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Trump To Drop Refugee Cap To Lowest In Years
Trump and Republicans have taken direct action to deport as many undocuments U.S. residents as possible, prevent Muslims from entering the country, and ran an entire campaign based on building a wall on our border. Add this to the list of despicable actions -- lowering the amount of refugees admitted to the United States, leaving hundreds of thousands in imminent danger around the globe. America Last.
The Trump administration plans to cap the number of refugees the U.S. will accept next year at 45,000. That is a dramatic drop from the level set by the Obama administration [110,000] and would be the lowest number in years. The number of refugees the U.S. admits has fluctuated over time. But this cap is the lowest that any White House has sought since the president began setting the ceiling on refugee admissions in 1980.
Beyond this 2018 cap,Trump and the GOP put the entire refugee resettlement program on hold under its travel ban executive orders meaning that President Obama's prior cap of 110,000 led to only about half that number being admitted in 2017.
“The United States has historically led the world in terms of refugee resettlement,” according to the Migration Policy Institute. Mass displacement of individuals hit record numbers in 2015 in what the institute calls a "global humanitarian crisis.”
If you read or watch one more thing on this topic PLEASE make it this, from Fareed Zakaria's CNN program in late-2015:
Besides the unbelievable and undeniable humanitarian reasons to settle as many refugees as possible, the argument by Republicans citing costs is proven to be false. Based on extensive research cited in the NPR article below, while refugees are a net expense to the U.S. for several years, they pay off significantly thereafter for our society.
It costs "something like $180,000" to resettle each refugee, estimates William Evans, chair of the economics department at the University of Notre Dame. He says that estimate includes direct and indirect costs like social services. For the first nine years they're in the country, Evans said, refugees tend to be net takers. They cost the government more in social services than they pay in taxes. But then, something changes. "After that ninth year," Evans said, "they're actually paying more to the government than they're taking out." Over 20 years, Evans and his colleague found that refugees pay about $20,000 more in taxes than they use in social services.
That fits with what researchers at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found. They prepared an internal report this summer that showed refugees brought in $63 billion more in revenue than they cost between 2005 and 2014. The White House never released that report, which was leaked to The New York Times.
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