While news right now is focused on the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy on the U.S. southern border, the current crackdown is “part of a broader picture where the shape of our country and the response to refugees and people who need our assistance has changed in ways that we’ve never seen before,” said Melanie Nezer, senior vice president for public affairs, HIAS, the Jewish refugee agency, in a national teleconference call hosted by Peace Corps Community for Refugees June 18.
Her remarks were echoed by leaders from Lutheran Immigration & Refugee Service (LIRS), Carolina Refugee Resettlement Agency, and LIRS Georgia. With refugee arrivals at an all-time low, local employers report that they are hurting for refugee workers, and community members eager to help are left with few families to assist, they said.
“Efforts by the administration to dismantle the admissions program really is proof in our view that the U.S. has abdicated its historic role in refugee resettlement,” said Kay Bellor, vice president for programs, LIRS.
Similarly, the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, created to acknowledge the extraordinary risks that Iraqi and Afghan allies have undertaken to assist the U.S., has been wracked by unreasonable processing delays, according to Adam Bates, policy counsel, International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP).
The current administration has systematically begun to dismantle the private-public partnership established in 1980 for resettling refugees. If current trends continue, refugee resettlement in the U.S. will effectively end, and it will likely take years for our nation to restore the process that has been built over four decades. Listen to experts in the field as they discuss the short and long-term impacts of the Trump administration’s slowdown of refugee admissions.
Listen to a recording of the refugee crisis conference call.
