The Trump administration recently announced a new level of refugee admissions many find controversial. The Pilgrims came to America fleeing religious intolerance and since the country’s founding refugees from around the world have seen the United States as a place to find freedom. But not everyone has welcomed refugees to our shores.
To understand the administration’s recent announcement on refugees and its implications, I interviewed Matthew Soerens, U.S. director of church mobilization at World Relief and the national coordinator of the Evangelical Immigration Table. Matthew is the co-author of the recent books Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate and Seeking Refuge: On the Shores of the Global Refugee Crisis.
Stuart Anderson: What is the annual refugee ceiling?
Matthew Soerens: The Refugee Act of 1980 gives the president the responsibility, in consultation with Congress, to set a maximum number of refugees who will be admitted to the United States each fiscal year. The consultation with Congress seems to have become something of a formality, as ultimately the president has the authority to set the cap.
Anderson: What did the Trump administration just announce?
Soerens: On September 17, 2018, the Secretary of State announced the administration’s intention to set the annual refugee ceiling at just 30,000 for fiscal year 2019. That won’t be official until the administration consults with Congress and the president signs a determination, so at World Relief we’re still urging the president to reconsider this historically-low ceiling.
Anderson: How do Donald Trump’s refugee policies compare to those of other contemporary presidents?
Soerens: In 1980, the year the Refugee Act was signed into law, the refugee ceiling was set above 230,000, and nearly that many refugees arrived, primarily – at that time – from Vietnam. The average ceiling during President Reagan’s two terms in office was about 90,000. President George H.W. Bush set it between 125,000 and 142,000 each year of his administration. Throughout the entire second Bush administration and the Obama administration, the ceiling was always between 70,000 and 85,000, until President Obama raised it to 110,000 two years ago.
One week into the Trump administration, President Trump signed an executive order that placed a four-month moratorium on all refugee resettlement, indefinitely restricted resettlement of refugees from Syria and lowered the ceiling for fiscal year 2017 from 110,000 to 50,000. That executive order was challenged in court, such that the overall number of arrivals for fiscal year 2017 was allowed (by court order) to slightly exceed 50,000. But then the president set the ceiling at 45,000 for the current year, and now the administration’s intention is to lower it further, to 30,000, for the upcoming year.
Anderson: Reports are that the actual admission of refugees has been well below ceiling levels in FY 2017 and FY 2018. What administration policies have led to these low admissions numbers?
Soerens: That reality speaks to another shift from previous administrations. Previously, the State Department generally treated the ceiling as a goal.
The current administration has made clear it sees the ceiling merely as a maximum, not an objective for which to aim. So, this year, while the ceiling was set at 45,000, there have been fewer than 21,300 refugees admitted, with just ten days left in the fiscal year. We’re unlikely to reach 22,000.
Anderson: What else has contributed to the decline?
Soerens: There are several factors that have contributed to the decline in admissions. Most notably, the number of officers dispatched to various parts of the world to interview and vet refugees has been reduced significantly.
Contrary to statements from some politicians, the Department of Homeland Security does have a thorough vetting process for refugees being considered for resettlement, but it takes personnel to complete the thorough vetting, a process which previously took between 18 months and three years to complete once a refugee is under consideration.
Last October, the administration implemented additional expectations for vetting each refugee, such as requiring contact information for all relatives and addresses for the past ten years (rather than five), information that can be difficult for those who were literally fleeing for their lives from one country to another, who in some cases do not know if their relatives are still alive or not.
Anderson: How do you respond to the argument it’s better for America to spend money to help refugees overseas rather than on resettling refugees in the United States?
Soerens: We should both resettle a small share of the most vulnerable refugees and provide assistance to allied countries hosting far greater number of refugees – and historically, we have done both. But the administration has dramatically reduced resettlement at the same time it has sought to significantly reduce aid for refugees abroad.
In the past few decades, the U.S. has never resettled more than about one-half of one percent of the world’s refugees in any given year, but doing our relatively small part has allowed us to take some of the most vulnerable cases, individuals who in many cases continued to be at risk in the neighboring country to which they initially fled (including some persecuted for their Christian faith, who fled from a situation of genocide to a marginally better but still harsh situation of discrimination).
