New York Immigrant Rights Advocates Slam Biden’s Complete Reversal on Refugee Admissions

New York, NY-Today, the Biden administration announced it would maintain its predecessor’s historic-low number of refugee admissions goal for FY 2021 in place for the remainder of this fiscal year. Immigrant rights advocates slammed the move as a direct reversal of President Joseph R Biden’s previous commitment to raise the cap. The White House’s about-face follows a severe delay in signing a revised Presidential Determination on refugee resettlement, which has caused irreparable damage to many refugees who were already approved for resettlement. This amounts to a broken promise to the American public and prevents the United States from meaningfully rebuilding this vital humanitarian program.

Murad Awawdeh, interim Co-Executive Director of the New York Immigration Coalition: 

“President Biden has utterly failed to keep his promise to the American people and failed children and families desperately seeking a safe harbor from the violence and persecution they experienced at home. There is neither a moral or practical reason to maintain this historically low refugee admissions goal, and the President should be ashamed to leave families stranded and in harm's way. Compounding this abysmal failure in leadership is the massive delay in restoring regional allocations. As a result, thousands of refugees approved for travel to the country are stuck in a cruel limbo as their medical and security checks expire. This White House will never reclaim the mantle of world leadership or moral authority if it cannot meet its commitments to our country’s once-proud history as a haven for refugees. President Biden must recommit to welcoming as many refugees in FY 2021 as possible and move to transform our resettlement program to resettle 125,000 in FY 2022.”