Joe Biden set to reverse Trump's policy on refugee admissions to the US, but there will be challenges
With Donald Trump’s presidency now set to become a thing of the past, President-elect Joe Biden has shown an intent to reopen America’s doors to the refugees. This is something that the last Democratic administration led by Barack Obama had followed but was reversed by the Trump administration which wanted to seal the country’s borders. The policy is now set for change again.
In 2016, Obama aimed to admit 110,000 refugees but his successor lowered the cap. For 2021 fiscal, the Republican president set the cap at 15,000 -- the lowest recorded. Biden has promised to take a contradictory approach than Trump to put the annual global refugee admissions cap back to 125,000 and raise it more as time progresses. The US has over the decades provided shelter to people who have fled persecution in other countries till Trump changed that policy. National Public Radio cited refugee policy experts who said the upcoming Biden presidency will see a return to the previous stance.
The report cited Becca Heller, the executive editor of the International Refugee Assistance Project who said that while the president has the power to set refugee admissions numbers, it will take time to rebuild the US’s resettlement program after four years of Trump who largely dismantled it.
It is a signal to the world that the US' priority is changing again
“The point is not to hit 125,000 — the point is to signal both to the rest of the world and also to the domestic population in our own government that this is a priority again,” Heller was quoted as saying. “It’s less relevant if we hit the exact number and more relevant that we say, "Admitting refugees is really important. We are going to aim at this high number and invest in infrastructure and get as close as we can’,” she added.
However, the Biden administration will face some challenges while trying to reverse the Trump-time policy, according to the NPR report and they could be cuts in budget that have hit the infrastructure, huge backlog, a divided Congress, etc.
According to Muzaffar Chisti of Migration Policy Institute, Washington DC, the fact that the election produced a divided Congress will see the members less ecstatic over the immigration policy and especially with the coronavirus pandemic and economic recession still continuing to wreak havoc, the possibility looks even less.
“For the first 100 days, there will be very little bandwidth for a Biden administration to deal with anything other than COVID. We have never faced a crisis like this before. We can’t expect a huge leap on immigration policy. If people expect that this is going to happen tomorrow, they will be in for a big disappointment,” he said.