In Another Reversal, Biden Raises Limit on Number
of Refugees Allowed Into the U.S.
The action comes about two weeks after President Biden
announced that he was leaving the Trump administration’s limit of 15,000
refugees in place, prompting a swift backlash.
President Biden acknowledged on Monday that the
government was unlikely to resettle 62,500 refugees because of budget and
staffing cuts that agencies suffered during the Trump administration.
Michael D.
Shear Zolan Kanno-Youngs
By Michael
D. Shear and Zolan Kanno-Youngs
May 3, 2021
WASHINGTON
— President Biden on Monday reversed himself and said he would allow as many as
62,500 refugees to enter the United States during the next six months,
eliminating the sharp limits that President Donald J. Trump imposed on those
seeking refuge from war, violence or natural disasters.
The action
comes about two weeks after Mr. Biden announced that he was leaving Mr. Trump’s
limit of 15,000 refugees in place, which drew widespread condemnation from
Democrats and refugee advocates who accused the president of reneging on a
campaign promise to welcome those in need.
Mr. Biden
quickly backtracked, promising only hours later that he intended to increase
refugee admissions. With Monday’s announcement, the president formally bowed to
the pressure.
“This
erases the historically low number set by the previous administration of 15,000,
which did not reflect America’s values as a nation that welcomes and supports
refugees,” Mr. Biden said in a statement issued by the White House.
His sharp
reversal underscored the difficulty he has had on issues involving immigration
since taking office. Mr. Biden has struggled to unwind what he calls Mr.
Trump’s “racist” immigration policies while also managing a surge of migrant
children at the southwestern border. His initial hesitation to allow tens of
thousands of additional refugees into the country was a recognition that he was
already being criticized for failing to stem the flow of illegal immigration
from Central America.
Over the
past four years, efforts by Mr. Trump to limit the entry of refugees were among
the most potent symbols of the United States’ decision to turn away from its
decades-long role as the leading destination for displaced people around the
globe.
During the
2020 presidential campaign, Mr. Biden promised to restore the country’s
reputation for welcoming those seeking safety, saying he would allow as many as
125,000 refugees to enter in his first full year in office. He took a step
toward that goal in February, promising to allow as many as 62,500 refugees
into the United States for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
So an
announcement on April 16 that he was keeping the Trump-era limits in place for
the time being was all the more baffling for those expecting a significant
increase.
White House
officials have insisted that Mr. Biden’s intentions in mid-April were misunderstood.
The president says he always intended to raise the refugee cap “should the
pre-existing level be reached and the emergency refugee situation persist.” The
Biden administration has resettled roughly 2,360 refugees out of the initial
mandate of 15,000, according to Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a
resettlement agency.
Administration
officials also argued that increasing refugee admissions could overwhelm the
Department of Health and Human Services’s office that is also responding to
thousands of young asylum seekers crossing the border.
That logic,
which was also adopted by the Trump administration to sharply cut refugee
numbers, drew criticism from refugee advocates who accused Mr. Biden of
conflating two different immigration systems.
While the
Department of Health and Human Services does provide shelter to minors who
cross the border, it plays a smaller role in processing refugees compared with
the Departments of State and Homeland Security. The Department of Health and
Human Services does eventually provide financial assistance to refugees after
they arrive in the United States.
In his
statement on Monday, Mr. Biden appeared to acknowledge that he had fumbled his
handling of the issue by sending the wrong signal to the world.
“The United
States Refugee Admissions Program embodies America’s commitment to protect the
most vulnerable, and to stand as a beacon of liberty and refuge to the world,”
he said. “It’s a statement about who we are, and who we want to be.”
Still, Mr.
Biden acknowledged that the government was unlikely to reach the limit of 62,500
refugees, blaming budget and staffing cuts during the Trump administration. But
he said the decision to raise the limit was necessary “to remove any lingering
doubt in the minds of refugees around the world” that the United States would
help them.
“The sad
truth is that we will not achieve 62,500 admissions this year,” the president
said. “We are working quickly to undo the damage of the last four years. It
will take some time, but that work is already underway.”
It is
unclear whether the White House has done anything to address the resource
concerns that officials raised last month about the Department of Health and
Human Services. The White House declined to comment on the issue on Monday.
In his
order on Monday, Mr. Biden seemed to indicate that he had recently learned that
the agencies had adequate resources to raise the ceiling “upon additional
briefing” about the capacity for refugee resettlement.
“We clearly
lost 10 weeks of momentum here due to a political miscalculation, but we are
elated the White House has put the train back on the tracks,” said Mark J.
Hetfield, the chief executive of HIAS, a resettlement agency.
Senator Tom
Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, who made clear that Republicans intended to seize
on Mr. Biden’s immigration agenda to galvanize the party’s base ahead of the
midterm elections next year, criticized Mr. Biden on Twitter.
“Increasing
the refugee admissions cap will put American jobs and safety at risk,” Mr.
Cotton tweeted, despite multiple studies showing that immigrants work jobs that
employers historically struggle to fill. “The Biden administration should be
focused on getting Americans back to work.”
But the
president’s statement drew praise from some of the very people who had criticized
his earlier decision on refugees.
David
Miliband, the president of the International Rescue Committee, had called Mr.
Biden’s plan to keep the 15,000-refugee limit a “disturbing and unjustified
retreat” from his campaign promises. On Monday, Mr. Miliband praised Mr.
Biden’s “long legacy of support for refugees, from being a co-sponsor of the
Refugee Act of 1980 when he was a member of the Senate, to his commitment to
rebuild the resettlement program upon taking office in January.”
Oxfam
America, a nonprofit organization, said in a statement: “We are relieved that
the Biden administration has, after a long and unnecessary delay, kept its
promise to raise the refugee admissions cap for this year to 62,500.”
The
back-and-forth about the refugee program is the latest turn in the president’s
struggle to deal with the immigration system.
On his
first day in office, Mr. Biden proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the
nation’s immigration laws and issued a number of executive orders aimed at
rolling back Mr. Trump’s policies. But after about 100 days, immigration
legislation still has not advanced in Congress. And for weeks, Mr. Biden
delayed raising refugee admissions, despite a plea from his own secretary of
state, Antony J. Blinken, to make good on his commitment.
The
administration has also had to defend its response to a surge of migrants at
the border with Mexico, even as Mr. Biden has continued to rely on a Trump-era
health rule to rapidly turn away many migrants from entering the United States
without providing them a chance to apply for asylum. The administration has
said the rule is necessary to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
The
president’s Republican critics have seized on the issue as a political weapon,
accusing Mr. Biden of making poor policy choices that opened the floodgates to
illegal immigration during a pandemic.
The
administration, however, has made progress in safely processing migrant
children and teenagers out of border detention facilities and into temporary
shelters. While more than 5,000 minors were stuck in facilities run by the
Border Patrol in March, on Monday, the administration recorded roughly 600
minors in such jail-like facilities.
White House
officials have urged migrants not to come to the United States now, but have
promised that Mr. Biden will work to increase legal opportunities to live, work
and visit the United States. Eleanor Acer, the director of refugee protection
at Human Rights First, said the president must continue to do that.
“Upholding
values — rather than continuing Trump administration policies that block
refugees from the country — is the right step forward,” she said.
Miriam
Jordan contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
Michael D.
Shear is a White House correspondent. He previously worked at The Washington
Post and was a member of their Pulitzer Prize-winning team that covered the
Virginia Tech shootings in 2007. @shearm
Zolan
Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent covering a range of domestic and
international issues in the Biden White House, including homeland security and
extremism. He joined The Times in 2019 as the homeland security correspondent. @KannoYoungs
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