Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart did some number crunching yesterday and the conclusion is that if the Trump Administration continues to admit refugees at this historically low level, our refugee admissions this year will be way below the CEILING Trump set in September for this fiscal year (45,000).
But….
Will President Donald Trump beat George W. Bush’s record?
Here is Leahy:
The number of refugees admitted into the country during the first month of FY 2018 by the Trump administration plummeted to 1,242 – an 87 percent decline from the 9,945 admitted during the first month of FY 2017 by the Obama administration.
The percentage of refugees admitted who are Muslim declined dramatically as well, from 45 percent in October 2016 to 23 percent in October 2017, according to the State Department interactive website.
Of particular note is the precipitous drop in the number of refugees admitted from the seven countries whose citizens were temporarily banned from traveling to the United States under the first travel ban, Executive Order 13679, issued by President Trump on January 27, 2017.
In October 2017, the first month of FY 2018, only 275 refugees from these seven countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudian, Syria, and Yemen — were admitted to the United States under the Refugee Admissions Program.
In contrast, in October 2016, the first month of FY 2017, a total of 4,581 refugees from these seven countries were admitted into the United States under the Refugee Admissions Program (1,352 from Somalia, 1,323 from Iraq, 1,297 from Syria, 414 from Iran, and none from either Libya or Yemen.)
This would beat the Bush record!
Should refugee admissions continue at this same pace for the remaining eleven months of FY 2018, the total number of refugees admitted for the entire fiscal year would be less than 15,000, which is 30,000 below the 45,000 cap for refugees set forward in the Trump administration’s presidential determination announced in September.
If it should be 15,000 that would be the lowest number admitted since the creation of the present system of admitting refugees. However, anything above George W. Bush’s two lowest years of 27,070 (2002) and 28,117 (2003) would not set any records. In both those years the CEILING was set at 70,000 (so much for ceilings having any meaning!).
Leahy continues:
The refugee resettlement industry — which receives almost all of its estimated $1 billion annual funding from the federal government — is already feeling the budget pinch resulting from the diminished number of new arrivals. [And, that is why you are seeing so many refugee ‘forums’ in various states seeking to gin-up negative media publicity against Trump—ed]
[….]
The harsh political reality now facing the refugee resettlement industry is that neither the Trump administration nor Congress have much inclination to meet that 45,000 annual refugee ceiling.
Want to see where the refugees went in the first month of FY18. Here is a map from Wrapsnet (October 1-31, 2017). Top ‘welcoming’ states were Texas, Ohio, California, New York and Washington.
For more on numbers, see my ‘refugee statistics’ category here.