Advocates for refugees cheered Monday’s move. But they noted that the Biden administration will not be able to actually resettle that many refugees during the next fiscal year without hiring more employees in the government agencies that do the work to process them.
During Mr. Trump’s presidency, the government agencies and nonprofit organizations which manage refugee resettlement were dramatically shrunk because of the low cap that the former president placed on the program. As a result, under Mr. Biden, only about 7,500 official refugees have been resettled in the United States even though the cap would allow 62,500.
“Understandably, four years of the Trump administration’s assault on the refugee program coupled with pandemic challenges have hamstrung federal rebuilding efforts,” said Krish Vignarajah, President of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which works with the government to resettle refugees. “But raising the cap without dedicating significant resources, personnel, and policies to streamline the process would be largely symbolic.”
Tens of thousands of Afghans who were flown out of Kabul last month have already arrived in the United States, and many will likely be resettled in communities across the country.
But most have been granted the ability to live and work in the United States temporarily under a humanitarian program that does not consider them to be official refugees. Some may eventually apply for asylum to stay in the United States permanently, and the Biden administration is asking Congress to pass a special law to put all of them on a special path to citizenship.
Many of the Haitians who have crossed the Rio Grande River over the last several days in Texas are also not officially considered refugees. The administration has said they have already begun to quickly process them as illegal border crossers and fly them back to Haiti.