Ο Joe Biden announced yesterday, Thursday 04/02, its intention to increase eightfold the number of refugees to be received by the USA year on year compared to the historic low imposed by the Donald Trump at the end of his term of office.
«We are facing a crisis, more than eighty million displaced people are suffering around the world,’ the Democratic president said, announcing that a presidential decree will allow »to increase refugee admissions to 125,000 in the first full fiscal year« of the new administration, which will begin on October 1.
The new president means to keep his campaign promise on the refugee resettlement programme, which in the current financial year is only expected to receive 15,000 people.
This all-time low was announced about a month before the November presidential election by Republican Donald Trump, who had made immigration crackdowns, legal and illegal, the focus of his presidency.
During the days of his predecessor, the Democratic Barack Obama, the US received an average of about 100,000 refugees each year.
This program is only for people who are selected and screened by US security and intelligence agencies in camps in the UN where refugees are hosted around the world. The most vulnerable refugees - the elderly, widows, orphans, widowers, disabled people - are selected for resettlement in the country. Biden announced that the resettlement program in the future will also protect members of the LGBT community.
In the past, the US «offered a safe haven to people fleeing violence and persecution, and our example has prompted other countries to open their doors,» Joe Biden recalled during his speech at the State Department.
For years, the United States has received more refugees than all other countries combined. But the Canada exceeded them in 2019, opening its doors to 30,000 migrants, according to UN data.
The head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for Refugees (UNHCR), the Filippo Grandi, expressed satisfaction with Joe Biden's position.
The US president's decision «will save human lives. It's as simple as that,» he stressed in a press release.
«It also shows that power comes from compassion», he added.
According to the UN, the number of refugees being resettled internationally is the lowest in at least the last twenty years, despite new tragic records of displacement, partly due to the pandemic of the new coronavirus.
