Memo to President Biden: Don’t go wobbly on refugee resettlement

The challenge for the Biden administration is seeking comprehensive immigration reform that addresses border security, while at the same time increasing the legal pathways and support networks for refugees, asylum-seekers and economic migrants to be welco

It’s a lot easier to make campaign promises than it is to fulfill them once you’re in the White House. President Joe Biden found that out the hard way recently when, amid a surge of migrants from Central America, he appeared to waver in regard to his commitment to quadruple the number of refugees resettled in the U.S. in fiscal year 2021 and instead maintain Donald Trump’s historically low refugee cap of 15,000.

That apparent decision, laid out in Biden’s April 16 Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions, resulted in an immediate backlash from humanrights groups, refugee resettlement agencies and scores of lawmakers. Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, for example, chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, labeled it “unacceptable,” especially when “facing the greatest refugee crisis in our time.”

Statements like that led the administration to walk back its initial April 16 memorandum and announce that it would arrive at a final, increased refugee cap by May 15. When asked if the new cap would be near the 62,500 refugees Biden had promised earlier, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that was “unlikely,” even as she continued to claim there was no connection between the crisis at the border and the administration’s lower refugee cap.

Psaki was left in the unenviable position of denying the obvious. On Feb. 12, the administration delivered a report to Congress stating that, “new political violence, humanitarian crises and growing threats to refugees in countries of asylum all support a need to increase the refugee admissions number for FY 2021.” Yet just two months later, the April 16 memorandum said, “The admission of up to 15,000 refugees remains justified by humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest,” until and unless a subsequent determination is made.

Many have pounced on Biden’s refugee waffling as proof that it’s not wise — politically or practically — to welcome more refugees into the country at a time when a large number of undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers are attempting to cross our southern border.

We respectfully disagree. Biden’s mistake was not his promise to quadruple the number of refugees in 2020; it was turning his back on that promise. As the Dallas Morning News Editorial Board explained in January 2020, when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott unwisely chose to opt out of the federal refugee resettlement program: “This is not a question of seeking to enforce border laws, something this newspaper supports. This is about creating space for people with clear and approved asylum claims.”

It may be politically expedient to conflate legal refugees welcomed to this country after a lengthy and painstaking screening process with those undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers who arrive at the border unknown and unannounced. But it has little to do with reality.

The refugee resettlement and asylum systems are related, Mark Hetfield, president of the refugee resettlement agency HIAS, said recently, but in a complementary way. “The danger of putting your life in the hands of greedy human traffickers and crossing the desert in order to escape danger and reunite with family is a last resort which is taken when there are no legal routes to safety.”

For this reason and many others, including warfare, religious persecution and economic devastation in regions as varied as Central America, Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, continued Hetfield, “the Biden administration needs to widen legal pathways to find refuge — first and foremost by raising the annual ceiling on refugees to the historic norm of more than 90,000 — not keep the Trump administration’s barricades in place.”

The American people, if given the chance, can grasp the difference between refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, Myanmar, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen or Iran — who have been granted refugee status and asylum before coming to America — from those who seek asylum upon arrival.

The challenge for the Biden administration is seeking comprehensive immigration reform that addresses border security, while at the same time increasing the legal pathways and support networks for refugees, asylum-seekers and economic migrants to be welcomed into this great nation of immigrants. That’s a goal worthy of support from all our lawmakers, regardless of what side of the aisle they’re on.