The Obama administration is planning to increase the number of refugees allowed into the United States by 30 percent in the next fiscal year, which begins on October 1. According to the annual refugee report to Congress, obtained by the Wall Street Journal, the number of refugees admitted will increase from 85,000 this fiscal year to 110,000 in 2017.
President Obama is expected to announce the increase before the United Nations Summit for Refugees and Migrants at the UN headquarters in New York next week. The summit, which Obama is convening on Monday, will mark “the first time the General Assembly has called for a summit at the Heads of State and Government level on large movements of refugees and migrants.”
The 111,000 refugees represent a 60 percent increase from 2015 when 70,000 migrants fleeing war, persecution, and other disasters were admitted to the country. The number is almost as high as 1995 levels when President Bill Clinton set a 112,000 maximum.
As President Obama and John Kerry work to admit more refugees to the United States, the Republican presidential nominee has repeatedly called for a ban on Muslim immigration and insisted that Syrian refugees are too dangerous to enter the country.
More than five million Syrians have been displaced by a civil war that has been raging for five years. Though a ceasefire was recently brokered in the region by U.S. and Russian officials, it’s off to a shaky start.
(Via Wall Street Journal)