Instead of availing themselves of an opportunity to stop accepting refugees, most states in the US will continue to do so
In what appears to be the latest effort by the White House to restrict the US refugee resettlement programme and following a temporary freeze on all resettlements in 2017, on September 26, 2019, president Donald Trump issued an Executive Order on Enhancing State and Local Involvement in Refugee Resettlement (the “Executive Order”) which required state and local elected leaders to opt in if they wish to receive newly-arriving refugees. Forty-two states and more than 100 mayors have since affirmed their support for continued refugee resettlement and the governor of Utah, Gary Herbert, has asked the administration to increase refugee resettlement in his state.
The Executive Order is an attempt by the Trump administration to fulfil a campaign promise to allow states and cities more say on which, if any, incoming refugees they receive. It prevents refugees from initially being settled in non-participating locations and, as a result, such places will not receive federal funds to assist with refugee integration. In this way, the Executive Order is designed to make it more difficult for new arrivals to become self-sufficient in non-participating areas and non-participating areas less attractive as a result.
Decision stayed
On January 15, US District Judge Peter Messitte sitting in federal court in Maryland dealt a blow to the administration’s plans when he issued a preliminarily injunction to block the Executive Order from going into force, ruling that it would have the effect of giving state and local governments “veto power” over refugee resettlement in violation of the Refugee Act of 1980, and would also have the effect of causing hidden bias.
Messitte further found that the Executive Order was contrary to clear congressional intent and may in fact be unconstitutional because the US constitution specifies that the power to admit or exclude noncitizens is exclusively federal in nature. The judge also raised concerns under the Administrative Procedure Act that the government had failed to adequately consider critical factors when creating the policy, including the effect of refugees who move to non-participating locations after their initial placement.
Systematic shutdown and a slow strangulation
Since 2017, the Trump administration has worked systematically to scale back the refugee resettlement programme first by temporarily suspending refugee admissions and then by reducing the refugee ceiling set by the previous administration from 110,000 to 50,000, the lowest allocation in the history of the resettlement programme.
In fiscal years 2018, 2019, and 2020, the administration lowered the ceiling even further, from 45,000 to 30,000 and then to 18,000. The administration has also limited the number of refugees entering the US by slowing down admission rates through enhanced security measures and understaffing. These acts combined to ensure that, although the 2018 ceiling was set at 45,000, just 22,291 refugees were ultimately admitted in that period.
The acts of the Trump administration have also significantly changed the ethnic make-up of admissions, with an 87 per cent. drop in the number of Muslim refugees admitted to the country since 2016. This decline has largely been driven by limited arrivals from 11 countries the administration designated as “high risk”: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Since January 2018, applicants from these countries have been subjected to extra screening measures.
Nine voluntary agencies have been central to the resettlement program and its success however because of decreasing arrivals since 2017, many of these agencies have been forced to close or lay off staff. As of June 2019, refugee resettlement agencies had closed 51 programmes and suspended resettlement services in 41 offices across 23 states. These reductions have meant a loss of personnel with valuable expertise in areas such as trauma care, housing assistance, and job placement.
