In yet another stark policy difference between President Trump and Joe Biden, the Trump Administration has “slashed the number of refugees it will allow to resettle in the United States in the coming year, capping the number at 15,000, a record low in the history of the country’s modern refugee program” (Reuters, Oct. 28, 2020).

The level of 15,000 will be limited to refugees from specific categories of admissions, potentially leaving out more than 1.4 million of the world’s most vulnerable refugees still in need of resettlement, the International Refugee Committee said in an Oct. 28 news release. “This late announcement came a full month into the fiscal year, causing undue delays to thousands of vulnerable people left in harm’s way,” the IRC noted.

The administration also included a restriction on individuals from Somalia, Syria, or Yemen, requiring that individuals from these three countries “shall not be admitted as refugees” unless they meet specific humanitarian carve-outs, the IRC said.

Biden says he will restore the program to around 125,000 refugees a year should he be elected President of the United States.

President Trump’s “rollicking abuse of refugees and the answering jeers of his fans are a frank confession of moral rottenness,” writes George Packer in a new column for the Atlantic magazine. “His contempt for people who have given up everything to become Americans fully displays his fundamental unworthiness as a president and a human being,” Packer says of Trump.

Under Trump, notes Packer, the U.S. refugee program has almost collapsed. “Last year, the administration set a ceiling of just 18,000 refugees. It actually admitted 10,000. Several weeks ago, the administration announced that the ceiling for fiscal year 2021 will go down to 15,000.”

Becca Heller, the executive director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, told Packer, “I think if Trump is reelected, it’s the end of the U.S. refugee program.”

In stark contrast to Trump’s hostility to refugees, Joe Biden has pledged to raise the ceiling of refugees admitted to the U.S. to 125,000 in his first year as president.

The Trump administration earlier this week said it intends to allow only 15,000 refugees to resettle in the United States in the 2021 fiscal year, “setting another record low in the history of the modern refugee program,” Reuters reported on Oct. 1.

The refugee cap was reduced to 18,000 last year, “but only roughly half that many refugees were let in as increased vetting and the coronavirus have slowed arrivals,” the news service noted.

The Trump administration “said it would cut its already rock-bottom refugee admissions still deeper into record territory for the upcoming year, as President Trump returned to his anti-immigrant themes in the closing month of his re-election campaign,” the New York Times reported.

Trump cut the cap to 50,000 in 2017 and then to 45,000 in 2018, 30,000 in 2019 and 18,000 last year, notes Claire Hansen in U.S. News and World Report.

Refugee groups decry proposal

A number of groups that place refugees were quick to criticize the proposal.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) “reacts with deep concern to the Trump administration’s report to Congress recommending a refugee admissions goal of 15,000 for fiscal year 2021, a further reduction from the all-time low of 18,000 set in the previous year, in the face of growing global need,” the IRC said in a statement.

“It is a sad moment when our country shows such weakness when it should be leading,” said HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield said. “The administration’s decision to set a record low number of refugees at a time of record high needs — and without even consulting with Congress, as required by law — shows how far we have fallen. Not only will refugees who have fled violence and persecution suffer, but so will our country, as refugees who become new Americans have contributed so much to this country.”

Biden proposes increase in refugee admissions

Joe Biden, the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, has committed to restoring the annual cap on refugees in the U.S. to 125,000 people.

Keren Blankfeld, who covers immigration and refugee issues for the New York Times, reports on a largely untold story about World War 2 — towards the end of the war, the U.S. invited 982 refugees to a converted military base in upstate New York.

They were the only refugees taken in by the United States during World War II, Blankfeld noted.

The military base was located in Oswego, N.Y.

“As the refugees settled in, some Oswegans regarded the camp with suspicion. Rumors circulated that the group was living in luxury,” writes Blankfeld.

“Interacting with the refugees, seeing their gaunt and frightened figures upon arrival and hearing their stories through the fence, many Oswegans had their eyes opened,” the story noted.

