Biden reversal dashes hopes of refugees, advocates
Since Oct. 1, just 32 refugees have been resettled in Columbus.
Mohamad Khawanda’s family wasn’t among them.
Originally from Syria, the 29-year-old North Side resident came alone to the United States from Egypt in 2019, assured his family soon would be able to follow.
First, the Trump administration’s travel bans on Muslim-majority countries, including Syria, kept them out.
Then it was delay after delay as his family’s medical clearances — good for only six months — expired before they got a flight. One time, their flight was canceled when they were all ready to go, and Khawanda still doesn’t know why.
Now, he doesn’t know whether to have renewed hope or not.
Despite President Joe Biden’s campaign promises to welcome more refugees like Khawanda’s parents and sisters, the president announced on Friday that he wouldn’t raise the annual cap for refugees from Trump’s historic low of 15,000.
That announcement brought backlash from some of Biden’s supporters — so much that it caused the president to change course later.
“Given the decimated refugee admissions program we inherited, and burdens on the Office of Refugee Resettlement, his initial goal of 62,500 seems unlikely,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.
That figure was announced by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in February, but on Friday — after the backlash that followed the news that Biden wouldn’t be raising the cap after all — Psaki said the president now will set a “final, increased” cap by May 15.Refugees enter the country legally after rigorous security, medical and background checks. They are resettled because they are fleeing violence or persecution in their home countries.
For local refugee resettlement agencies and their clients, the situation is creating whiplash, said Angie Plummer, executive director of Community Refugee and Immigration Services (CRIS), one of two refugee resettlement agencies in Columbus.
“With Biden’s promises, we had renewed hope,” Plummer said. “But by leaving the cap at 15,000, it really undermines it.”
Both Plummer and Nadia
Kasvin, co-founder and director of the other area refugee resettlement agency, US Together, were deeply disappointed when they heard the initial news on Friday of a 15,000 cap.
“This really flew in the face of everything he pledged on the campaign trail and everything said to date,” Plummer said. “We started to get nervous and were wondering why hadn’t he signed it, and with those really significant facts - all those flights had been canceled, including one of ours - we really became concerned.”
A family of nine from Eritrea was supposed to arrive in Columbus on April 13, but their flight was canceled for unexplained reasons, Plummer said.
In total, the flights of more than 700 refugees nationwide have been canceled recently, Kasvin said.
Once the presidential determination is set, as it was by
President Donald Trump before he left office, each agency is approved to resettle a certain number of people. CRIS was approved for 158 this year; it has resettled 19 since Oct. 1 and Plummer had been hoping, before Friday, that the agency might get to resettle a total of 300 refugees with a higher cap for the rest of the year.
At US Together, only 13 refugees have arrived to be resettled since October, Kasvin said, and only one other flight is scheduled this month.
Last year at this time, US Together had resettled 64 people and CRIS had resettled 45 people.
Both Kasvin and Plummer said it’s important to start resettling more refugees before the end of this federal fiscal year and not just start with a large number in October.
When Trump took office in 2017, he lowered the cap from former President Barack Obama’s number of 110,000 to 50,000 almost immediately. Many refugee advocates expected Biden would raise the cap as soon as he took office, or at least before now.
Rebuilding a complex process of getting refugees resettled and helping them become part of a community can take time, both Kasvin and Plummer said. Plummer said she wishes the program would’ve begun in February, ramping up slowly with more and more refugees coming over time.
Kasvin said it at least needs to begin now.
“We need to start repairing our refugee program now - and the sooner the better,” she said. “You need to start gradually rebuilding capacity and repairing the program not just at the federal level, but at the local level.”
Now, Plummer said she just wants refugees to come, even if the agency isn’t as ready as it would like to be, because she knows every moment matters.
“What do you tell the person who’s actual day-today experience is sitting in limbo?” Plummer said. “People have waited to so long; we’ve waited so long, and it’s been the most miserable, disappointing four years, and we had this hope.”
Kasvin and Plummer also pushed back against the commonalities drawn between the systems that process asylum seekers at the U.s.-mexico border and refugees.
“There’s really a lack of understanding that both these humanitarian programs ... are processed separately,” Plummer said. Refugee resettlement “can happen independent of what’s going on at the border, and there have been many, many years where we’ve processed asylum seekers and refugees in much higher numbers, so it definitely can be done.”
Plummer said that while the country addresses the backlog of unaccompanied minors at the border, it doesn’t need to simultaneously increase the backlog of refugees waiting to come to America by keeping the annual cap low.
“Increasing refugee arrivals does not take resources from asylum seekers,” she said.
The U.S. Department of State does much of the work with refugee resettlement, Plummer said, although the Office of Refugee Resettlement has a role in both taking care of unaccompanied minors crossing the border and helping refugees.
While only 2,050 refugees have been admitted nationwide since the beginning of the federal fiscal year on Oct. 1, there are thousands that have gone through all the processing and are ready to come, Kasvin said.
“There are people who are languishing all around the world in unsafe situations,” she said. “It’s not like refugees are in a safe place right now waiting somewhere for this decision to be made.”
There are refugees who were approved to travel to the United States in 2016 and are still waiting, Plummer said.
Both Plummer and Kasvin are trying to stay hopeful despite Biden’s recent actions.
“This is not a good start to rebuilding the program,” Kasvin said of Biden’s Friday announcement and subsequent delay in setting a number. “I am waiting to see what they will come up with by May 15, but no doubt, every second, every minute, every day, every week, it makes a huge difference in the lives of people who are waiting for those decisions overseas.”
The waiting means a lonely, empty home for Khawanda, a lack of adequate healthcare for his aging parents, and delayed educational opportunities for his younger sister and nephew. He’s waiting on them as well as his older sister and her husband to join him in America.