Numbers from the State Department Refugee Processing Center database confirm that President Trump has mightily slashed rates of refugee resettlement from where they were under the reign of Barack Obama. According to the figures, the Trump State Department admitted only 6,708 refugees in the first four months of the new fiscal year. That’s a remarkable number, especially when you compare it to the same period a year earlier, which 32,448 refugees were resettled in the U.S.
From CNS News:
Between Oct. 1, 2017 and Jan. 31, 2018, the Trump State Department admitted 6,708 refugees from 43 countries, with the largest contingents coming from Bhutan (1,792), Democratic Republic of Congo (1,422), Burma (794) and Ukraine (779).
During the same period one year earlier, the Obama State Department resettled a total of 32,448 refugees from 67 countries, with the biggest groups originating from DRC (5,833), Syria (4,884), Iraq (4,841) and Somalia (4,034)
For three of the first four months of FY 2018, monthly refugee admissions numbers have remained below the 2,000 mark – 1,385 in January, 1,858 in November and 1,248 in October. In December 2,217 refugees were resettled.
The first four months of FY 2017, by contrast, saw 9,945, 8,355, 7,371 and 6,777 admissions respectively.
CNS has a tendency to go overboard on raw figures, but what it comes down to is this: Trump is making good on one of his most enduring and memorable campaign promises. The debate over refugees was one of the issues that caused Trump to stand out sharply among the wide Republican field, and it certainly gave voters a stark contrast to choose from when it came down to Trump and Hillary. The then-GOP nominee said at the time that “tens of thousands” of Syrian refugees represented a “great Trojan horse” within which radical Islamic terrorists could form cells within the United States. Hillary, in the meantime, wanted to expand refugee admissions beyond even what Obama was allowing through the door.
In September 2015, Clinton appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation to insist that America should “lead the world” in giving relief to those affected by the Syrian civil war (a war, by the way, she had a huge hand in creating). “I think the U.S. needs to do more,” she said.
Much more, in fact. By the time Clinton and Trump met on the stage for their debates, Hillary was campaigning on a promise to let in 65,000 Syrian refugees a year – up from Obama’s 10,000. And that’s Syria ALONE.
We can only thank God that we do not live in the alternate universe in which Hillary Clinton won the presidency. If there was ever a point-of-no-return for this nation, her election might have been it. Amidst all the chaos and negativity that Trump’s presidency has generated, it’s worthwhile to take a step back every now and then and appreciate the fact that we really dodged a bullet.
