President-elect Joe Biden recommitted during an address to a Catholic group that helps resettle refugees and displaced people that he’ll raise admissions to the U.S. from a historic low of 15,000 set by the Trump administration to 125,000 under his new administration. As Religion News Service (RNS) reports, Biden has previously made this commitment. “But it is the first time he has confirmed that number as president-elect.”
“The United States has long stood as a beacon of hope for the downtrodden and the oppressed, a leader of resettling refugees in our humanitarian response,” RNS reports Biden said in the recorded address to the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) agency. “I promise, as president, I will reclaim that proud legacy for our country.”
Biden first announced his intention to raise refugee admissions in his immigration plan and then reaffirmed that on World Refugee Day this past June, saying that “Donald Trump has made clear that he does not believe our country should be a place of refuge.” The outgoing administration has not only taken a sledgehammer to the nation’s refugee resettlement system, it’s tauntingly violated the law over and over again doing it.
In his remarks to JRS, Biden vowed to go a drastically different direction. “The Biden-Harris administration will restore America’s historic role in protecting the vulnerable and defending the rights of refugees everywhere,” he continued in his remarks according to RNS, “and raising our annual refugee admission target to 125,000.”
Biden further noted the role both refugees and immigrants have played in America’s novel coronavirus response, saying that “[a]s we speak, refugees and immigrants are working on the frontiers of this devastating pandemic as doctors, nurses, researchers, farmworkers,” America Magazine reported. “We’re a safer, stronger, better country because of their contributions. Together we must all work toward a more resilient inclusive and hopeful future for our world.”
The president-elect further praised the work of resettlement agencies like JRS, saying “[t]his organization was founded to serve the needs of some of the most vulnerable among us: refugees and displaced people,” RNS continued. “JRS believes that, in the stranger, we actually meet our neighbor. And that every society is ultimately judged by how we treat those most in need.”
This is a far cry from the treatment of these agencies under this current administration. As Daily Kos has noted before, Trump’s slashes have not only hurt refugees and displaced people around the world, but also hurt the agencies tasked with assisting resettle them here.
“Once an exemplary model as a welcoming nation to refugees, the U.S. refugee resettlement system has been decimated by the Trump administration since it took office in 2017,” the Center for American Progress (CAP) said in a new report. “Low admission levels translate to reduced funding available for the operation of the program, starting a domino effect on the entire system—from decimating the local infrastructure, which supports newly arrived refugees, to affecting those overseas who are waiting to be resettled—and making it harder to simply restart once the numbers rise again.”=
”These changes could not have come at a worse possible time,” CAP continued. “According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are currently 79.5 million people who have been forced to flee their homes globally, with more than 26 million identified as refugees.”