Trump’s refugee policy is a miserable moral failure
So is our nation’s long history of choosing economic success over global equity, safety, and wellbeing.
“I have reduced refugee resettlement by 85 percent!” bragged President Trump at a rally last year. He wasn’t exaggerating by much. His first week in office, he issued an executive order that suspended the US Refugee Resettlement Program for 120 days and slashed the 2017 cap on refugee admissions from the 110,000 set by the Obama administration to 50,000. (Far fewer were actually admitted.) Each subsequent year, he has further reduced the cap.
Now Trump has announced that no more than 15,000 refugees will be allowed to resettle in the US in 2021. This is the lowest cap since Congress created the resettlement program in 1980. Meanwhile, forced migration is on the rise, and the number of refugees in the world is at its highest level since World War II.
Three days after Trump announced the 2021 refugee cap, Pope Francis published Fratelli tutti. The encyclical articulates the Christian obligation to welcome and protect migrants—especially those who are fleeing danger or persecution.
