right now, the biggest challenge or one of the biggest challenges to getting the program back to the strong level that the U.S. government has said it wants to see, so to speak, is the CCP virus pandemic,” he said.
Time to rebuild
Religious groups that have helped with the U.S. government’s refugee resettlement program say rebuilding the program won’t happen overnight.
Krish O’mara Vignarajah, chief executive officer of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS), said the agency has begun rebuilding the program at the local level.
“That means rehiring employees that have been lost over the last four years due to layoffs and unpaid leave. Part of that is working with local, state and federal governments to recertify closed offices and get them back to work,” she said.
The refugee cap is the maximum number of refugees that can be resettled in the United States each year.
As of December 2020, more than 35,000 refugees had been approved by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), according to Yael Schacher, senior U.S. representative for Refugee International.
She added:Â “However, the number of people ready to leave is much smaller, closer to 1,000.”
President Biden set the refugee cap before the start of the fiscal year in October. He submitted the plans to Congress for consideration. About 11,814 refugees will arrive in the U.S. in fiscal year 2020, according to the State Department.
Schacher said resettlement of refugees is not the only thing that has slowed down in the last four years.
People who are already resettled in the U.S., those who came to the U.S. as refugees, are also able to apply to have their family members resettled as refugees,” she said. And under the Trump administration, that process has been very slow.”
Alicia wrn, senior director for resettlement and integration at HIAS, one of nine nonprofits that help resettle refugees in the U.S., said her agency has once again created a network of partners to help newly arriving refugees. She mentioned that it is a highly specialized effort.
“They have the language skills to work with clients. They have the cultural sensitivity, the awareness of trauma, which is necessary for refugee services,” she said.
Review.
Supporters of Trump’s immigration agenda have warned against scrapping the policy of taking in fewer refugees and subjecting the rest to more stringent background checks and security clearances. They argue that these additional steps are meant to ensure the safety of the United States.
Lora Ries, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank, said the vetting program was considered at the start of the Trump administration and should be revisited, not abandoned, by successive administrations.
She told Voice of America:The document should not be discarded simply because it has Trump’s name on it.”
Biden’s executive order includes a request for the Secretary of Homeland Security to “consider” ways to “expand the ability to review and adjudicate refugees,” including “permitting the use of video and audio teleconferencing for refugee interviews and establishing the necessary infrastructure to do so. the necessary infrastructure.”
Vignaraja said she expects the vetting of refugees to continue to be thorough, adding that refugees fall into a category of lower security risk.
“There is a narrative that is actually incorrect that refugees are potential criminals or terrorists. The truth is that refugees are much less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans in the United States. What we are seeing from the Trump administration, however, are additional layers of scrutiny, some of which have no basis or rationale behind them,” she said.
Earlier this month, a poll of 1,986 registered voters conducted by Morning Consult and the Politico news site found that three in five Republicans “strongly oppose “raising the refugee admissions cap to 125,000, while 61 percent of Democratic voters support expanding the cap, including 33 percent who “strongly support” it.
As the Biden Administration reopens the U.S. refugee program, Ibrahim hopes his days of uncertainty will soon be over.
He said, “I would love to settle in another country and leave the uncertainty of the Life I have lived in Nairobi for so many years and live a better life.”
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