There are growing questions in Washington, D.C. as to why President Biden is not taking action to increase the flow of refugees into the U.S.

To be clear, this is a separate question from the current situation on the U.S.-Mexico border.

During the presidential campaign, Biden made it clear he would move to raise the cap on the number of refugees allowed into the U.S.

While he was president, Donald Trump dramatically reduced the number of refugees allowed into the U.S.

“Democrats are pushing the administration to explain why President Joe Biden has not signed paperwork raising the cap on the number of refugees allowed in the United States, which has put hundreds in limbo even as the Biden administration had promised to reverse former President Donald Trump’s policies,” CNN reported on March 24.

“There are fewer refugees being resettled to safety in the U.S. right now than there were during the last year of the Trump administration. Read that again,” wrote Mary Elizabeth Margolis, Acting Managing Director of Voice for Refuge Action Fund, in a recent opinion piece for the Hill.

She notes that Biden “quickly signaled his intent to follow through on his commitment to support refugee resettlement” and through executive action, he “rescinded the previous administration’s wrongful refugee bans and laid the foundation to strengthen refugee protections and increase refugee admissions.”

It has been almost two months since his announcement “and more than one month since the consultations, and President Biden has still not signed on the dotted line to allow more refugees to travel. Seven hundred flights have been canceled, and there is now an indefinite suspension on booking travel for refugees who are not in the restrictive categories,” Margolis wrote.

“With increasing needs for protecting asylum seekers at the border, it appears the administration is holding the resettlement program hostage as it figures out what to do next. History has clearly shown that the U.S. has the resources and the will to have both a robust resettlement program and a humane system for protecting asylum seekers and unaccompanied children. This is an excuse based only on optics, and ignores the reality that resettlement and asylum protections are complementary,” she said.

Vermont’s Republican governor is asking the State Department to at least triple the number of refugees expected to arrive in the current fiscal year, the Associated Press reported.

Gov. Phil Scott said in a letter to the State Department that Vermont is scheduled to receive 100 refugees this year and he would like to see at least three times that number next year, the story noted.

“Refugees are an integral part of our efforts to grow Vermont’s economy, which include a workforce development strategy to attract new workers and meet the demographic challenges faced by a declining population,” Scott wrote.

More than 715 refugees from around the world “who expected to start new lives in the United States have had their flights canceled in recent weeks because President Biden has postponed an overhaul of his predecessor’s sharp limits on new refugee admissions,” reports Miriam Jordan in the New York Times.

Jordan notes that in his first foreign policy speech last month, the president said he would lift the refugee ceiling to 125,000 in the 2021 fiscal year. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken notified Congress on Feb. 12 that the administration planned to allow up to 62,500 refugees to enter the country in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

“President Biden has talked the talk on refugees, but he refuses to walk the walk. Or, more specifically, sign some basic paperwork,” writes Catherine Rampell in an opinion piece published in the Washington Post.

“If the refugee-ceiling paperwork delay is about avoiding more headlines alleging Biden’s softness on persecuted peoples, well, he already got those headlines — a month ago, when he announced the new policy. The public believes Biden has already lifted the refugee ceiling; only those desperate refugees who were recently unticketed know otherwise,” Rampell points out.

In a Fox 2 News story, the work of St. Louis-based Oasis International on behalf of refugees is profiled.

The story notes that every year 500 to 1000 refugees come to St. Louis from 35 different nations with the promise of starting a new life.

“St. Louis is a city of immigrants and refugees,” said Joanie Akers, who founded Oasis International with her husband.