Trump administration continues to degrade refugees and the poor

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

— The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus

This is no time to be poor and foreign in America, despite the welcoming message engraved on the Statue of Liberty.

While more refugees than ever are seeking sanctuary from hostile conditions in their home countries, the administration of President Donald Trump is drastically reducing their odds of finding solace in the United States.

The U.S. previously accepted up to 110,000 refugees a year for resettlement here, but the president has been ratcheting that number down. Now advocates fear it will be further cut to a trickle for the federal fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration this week announced plans to make it harder for poor families to receive food assistance, with as many as 3.1 million Americans in jeopardy of losing meager benefits that average about $4 per person per day in Ohio, or $121 a month.

Community Refugee and Immigration Services, a Columbus resettlement agency, helps connect refugees with local businesses that want to hire them but the numbers of people they have been able to assist continues to drop as the Trump administration has persistently slashed the caps on how many refugees will be admitted annually.

The number of refugees seeking to relocate worldwide has been pegged at an all-time high of 25.9 million people, while Trump has made baseless comments that the United States is “full.”

Accordingly, CRIS fears another drop as caps for the new fiscal year are to be set by the end of September. In 2017, the refugee cap was reduced more than half to just 50,000 and then further trimmed for 2018 to 45,000. For the year ending Sept. 30, the cap was set at just 30,000, an historic low that is 73% less than what it had been when Trump took office.

CRIS Executive Director Angie Plummer is right to view the cuts as “so much missed opportunity in so many ways,” not only for refugees seeking a better life but also for employers who are struggling to fill open positions.

With their business development and job creation, refugees contribute $1.6 billion a year to the Columbus economy, said Nadia Kasvin, a founder and director of the resettlement agency US Together.

The benefit under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is hardly enough to survive on, but for many working families struggling to get by, it is a lifeline.

SNAP provides about nine meals for each meal provided by Ohio food banks, but the charities can’t compensate for the cuts now proposed, said Lisa Hamler-fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks. Many of the 1.3 million Ohioans now receiving food assistance will suffer food insecurity and see their efforts to rise above poverty put under additional strain, she said.

A similar state lawmaker’s proposal in House Bill 200 has been questioned by the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors’ Association.

The Trump administration’s mean-spirited actions are all the more reprehensible in contrast to its tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals as the U.S. budget deficit exceeds $1 trillion this year.