President initially retained historically low 15,000-person limit set by Trump administration
Facing mounting criticism from Democratic allies, the White House said President Joe Biden plans to lift his predecessor's historically low cap on refugees by next month, after initially saying that he would leave the cap in place.
The White House issued a statement Friday saying Biden would set a "final, increased refugee cap" by May 15 for the remainder of the fiscal year.
Earlier Friday, Biden signed an executive order keeping the admission of refugees capped at 15,000 for fiscal 2021, a number set by the Trump administration. Biden said in the order that the number "remains justified by humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest."
However, Biden also said in his order that if the cap was reached before the end of the fiscal year, then a presidential determination might be issued to raise the ceiling.
The order led to criticism from prominent Democrats, including Senator Dick Durbin, the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, who called the refugee limit "unacceptable."
"Facing the greatest refugee crisis in our time there is no reason to limit the number to 15,000. Say it ain't so, President Joe," Durbin said in a statement.
Following the criticism, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden’s original announcement had been "the subject of some confusion" and said the president was expected to increase the refugee cap by May 15. However, she did not say what the new limit would be.
Under the order Biden signed, the administration modified the allocation of refugee slots.
The order allocated 7,000 slots for refugees from Africa, 3,000 from Latin America, 1,500 from Europe and Central Asia, 1,500 from the Near East and South Asia, and 1,000 from East Asia. The remaining 1,000 slots are to be used as required.
According to the most recent data, as of April 2021, the U.S. has resettled just over 2,000 refugees since the current fiscal year began on October 1.
The 2021 ceiling is dramatically lower than in 2016, when it stood at 85,000.
Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said before Biden's late statement Friday that her organization was grateful for the president's move to revise refugee policy but was "deeply" disappointed that the administration left in place the record-low admissions cap of its predecessor.
"While it is true the Trump administration left the resettlement infrastructure in tatters, we feel confident and able to serve far more families than this order accounts for," Vignarajah said in a statement.
Biden sent a plan to Congress, as required by law, two months ago to raise the refugee ceiling to 62,500. The president also wanted to get rid of restrictions enforced by former President Donald Trump that have excluded a high number of refugees, including those fleeing war. Though the presidential action does not require congressional approval, presidents in the past announced a refugee cap shortly after the notification to Congress.
The Biden administration has been heavily criticized for not doing the same.
Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, an international Jewish humanitarian organization that provides services to refugees and asylum-seekers in 16 countries, said in a statement that Biden had broken his "repeated promises to significantly raise this year's refugee admissions cap."
"The global need for resettlement has never been greater," Hetfield said.
Psaki said Friday that Biden did not act right away because "it took us some time to see and evaluate how ineffective, or how trashed in some ways, the refugee processing system had become, and so we had to rebuild some of those muscles and put it back in place."
Officials had also cited the COVID-19 pandemic as one of the reasons to keep the cap at 15,000, but they added that with vaccination and testing expansions, it would be easier to process new refugee admissions.
Psaki said another concern was the record number of unaccompanied migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, which she said had consumed many of the resources that would go into resettling refugees in the U.S.
"It is a factor," Psaki said, adding that the Office of Refugee Resettlement "does management and has personnel working on both issues and so we have to ensure that there is capacity and ability to manage both."
U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote a letter to Biden, urging him to follow through on his campaign promise and raise the refugee ceiling.
"Failing to issue a new determination undermines your declared purpose to reverse your predecessor's refugee policies and to rebuild the Refugee Admissions Program to a target of 125,000 people in FY22, and threatens U.S. leadership on forced migration," he wrote.
