Biden Administration should be embracing refugees, not limiting their acceptance | Opinion


Mihir Ram
Sat, June 4, 2022

The Tennessean

The refugee crisis has long been a problem worldwide, and the recent conflict between Russia and Ukraine has only worsened it. President Biden needs to help alleviate the crisis by accepting more refugees into the United States.

In the past decade, the global refugee population has more than doubled. Currently, there are estimated to be over 22.6 million refugees worldwide, and this number does not include the millions of new refugees coming from Ukraine.

Of these millions of people, only a small fraction of them are resettled, and an even smaller fraction are resettled into the United States. This seems like the case because the conversation about refugee admission into the United States always seems to create conflict.

More: What happened to Rafi Sherzad and his family after they fled Afghanistan? | Plazas

Refugee admission into the U.S. by the numbers

The president controls the refugee cap in the U.S. through a power officially known as Presidential Determination, and for the fiscal year of 2022 that cap was set to a total of 125,000 refugees.

Sarwar Hawez helps newly arrived Afghan refugees check in to a Motel in Nashville, Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021.

This cap is quite the increase from the one set during the Trump administration, which was the lowest number in U.S. history at 18,000 refugees during the 2020 fiscal year.

However, the increase in cap size has not seen an increase in refugee admissions. Since 2017, there has only been one year, 2019, in which the cap was met, but that cap was quite low at only 30,000 refugees.

In the fiscal year of 2021, only 11,411 refugees were accepted with a cap of 62,500. Similarly, in the six months in which data has been collected for the 2022 fiscal year, the number of accepted refugees is only 8,758. The Biden administration needs to put in a greater effort towards accepting more refugees into the United States.

The argument for refugees

Despite all of the debate around refugee acceptance, studies have consistently concluded that refugees are a net-positive for the United States, no matter how you look at it.

At a press conference Wednesday, Nashville Deputy Mayor Brenda Haywood highlights the city's partnership with local faith-based nonprofits to welcome Afghan refugees in the city.

First, refugees do not pose a security risk to the U.S. All accepted refugees have undergone a vetting process from both the United Nations and the U.S. federal government that typically lasts anywhere from 18 to 24 months. So they are very unlikely to pose a risk.

Studies have also confirmed that refugees are not a risk and are less likely to commit crimes than natural-born U.S. citizens. Oftentimes, introducing refugees into communities lowers the crime rate.

Furthermore, refugees have been shown to be an economic positive. The amount of revenue a refugee provides to the U.S. is greater than the government costs of resettling and providing aid for the refugee in the long-term.

The U.S. is currently facing a labor shortage. Studies have shown that refugees do not steal jobs from the American worker, but rather they fill labor shortages, and in the long-term they create more jobs.

The United States needs refugees now more than ever, and we could look like heroes helping alleviate the refugee crisis as we solve our own problems.

Mihir Ram is a political science student at Vanderbilt University

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Refugee resettlement: Why we must embrace more newcomers in America