Historically the United States has led the world in refugee admissions, resettling an estimated third-to-half of the world’s refugees since World War II. However, the Trump administration has changed that. For the first time since the adoption of the 1980 Refugee Act the United States has resettled fewer refugees than the rest of the world. Given President Trump’s discriminatory rhetoric towards members of the Islamic faith, this decrease in refugees appears to particularly disadvantage refugees from Muslim-majority countries.
Admission as a refugee is the most challenging way for someone to enter the United States. To be placed in the United States a refugee must go through a 20-step vetting process, involving screenings from the United Nations and multiple U.S. federal agencies.
The process from application to resettlement takes eighteen months at a minimum, but can stretch up to three years.
Since 1980, the refugee resettlement process has largely been controlled by the presidency. Every year in October the Executive Branch sets a cap or “ceiling” on the number of refugees admitted into the United States in the next fiscal year.
Historically, this upper limit on refugees entering the United States has averaged around 96,000, but the actual number of refugees settled in the U.S. often falls short of this cap. In response to the Syrian Civil War and the growing refugee crisis across the globe, the Obama administration increased the refugee cap from 85,000 in FY 2016 to 110,000 in FY 2017.
One of the first policy decisions made by the Trump administration was to halt refugee settlement in the United States. On January 27, 2017, President Trump signed Executive Order 13769, commonly known as the Muslim Ban, which barred entry from seven Muslim-majority nations and
imposed a 120-day ban on all refugees entering the United States. While the courts intervened to dismantle portions of the ban, in October, 2017 the administration passed new vetting policies that further slowed resettlement processes and imposed a new 90-day ban on 11 countries, including nine Muslim-Majority countries.
These federal actions resulted in a dramatic slowdown in domestic refugee resettlement. Despite the 110,000 ceiling in 2017, the United States only resettled 53,716 refugees. In 2018, the Trump administration further reduced the cap to a nearly 40-year low of 45,000, and, over the course of the year, resettled less
than half of that target (22,491). In 2019, the Trump Administration announced it would further reduce the cap to 30,000 refugees and, as of May 2019, the country is well short of reaching that limit.
These reductions in United States refugee resettlement are coming at a time when the number of refugees worldwide is growing. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR), the number of refugees globally nearly doubled between 2012 and 2017, from 10.4 million to 19.9 million over the five years. As a result the United States is further exacerbating the global refugee crisis.