Sara Staedicke
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Refugee Resettlement, Devastated by Trump, Finds a Long Road to Recovery
2021
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Refugee Resettlement, Devastated by Trump, Finds a Long Road to Recovery 3
2021
Statement
Refugee resettlement in the United States was brought to a near standstill under the Trump administration as each year brought a new record-low cap on the number of refugees admitted, and policy changes wreaked havoc on the system to protect and resettle some of the world’s most vulnerable people. Over the past four years, the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. has dropped by 86% and the ceiling for the Fiscal Year 2021 was just 15% of the historical average between 1980 and 2017. Amid these cuts, certain policy changes have also had a dramatic effect on the demographic origins of those admitted, most notably with the steep decline of refugees who are Muslim or from the Middle East(Greenberg, 2020). The program’s overall capacity has been gutted as resettlement organizations saw major cuts to their funding, leading to the closure of about a third of all resettlement offices in the country. With a new administration in office, President Biden pledgedto raise the ceiling from 15,000 refugees to 62,500 in FY2021 and 125,000 in FY 2022, yet that commitment waveredthis spring, citing the challenges of inheriting a refugee program that was decimated under Trump.When a new refugee ceiling is officially signed, the road to rebuilding the program will be long andchallengingas much as the necessary infrastructure is badly damaged.This project explores the effects of the Trump administration’s policies on refugee resettlement statistics and assesses the capacity of resettlement organizations to rebuild their programs given an anticipated reversal under the Biden administration.
Data Analytics and Visualization (MPS) Students