In late 1945, President Harry Truman “issued a directive requiring that existing immigration quotas be designated for war refugees. He specifically directed that Fort Ontario’s ‘guests’ be given visas.”

Early the next year, “groups of the Oswego refugees climbed onto school buses, drove to Niagara Falls and formally registered at the Canadian border. They then returned as official American immigrants, eventually dispersing to 20 states.”

A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that immigrants act more as “job creators” than “job takers” and that non-U.S. born founders play outsized roles in U.S. high-growth entrepreneurship.

“People want to think of immigrants as coming into the economy and maybe not having very many skills and not having a positive impact on the economy,” Benjamin Jones, a professor of strategy at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University involved in the study, told Newsweek, which reported on the study.

He also said that immigrants “start lots of companies at a much higher rate [than U.S.-born counterparts], but those companies actually tend to grow quite a lot.”

It’s been one month since a fire in Denver, Colo., took the lives of Djibril Diol, Adja Diol and their almost three-year-old daughter, Khadija, which authorities said was caused by arson. Hassan Diol and her infant daughter, Hawa Beye, died in the fire as well.

Here is a photo of Djibril and Adja Diol and their daughter:

Police in Denver released these photos of three suspects clad in white masks who they believe set the fire:

There is no doubt in my mind that the perpetrators of this horrific crime targeted the family because they were refugees.

Metro Denver Crime Stoppers (https://www.metrodenvercrimestoppers.com/) is offering a reward of $14,000 for information on the fire.

Samuel Lavi, a refugee from the Congo, has come up with innovative approaches to helping refugee families cope with navigating today’s challenging educational waters due to COVID-19, reports the Associated Press.

With remote classes now underway at the K-8 school for refugee children in Phoenix, Lavi helps students connect from home with loaned iPads so they can learn English before transferring to mainstream schools, the AP noted.

Lavi “created group chats on the WhatsApp messaging app in Swahili and some of the other six languages he knows. To ensure parents who can’t read or write could participate, Lavi taught them to record and share small audio clips.”

In a report released in July, the Migration Policy Institute offers a comprehensive catalog, by topic, of changes made by the Trump administration to the U.S. immigration system since entering office in January 2017.

The report, “Dismantling and Reconstructing the U.S. Immigration System: A Catalog of Changes under the Trump Presidency,” was written by Sarah Pierce, a Policy Analyst for the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at MPI, and Jessica Bolter, an Associate Policy Analyst with the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at MPI.

The report is available here.

Local news station KCCI of Des Moines, Iowa, reports that hundreds of refugee families in eastern Iowa are homeless after a recent derecho.

“Cedar Rapids remains one of the worst-damaged Iowa cities in need of recovery. It’s a need felt especially by refugees and immigrant families,” writes KCCI’s Kayla James in a story posted online.

Local resident Nancy Mwirotsi is leading an effort to help the refugees. Mwirotsi and several others “have made continuous trips from Des Moines to Cedar Rapids. They’ve brought food, clothing and any other supplies they could get,” James reported.

To donate to Mwirotsi’s effort, click here.

If Joe Biden wins the presidency in November, he is expected to use executive powers to reverse President Trump’s changes related to immigration and refugee policy “and even end some immigration enforcement measures that have been in place for decades,” reports Michelle Hackman in a recent Wall Street Journal article.

“Many of Mr. Biden’s policy plans would require legislation to enact—but immigration is an issue where the former vice president would have the ability to enact much of Democrats’ desired agenda through regulatory changes and other executive actions,” Hackman notes in the story.

Biden has “also said he would pursue a bill providing a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants in the country who lack permanent legal status, a task made easier if Democrats take back control of the Senate.”

Also, Biden would restore the annual cap on refugees to 125,000 people “from a record-low 18,000, and end a program that sends asylum seekers back across the border to Mexico to await their immigration hearings.”