Kakuma Refugee Camp Kenya by twenty20photos
By Billy Binion | Reason
President Joe Biden on Monday announced he would move to increase the annual refugee cap set by former President Donald Trump, who had limited admissions to a historically low 15,000 refugees during his time in office.
Biden’s announcement came after he received heavy criticism last month when he revealed he would keep Trump’s cap in place after promising to expand it by more than 300 percent. Today he said he would reverse course again and attempt to meet that earlier promise, although he said it likely wouldn’t happen by September 30, the end of the fiscal year.
“Today, I am revising the United States’ annual refugee admissions cap to 62,500 for this fiscal year,” he said in a statement. “The sad truth is that we will not achieve [that goal] this year. We are working quickly to undo the damage of the last four years. It will take some time, but that work is already underway. We have reopened the program to new refugees. And by changing the regional allocations last month, we have already increased the number of refugees ready for departure to the United States.”
