For reasons that can only be described as pure sadism, the White House apparently thinks we’re still bringing in too many refugees every year-45,000, in a country of well over 325 million people, and over 3.5 million square miles of land area-and would like us to take less. After a report last month by the Daily Beast that a significant reduction in refugee admission was under consideration, the New York Timesreports that the Trump administration is floating a further cut to the annual refugee cap it set in 2017-from 45,000 to 25,000. As the Times notes, that’s a more than 40% cut from this year’s limit, but still not as low as the number advocated by Stephen Miller, which was just 15,000 people. What’s actually happening is closer to what Miller wants, reports the Times: Proponents of scaling back the refugee program argue that they are merely acknowledging that the government does not have the capacity to vet and admit the numbers of refugees it has in the past. They point to this year’s low numbers – the State Department said 16,230 had been resettled as of the end of June, putting the program on pace to admit only around 21,000 this year – as evidence, although those figures followed a year in which refugee admissions were frozen for months on end while officials conducted reviews that Mr. Trump ordered. For comparison, Germany-a country with roughly a quarter of America’s population, and a fraction of its space-took in over 186,000… [Read full story]
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