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Pressure builds on Biden administration to lift refugee cap after months-long delay
In his first days in office, President Joe Biden proposed expanding the number of refugees who could be admitted to the United States after years of historic lows, but more than two months later that increase remains unsigned despite Biden’s pledge, perplexing even officials within his own administration and frustrating allies on Capitol Hill.
“It’s a mystery as to why it hasn’t been signed,” an administration official told CNN.
In February, the administration proposed raising the year’s refugee cap which dictates how many refugees can be admitted to the US to 62,500, a significant increase from former President Donald Trump’s 15,000. Shortly afterward, the relevant department secretaries, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, briefed lawmakers on the plan a necessary step in the process.
Until immigration hard-liners began running amok in the White House four years ago, the United States stood as the global leader in accepting refugees for permanent resettlement more than 3.4 million people since the end of the Vietnam War. Among President Biden’s many challenges, as he acknowledged in a speech at the State Department on Thursday, will be to not only regain that status but also to resurrect the collapsed system of nonprofit agencies that do the actual work of resettling the new arrivals. It won’t be easy.
Why bother? Because it is who we are as a nation. Refugees seek resettlement because they do not have homes to which they can return safely, often because they face persecution on account of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion or politics. As a society, we believe in personal freedom, in the right to openly discuss political views without fear of retribution, to hold and express religious beliefs (or to not believe at all), and that all people should be t
For Manga Erasto Mfaume, leaving home was the beginning of a long journey ahead.
Mfaume and his family fled the Democratic Republic of Congo more than two decades ago in search of freedom and a safe place to call home. After spending 20 years in a refugee camp in Tanzania, where even basic necessities like food and medicine were limited, they were finally on their way to the United States.
On April 20, 2018, a date he remembers vividly, Mfaume resettled in Tucson with his wife and their five children. âWe all like this place,â he said. âThis is a peaceful country.â
There are nearly 26 million refugees globally, and refugees like Mfaume and his family make up less than 1% who are resettled each year, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports.