Joe Biden, the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, on World Refugee Day (June 20) said that as President he would increase the number of refugees the U.S. welcomes into the country, setting an annual global refugee target of 125,000 — up from a ceiling of 18,000 under President Trump — “and will seek to further raise it over time commensurate with our responsibility, our values, and the unprecedented global need.”

Biden outlined his plans in a statement posted on Medium.

Biden said that he will support efforts to work with Congress in a bipartisan fashion “to protect our refugee policy from drastic and arbitrary reductions we have seen during the Trump Administration and establish a minimum admissions number of at least 95,000 refugees annually.”

He will also pursue policies that increase opportunities for faith and local communities to sponsor refugee resettlement. “I will make more channels, such as higher education visas, available to those seeking safety. I will repeal the Muslim ban — and other discriminatory bans based on ethnicity and nationality — and restore asylum laws, including ending the horrific practice of separating families at our border,” he wrote.

Jill Biden pens Op-Ed on refugees

Meanwhile, Jill Biden noted in a June 22 Op-Ed that as Second Lady, and in her work after as well, she has traveled to refugee camps around the world.

“From Kenya to Jordan to Greece to Ethiopia to the Matamoros Tent Camp on the U.S. border, I have seen the truth of Warsan Shire’s poetry, that ‘no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark,'” Biden wrote.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration may not immediately proceed with its plan to end a program protecting about 700,000 young immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation, “dealing a surprising setback to one of President Trump’s central campaign promises,” the New York Times reported.

The ruling delivered “a hard-won victory to hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who have been living in limbo since President Donald Trump tried to dismantle the program, wrote Nicole Narea in a story for Vox.

The decision marked “the second stunning election-season rebuke from the court in a week after its ruling that it’s illegal to fire people because they’re gay or transgender,” wrote Mark Sherman for the Associated Press.

“The 5-4 outcome, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and the four liberal justices were in the majority, seems certain to elevate the issue in Trump’s campaign, given the anti-immigrant rhetoric of his first presidential run in 2016 and immigration restrictions his administration has imposed since then,” Sherman reported.

Trump considers another attempt to cancel program

The Trump administration “signaled that it was considering another attempt to cancel an Obama-era program that provided legal protections and work permits to unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, a day after a loss at the Supreme Court injected the issue into an already contentious election cycle,” The Wall Street Journal reported on June 19.

One per cent of the world’s population has been forced to flee their homes due to war, conflict and persecution to seek safety either somewhere within their country or in another country, according to the latest Global Trends report released June 18 by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

At the end of 2019, there were 79.5 million people around the world who had been forcibly displaced, according to the yearly report, up from 70.8 million the year before. The rise was in part due to worrying new displacement in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Sahel region of Africa, Yemen and Syria. It also reflected the inclusion for the first time of 3.6 million Venezuelans who have been displaced outside their country but who have not sought asylum.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left in place a lower court opinion upholding one of California’s sanctuary laws “that limits cooperation between law enforcement and federal immigration authorities, a measure that the Trump administration says is meant to “undermine” federal immigration enforcement,” CNN reported.

The California law “prohibits state officials from telling federal ones when undocumented immigrants are to be released from state custody and restricts transfers of immigrants in state custody to federal immigration authorities,” wrote Adam Liptak in the New York Times.

The Trump Administration sued California in 2018 in federal court, “accusing the state of unlawfully obstructing enforcement of federal immigration law and saying the measures violate the U.S. Constitution’s provision that federal laws take precedence over state laws,” noted Ted Hesson of Reuters.

“The case, which would have been heard next fall or winter, raised the broad issue of whether state and local governments can effectively provide sanctuary to undocumented immigrants threatened with arrest or deportation,” wrote USA Today’s Richard Wolf.

June 20 marks World Refugee Day.

As the Trump Administration continues its draconian efforts to shut America’s doors to refugees, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is hosting virtual World Refugee Day events. Click here for more details (link).

The United Nations General Assembly launched World Refugee Day in 2000.

The Trump administration “continues to advance its policies to restrict legal immigration, halting the flow of foreign workers and raising the bar for asylum seekers hoping for sanctuary,” report Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Maggie Haberman in the New York Times.

They report that administration officials last week “proposed a fallback for when they need to lift “emergency” border closure rules for the coronavirus, proposing regulations that would raise the standard of proof for migrants hoping to obtain asylum and allow immigration judges to deny applications for protection without giving migrants an opportunity to testify in court.”

The proposal would make it harder for immigrants to claim asylum in the U.S., even after the COVID-19 pandemic, writes Julia Ainsley for NBC News.

“If enacted after a public comment period, the rule would allow immigration judges to throw out asylum cases before holding a hearing,” she reported.

Critics say the proposed changes “are so severe that they would effectively shut down the asylum system in this country,” NPR reported.

The draft regulations are available here.

In a recent article for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Robert Patrick details how refugees are adjusting to life in the city during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Patrick focuses on the International Institute of St. Louis, which works with refugees in St. Louis.

“The institute, which has helped tens of thousands of immigrants resettle in the area over the last 100 years, closed its offices March 16 to visitors and switched to providing services remotely whenever possible,” Patrick reported.

“But the staff still had to pick up people at the airport and stock apartments with furniture and culturally appropriate food.”

It has been a challenge to tell new refugee arrivals to self-isolate and difficult emotionally for them not to explore and to delay “that feeling of home,” according to the institute’s senior vice president for programs, Blake Hamilton.

The COVID-19 pandemic “has created new turmoil for refugees who have escaped war and persecution to resettle in the Chicago region,” writes Katlyn Smith in the Chicago Daily Herald.

Many refugees in Chicago are on the front lines of the pandemic, working as certified nursing assistants or helping manufacture medical supplies, Susan Sperry, regional director for World Relief in the Chicago area, told the Chicago Tribune.

“Jims Porter, spokesman for RefugeeOne, a refugee resettlement agency in Chicago, said the organization’s main concern has been collecting emergency funds for those losing their income. RefugeeOne staff members have been working to help refugees file for unemployment, he said, and have been checking in with each family once a week,” write Elvia Malagon and Nausheen Husain.

Refugee women make masks

Chicago’s WGN recently reported dozens of refugee women in Chicago “have been turning scraps of fabric into masks and gifting them to others, but with a common thread.”

All of the women making masks aregraduates of the RefugeeOne service in Chicago.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, “border closures, suspended asylum programs, interruptions in global transportation and stay-at-home lockdowns have drastically curbed migration around the world, particularly from poorer nations to rich ones,” reports Kirk Semple in the New York Times.

“The pandemic has essentially — not absolutely, but essentially — stopped international migration and mobility dead in its tracks,” said Demetrios G. Papademetriou, co-founder and president emeritus of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, said in the article.

Indeed, in some places, “migratory flows have seemingly made a U-turn, as migrants no longer able to earn a living abroad have decided to return home, even if their home countries are mired in political conflict and economic ruin,” Semple writes.

In a May 1 Op-Ed published in the Houston Chronicle, a group of faith leaders suggest that stimulus check recipients “consider donating their stimulus to an especially needy group — our refugee neighbors.”

As faith leaders, “we have been approached by some of our congregants who are fortunate not to need the stimulus payment. They are comfortably employed or retired. They have ample savings. They see the stimulus payment as a tax policy whose benefit they would prefer to share with those truly in need,” wrote Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle, Rabbi Oren J. Hayon, Sheikh Joe Bradford and Venerable Hung-I.

“We would like to propose that those in this situation consider donating their stimulus to an especially needy group — our refugee neighbors,” the faith leaders wrote.