Refugee policy would limit entries by 50%
New Trump program bars refugees from countries that made up 44% of total
The Trump administration replaced its 120-day suspension of the refugee admissions program this week with a more restrictive, scaled-down version that would have banned half the refugees admitted to the U.S. last year.
The new program bars refugees from 11 countries that made up 44% of the 53,716 refugees admitted to the U.S. in the 2017 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, a USA TODAY analysis of State Department data found.
The 11 countries were identified by refugee agencies as Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. In all but two of the countries on the list — North Korea and South Sudan — Islam is the dominant religion.
The new program also bars 2,500 spouses of refugees and their children under the age of 21, a group that represented 5% of refugees admitted in 2017.
“What that tells me is this continues to be a ban,” said Melanie Nezer, senior vice president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a Maryland-based group that resettles refugees in the U.S. “They had 120 days to resolve this, and instead they’re continuing to ban refugees from majority-Muslim countries.”
The added restrictions come as President Trump takes drastic steps to slash the number of refugees admitted to the U.S.
President Obama raised the annual cap on refugees to 110,000 in his final year in office as countries around the world struggled to respond to the ongoing global migration crisis. But Trump lowered that to 55,000 in 2017 and has set a cap of 45,000 for 2018, the lowest cap since Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980.
Trump ordered a 120-day pause on all refugee admissions that started in June following a lengthy battle in the courts. He argued the pause was necessary to give his administration time to review and improve vetting procedures screen refugee applicants to ensure terrorists do not take advantage of the program.
That review concluded Tuesday, when the administration announced that refugee admissions would be restarted with the additional restrictions.
The most severe was the blanket restriction on refugee admissions from the 11 countries. The bans will last for 90 days and may be extended further.
Those countries were targeted because federal agencies “continue to have concerns” about the threats posed by people from those nations, according to a memorandum co-signed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Elaine Duke and National Intelligence Director Dan Coats.
The memo said some people from the 11 countries might be allowed to enter the U.S. if their case is deemed to be “in the national interest.” But for the most part, federal agencies will shift their focus to applicants from other countries.
The new program also restricts spouses and children who are screened separately from the primary refugee sponsoring them. That ban will remain in place indefinitely until the administration is comfortable with the kind of security vetting they face.
Even for applicants from approved countries, the new refugee program has a wide range of enhanced vetting procedures. Those include more in-depth interviews of families, the collection of additional biometric information to verify people’s identities and sending more federal officers overseas to scrutinize applications in person.