The Biden administration launched a new pilot program Thursday to allow ordinary Americans to sponsor refugees to settle in the United States.
The State Department program, called Welcome Corpswill initially recruit 10,000 Americans who will be able to sponsor up to 5,000 refugees from around the world.
“For more than four decades, our system has been based primarily on resettlement agencies [para el reasentamiento de refugiados]said Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Under this new initiative, people in communities, religious organizations, colleges and universities, veterans associations and other groups will be able to play that role: take the lead in helping refugees find a place to live, registering the children. at school [y] obtain basic goods such as furniture and winter clothing”, he emphasized.
The nationwide expansion of the refugee program is in line with the Biden administration’s broader immigration policy of expanding legal pathways for immigrants and discouraging border crossings.
But the inclusion of civil society groups also responds to longstanding demands from activists who have long wanted to play a bigger role in welcoming immigrants.
Groups that feed grassroots anti-immigration GOP sentiment have criticized other similar initiatives by Biden. “Instead of trying to stem an unprecedented flow of immigrants, they are fueling even more fraudulent asylum claims while finding innovative ways to process them en masse,” said RJ Hauman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). , for its acronym in English) in response to the launch of a similar program announced by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) earlier this month.
Washington has all but given up on a legislative solution. Not even a Democratic Congress could agree on a proposed immigration reform. And with Republican control of the House, the prospects for that immigration reform are nil.
Expanding the refugee program beyond a few federally funded nonprofit organizations could also serve to spread the initial costs of incorporating new immigrants across the country.
The private refugee sponsorship program echoes one that already exists in Canada, where it has been tremendously successful. This sponsorship model comes as the United States has fallen far short of meeting its annual refugee admissions goals in recent years.
Under the refugee admission program, created in 1980, presidential administrations set so-called “refugee ceilings,” or the number of refugees that can be admitted into the country.
Former President Donald Trump lowered the maximum refugee admission limit from 85,000 in fiscal year 2016, the last year set during the Obama administration, to 30,000 in fiscal year 2019 and just 18,000 in fiscal year 2020.
The Biden administration has set a refugee ceiling of 125,000 for fiscal years 2022 and 2023, but has struggled to meet those targets, citing insufficient decimated resources.
The United States hosted fewer than 26,000 refugees in fiscal year 2022, which ended in September. Biden has reannounced a goal to host 125,000 refugees this fiscal year, but the United States hosted fewer than 7,000 refugees during the first three months of the fiscal year, according to government data.
