On Thursday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden reiterated that he would raise the number of refugees permitted to enter the United States from the 15,000 President Trump wants to permit annually to 125,000 in a Biden first year in office.
In a prerecorded video to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Jesuit Refugee Service, Biden stated, “The Biden-Harris administration will restore America’s historic role in protecting the vulnerable and defending the rights of refugees everywhere and raising our annual refugee admission target to 125,000,” as ReligionNews.com reported.
In June, Biden released a statement on World Refugee Day in which he attacked President Trump for his “heartless” policies, writing:
As President, I will increase the number of refugees we welcome into this country, setting an annual global refugee target of 125,000 — up from a ceiling of 18,000 under Trump — and will seek to further raise it over time commensurate with our responsibility, our values, and the unprecedented global need.
I will support efforts to work with Congress in a bipartisan fashion to protect our refugee policy from drastic and arbitrary reductions we have seen during the Trump Administration and establish a minimum admissions number of at least 95,000 refugees annually. … I also recognize that it is not enough to simply reverse or dismantle the heartless policies of the Trump Administration.
“President Donald Trump has set the refugee ceiling — the maximum number of refugees admitted to the U.S. each year — to a new historic low every year he has been in office. Trump recently put that number at 15,000 for the current fiscal year, which started in October,” ReligionNews.com reported.
On October 28, President Trump released a presidential memo vis-à-vis refugees in which he stated:
The admission of up to 15,000 refugees to the United States during FY 2021 is justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest. This refugee admissions ceiling incorporates more than 6,000 unused places from the FY 2020 refugee admissions ceiling that might have been used if not for the COVID-19 pandemic. Refugee admissions during FY 2021 shall be allocated among refugees of special humanitarian concern to the United States in accordance with the following allocations:
Refugees who: have been persecuted or have a well-founded fear of persecution on account of religion; or are within a category of aliens established under subsections (b) and (c) of section 599D of Title V, Public Law 101-167, as amended (the Lautenberg and Specter Amendments), 5000; refugees who are within a category of aliens listed in section 1243(a) of the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act of 2007, Title XII, Div. A, Public Law 110-181, as amended, 4000, …
refugees who are nationals or habitual residents of El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras, 1000: other refugees in the following groups: those referred to the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) by a United States Embassy in any location; those who will be admitted through a Form I-730 following-to-join petition or who gain access to the USRAP for family reunification through the P-3 process; those currently located in Australia, Nauru, or Papua New Guinea who gain access to the USRAP pursuant to an arrangement between the United States and Australia; those who are nationals or habitual residents of Hong Kong, Venezuela, or Cuba; and those in the USRAP who were in “Ready for Departure” status as of September 30, 2019, 5000.