Taking our share has also given the U.S. the moral credibility to diplomatically insist that other countries do their part as well, both countries like Canada and Sweden (each of which resettles far more refugees per capita than the U.S.) and countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Kenya which host millions of individuals who have fled neighboring countries.
Anderson: In a January 2017 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Donald Trump promised to make it a priority to help Christian refugees facing religious persecution. Has that been reflected in the number of Christian refugees who have been resettled in the United States?
Soerens: Tragically, no. The number of Syrian Christians resettled this year, since January, has been just 9. By comparison, at this point in calendar year 2016, there were 54 Christians from Syria admitted. That’s a decline of more than 80 percent. The crazy thing is the president made that pledge to facilitate resettlement of Syrian Christian refugees, specifically, on the same day he signed the executive order excluding all Syrians indefinitely. It’s very possible that he did not personally realize the full impact that order would have, but I think he’s being advised by people whose antagonism toward refugees supersedes any concern for persecuted Christians.
In 2018, we have taken in just 5 Iranian Christians and though the State Department acknowledges that Christians in Iraq face the threat of genocide, we have taken in fewer than 20 Christian refugees from Iraq.
Of course, Muslim refugees have been the most dramatically harmed in terms of overall numbers. By the end of this year, about 40,000 fewer Muslim refugees will have been allowed in than in 2016. I find that very troubling, because, from my Christian perspective, each of those individuals is a person made by God with human dignity, and the United States has a constitutional tradition of religious liberty that means our government should not be favoring or disfavoring one religion.
Anderson: Have you found there is support in the evangelical community for helping refugees?
Soerens: Absolutely. World Relief partners with more than a thousand local churches in various locations throughout the U.S. to welcome refugees, and we simply could not do our work without their congregants’ volunteer hours, financial support and in-kind donations. I am in evangelical churches a few times a week speaking on a biblical perspective on refugee issues, and I find the audiences I speak to are largely supportive.
Anderson: Donald Trump has support in the evangelical community, particularly among many evangelical leaders. A question people may have is how do Christians of good faith reconcile that support with their compassion toward refugees?
Soerens: It is true that four-out-of-five white evangelical voters voted for President Trump. Many would say they were motivated by their commitment to issues of life (particularly the lives of unborn children) and religious freedom (particularly genuine concerns that their practice of their Christian faith could be restricted domestically).
I personally share those particular concerns, and I don’t see it as my role to tell people for whom to vote; Christians can come to different conclusions in good faith as they consider the many issues and the limited electoral options. I do believe, though, that since white evangelicals are significantly responsible for putting President Trump in the White House, we need to be the first people respectfully – but clearly – raising concerns when the administration advances changes to U.S. refugee policy that mean that tens of thousands fewer individuals this year will be able to access life-saving protection and freedom to practice their faith than would have been the case in any previous administration. This, too, is a pro-life issue and an issue of religious liberty.
Anderson: What do you believe would be a U.S. refugee admissions policy that is consistent with America’s interests, values and traditions?
Soerens: The U.S. cannot take all of the world’s refugees, but we can take a share that allows us to lead the world in terms of total refugees resettled, a distinction we’ve long held but which we are ceding this year to Canada (despite its much smaller population).
We can continue the longstanding tradition of leveraging the goodwill of Americans motivated by their faith, continuing the public-private partnership between the U.S. State Department and faith-based refugee resettlement agencies like World Relief, the U.S. Catholic Bishops, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) and others. This partnership with faith-based and other non-profit organizations has proven remarkably successful at ensuring refugees integrate into local communities, which is something many of our European allies have not done as well.
We can leverage the economic benefits of refugees as we encourage their entrepreneurial spirit, recognizing that many American companies were founded by refugees admitted in years past. And we can leverage our finances as well as our moral credibility to ensure that the vast majority of refugees who will not ever be able to come to the U.S. are protected overseas. That sort of a refugee policy – which really has been our policy until recently – is consistent both with the faith traditions of most Americans and the national values of our country, which still has the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, welcoming those “yearning to breathe free.”
