Refugee admissions to U.S. plummet in 2017
U.S. President Donald Trump was able to slash refugee admissions into the United States to historic lows by the end of 2017, USA Today reports.
From Inauguration Day to Dec. 31, his administration accepted 29,022 refugees, the lowest number since at least 2002, according to State Department data. Comparable figures before then are not available.
The previous low during that time frame (29,468) came in 2002, when the U.S. slowed down all avenues of legal immigration following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
That decline will continue in 2018 because Trump instituted an annual cap of 45,000 refugees a year, the lowest cap since Congress created the Refugee Resettlement Program in 1980. Presidents have the authority to unilaterally set the annual refugee cap, which has been as high as 217,000 under President Reagan and hovered between 70,000 and 80,000 under the Bush and Obama administrations.
In October, Trump signed an executive order that restarted the refugee program, but it included new restrictions that severely limited the number of refugees who could enter the U.S. Most notably, it barred citizens of 11 countries — identified by refugee agencies as Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Refugees from those countries accounted for 44% of admissions to the U.S. in the 2017 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.