The Trump administration announced Wednesday that the federal government is reducing the cap on asylum-seekers accepted into the country to 15,000, the lowest cap on record.
Late Wednesday night, the State Department, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services “submitted the President’s Report to Congress on the Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2021,” according to a State Department press release.
The report acknowledged that the United States expects to receive more than 300,000 refugee and asylum claims in fiscal 2021, which began Thursday. Of those claims, the administration said it will accept 15,000, a drop of 3,000 from fiscal 2020’s stated cap.
That cap has yet to be approached, however. After President Trump suspended admitting refugees between March and July, the Refugee Processing Center reported that United States had only accepted roughly 9,000 refugees as of Aug. 31.
Throughout both of terms, President Barack Obama gradually increased the refugee cap back to pre-9/11 levels: Between 2000 and 2001, the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. dropped from more than 60,000 to 27,000, according to the center. In 2017, in response to the Syrian refugee crisis, Obama pushed the refugee cap up to 110,000, the highest cap since 1995, according to data from Pew Research Center.
Despite that cap, the U.S. admitted fewer than 54,000 refugees after Trump issued an executive order that barred asylum-seekers entry into the U.S. from a number of countries and suspended the 2017 Refugee Acceptance Program for 120 days.
“The President’s proposal for refugee resettlement in Fiscal Year 2021 reflects the Administration’s continuing commitment to prioritize the safety and well-being of Americans, especially in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” the 2021 statement reads. “It accounts for the massive backlog in asylum cases – now more than 1.1 million individuals – by prioritizing those who are already in the country seeking humanitarian protection. It also accounts for the arrival of refugees whose resettlement in the United States was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
In December 2019, former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign announced that he would increase the refugee cap to 125,000 in addition to expanding access to work visas and creating more pathways to U.S. citizenship.
Since the Refugee Act was passed in 1980, the U.S. has admitted more than 3 million refugees, according to the State Department.
