SALT LAKE CITY — Joseph Kim lost his father to starvation, his mother to prison, and his sister was sold off. He was homeless and starving by age 12 and dreamed of “living a day with three meals.” Kim managed to escape North Korea and made it to the U.S. as a refugee.
“Living up to our moral responsibilities and principles is how we sustain and preserve our humanity. And improving the quality of other people's lives, including those of refugees, helps our own lives,” Kim wrote in a recent essay in the Catalyst.
Reports emerged last week that the Trump administration was considering lowering the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. to zero. Many groups have pointed out this would effectively eliminate the country's refugee resettlement program altogether, according to Politico.
The refugee ceiling is usually set by the president each year after deliberation with Congress. Only 22,491 refugees were admitted last year, the lowest number since 1980, when the U.S. officially established the refugee admissions program. The number plunged to a similar low of about 27,000 in 2002, the year following the Sept. 11 attacks.
In 2017, the ceiling was 110,000, but only 53,716 were effectively resettled. That ceiling was set by former President Barack Obama before Donald Trump took office.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement site still states, “U.S. policy allows refugees of special humanitarian concern entrance into our country, reflecting our core values and our tradition of being a safe haven for the oppressed.”
But the latest rumors from within the Trump administration have thrown this core value into question, especially for the religious groups that have traditionally worked as partners with the federal government to serve refugees once they arrive in the United States.
“Setting the U.S. refugee ceiling at zero would be an egregious assault on fundamental American values. And quite frankly, the humanitarian implications of this decision would be enough to nullify our global reputation as leaders of the free world,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, one of nine groups that works with the U.S. government to resettle refugees, in a statement.
In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, signed by more than 40 faith groups, organizations implored Pompeo to increase rather than decrease the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. They cited the decline in the number of refugees resettled in the U.S. for 2019 and predicted a 100% decline in the number of Jews and Zoroastrians from Iran resettled in the U.S. this year, as well as a 96.3% decline in Christians from Iran.
They wrote, “These figures represent a dangerous aberration from U.S. historic commitments to the persecuted, placing lives at risk and drastically reducing our ability to protect religious freedom.”
Melanie Nezer, vice president of Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a Jewish nonprofit that works with refugees, said in a statement, “Should the administration decide that the U.S. will no longer resettle refugees, it will be a full abdication of our role as the world’s humanitarian leader in refugee protection — a role the U.S. has held since World War II.”
According to the Pew Research Center, up until 2017, the U.S. settled more refugees than any other country. Canada, a country with a population slightly smaller than California’s, formally resettled the most refugees worldwide in 2018.
When the Trump administration lowered the refugee resettlement ceiling in 2018, Pompeo said, "We must continue to responsibly vet applicants to prevent the entry of those who might do harm to our country,” The New York Times reported. He also told the press at the time, "The daunting operational reality of addressing the over 800,000 individuals in pending asylum cases demands renewed focus and prioritization. The magnitude of this challenge is unequaled in any other country."
However, organizations continue to ask the administration to reconsider lowering the cap on refugees. “We urge the President, Congress and USRAP to embrace the foundational values of this great nation through compassion and fulfilling America’s longstanding humanitarian responsibility in safeguarding vulnerable refugees,” said Sharif Aly, CEO of Islamic Relief USA.
The history of U.S. commitment to refugee resettlement is checkered. In 1939, a ship with over 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Germany was turned away from American shores and forced to return to Europe, where many were killed.
It wasn’t until the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention that the criteria for refugee status was determined, and, most importantly, the countries participating in the convention agreed that a refugee should not be returned to a country where “he or she fears threats to life or freedom.”
The agreement that came out of the convention was “really a Cold War document,” explained Kathie Friedman, a professor at the University of Washington whose work focuses on migration and immigration. “I think a lot of it had to do with guilt over the Holocaust,” she told the Deseret News.
However, Friedman also noted that the convention did not foresee the rise of “generalized conflict.” A recent U.N. Refugee Agency report points out, “Wars and conflict continued to be the major drivers, with little visible progress towards peace.”
After the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodians were displaced and were resettled in the United States. According to the National Archives, this spurred Congress to create a “clear and flexible policy.” The law also raised the refugee ceiling to 50,000 and allowed for adjustments in times of emergency.
There are currently 70.8 million people displaced worldwide according to the U.N., with most coming from Syria, Afghanistan, and South Sudan.
Other countries have also tried to limit the number of refugees and asylum seekers-they take in. Australia banned refugees from entering the country by sea, and either turns ships back or puts asylum-seekers indefinitely in detention centers while it tries to relocate them to other countries, according to the Economist.
The Council on Foreign Relations writes that a rise of “anti-immigrant political movements in many affluent countries where refugees have sought asylum or been resettled” has limited the ability for people to seek asylum. While many of the dangers refugees seek to escape have not disappeared, asylum claims have plummeted. In Europe, there were 74,000 fewer first-time asylum-seekers in 2018 than 2017, according to the European Commission.
“We are once again in a humanitarian refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions,” Walter Mondale, former Minnesota senator and vice president, wrote in The Washington Post. Mondale, like many others, urged the Americans to voice their support for an increase in refugee admissions. Mondale repeated the words he spoke at a Geneva convention 1979: “Let us do something meaningful — something profound — to stem this misery.”