So far this year, over 16,760 migrants have survived clandestine voyages from Africa’s west coast to Spain’s Canary Islands, more than 5,500 arriving over just the last two weeks.
Catholic Charities U.S.A. spent decades building a domestic network to assist the social integration of incoming refugees. Three years of declining numbers and obliterated budgets took a sledgehammer to all that.
In a virtual event for J.R.S., Biden promised to increase the number of refugees resettled in the United States, and Dr. Fauci said the pandemic shouldn’t stop resettlement efforts.
The Trump administration has lowered refugee admissions to an all-time low. Giulia McPherson of Jesuit Refugee Service/USA explains why this is both inhumane and shortsighted.
The administration announced it would bring the refugee cap—the maximum number of displaced people the country decides to resettle in a federal fiscal year—to a historic low: 15,000.
“Asylum on the border is pretty much impossible,” a legal advocate with the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, said. “Covid is being used as an excuse to close the border.”