WASHINGTON — The United States will admit no more than 30,000 refugees in the coming fiscal year, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday, the lowest number in decades and a steep cut from the 45,000 allowed in this year.
The new number is a small fraction of one percentage point of the almost 69 million displaced people in the world today. But Pompeo said the United States remains the most generous nation in the world when other aid to refugees is taken into account.
He said the lower cap should not be the “sole barometer” of American humanitarian measures, but “must be considered in the context of the many other forms of protection and assistance offered by the United States.”
Pompeo said the new ceiling would be less than a third of the 110,000 refugees when President Donald Trump came to office. After he was done reading his statement from the podium in the State Department’s Treaty Room, Pompeo turned and left the room, ignoring questions shouted by reporters.
New refugee numbers must be announced at the end of every fiscal year. But with the midterm elections less than two months away, the decision reflects the administration’s gamble that current immigration levels are widely perceived as still being too high.
The new number is the lowest level of refugee admissions since the Refugee Act was enacted in 1980.
According to a Pew Research Center analysis, last year was the first time the United States resettled fewer refugees than the rest of the world combined. But on a per capita basis, the United States is far less generous than countries like Canada, Australia and Norway, all of which resettled more than 500 refugees per 1 million residents. The United States last year resettled 102 refugees per 1 million residents.
In a letter sent to Pompeo last month, a bipartisan group of former officials and heads of humanitarian organizations had urged him to raise the cap.
Criticism of the decision came swiftly from many quarters.
“Reducing the refugee number to another all-time low signals to the world that we are abdicating our moral leadership, which undermines our foreign policy and national security interests,” said Kevin Appleby, senior director of international migration policy at the Center for Migration Studies. “Congress should exercise its oversight responsibility and push back hard on this low number through every tool at its disposal.”
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