Midway through the fiscal year, the United States is on track to resettle one of the lowest numbers of refugees in the resettlement program’s history, VOA news reports.
From Oct. 1, 2018, until March 31, 12,151 refugees came to the U.S., primarily from three countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo (48 percent), Burma (17 percent), and Ukraine (13 percent), according to U.S. State Department statistics.
Last fall, President Donald Trump set the FY 2019 refugee ceiling at 30,000 — the smallest number in nearly four decades, since Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980.
At the current rate of arrivals — about 2,025 a month — the country will fall short of this year’s cap, though it may slightly surpass last year’s number of arrivals.
A VOA analysis of arrival data also shows the U.S. continues to accept an increasingly larger share of Christian refugees (81 percent) this fiscal year, compared to historical trends before Trump took office. During the same six-month period, about 15 percent of arriving refugees were Muslim.
The State Department data, which is updated daily and includes demographic information such as gender and religion, indicates the gap between religions is widening.
A VOA in June 2018 showed that the top three countries of origin for arriving refugees were the same as now (DRC, Burma and Ukraine) and that nearly 68 percent of arriving refugees were Christian.
That number has climbed throughout Trump’s nearly 2½ years in office. In January 2018, VOA documented arriving refugees, which under the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama were about half Christian and one-third Muslim, were skewing increasingly more Christian.
That level continues to increase, with Christians accounting for four of every five refugees coming to the U.S. this fiscal year.
The reduction in refugee arrivals to the U.S. means more refugees who are deemed in need of resettlement — meaning it is unsafe for them in their home country or to remain in their country of asylum — are not able to relocate. It has also led to layoffs in the refugee resettlement community. Over the weekend, one of the main resettlement agencies, World Relief, announced it was closing its office in Akron, Ohio.
“As the U.S. government decreases the number of refugees admitted into the U.S. and has also signaled an intent to reduce the long-standing public-private partnership with refugee resettlement agencies, World Relief unfortunately needs to reduce its footprint nationally,” the agency said in a news release Friday.