A new report indicates that the number of refugees being admitted into the United States has continued a downward trend that started when President Trump took office.
Only 913 refugees were admitted into the country in August, the first time that number has fallen below the thousand mark in over 15 years. It marks the smallest number since October of 2002.
As this chart from CNS News indicates, the numbers have dipped drastically – over 86% – from January, when Trump was inaugurated, to the most recent count in August.
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In addition, the Trump administration has implemented a long-overdue course correction on diversity of refugee admissions. This is a marked departure from the policy of the Obama White House, which focused exclusively on Muslim refugees, practically banning Christians from entry, with particular time period rates of 97+% for the former and fewer than 1% for the latter religious group.
In May of 2016 for example, the United States saw 1,037 Syrian refugees admitted, of which 1,035 were Muslims. Two were Christians.
The current president had argued that the previous administration made it nearly impossible for Christian refugees to enter the country.
“If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible,” he said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. “I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.”
Help them he has. Within days of assuming office, Trump ordered his administration to prioritize refugee applications from Christian minorities in Muslim countries.
Of the 913 refugees admitted in August, 60.3% of them were of the Christian faith, while 24.1% were practicing Muslims.
And, despite what the media would like you to believe, President Trump isn’t “barring” Muslim refugees from entering the country the way former President Obama practically did with Christians.
From January to August, the percentage of Christian refugees to Muslim sat at 51.6% to 37.0%.
The total number of refugees for the current year has now reached 51,392 – above the cap imposed as a result of budgetary constraints by Congress and quietly lifted by the State Department back in May.
Jennifer L. Smith, a department official, wrote to agencies dealing with refugees worldwide, that the groups could begin bringing people to the United States “unconstrained by the weekly quotas that were in place.”
While numbers have continued going down, the number of refugee admissions may begin going back up when budgets and time constraints are lifted.
Still, it would remain far lower than anything Obama attempted to implement when he purposely made an effort to increase the number of refugees admitted before Trump won the election by a whopping 86%.
Cross posted at the Mental Recession
