The Biden administration plans to announce on Thursday that it will increase the cap on the number of refugees to more than eight times the level at which the Trump administration left it.
President Joe Biden is expected to announce the move during a visit to the State Department. The Trump administration had drastically reduced the refugee admissions cap to only 15,000 for this fiscal year, the lowest since 1980, CNN reports.
The refugee cap must be approved by the president. Biden’s plan would raise that number to 125,000, an increase of 10,000 set by former President Barack Obama before he left office.
On Tuesday, CNN reported, the President signed three executive orders, including the establishment of a task force designed to reunite families separated at the US-Mexico border, a distinct reversal to Trump’s hardline immigration policies,
“I’m not making new law, I’m eliminating bad policy,” Biden said at the White House. “This is about how America’s safer, stronger, more prosperous when we have a fair, orderly, and humane legal immigration system.”
In the last few years of Barack Obama’s presidency, the administration raised the refugee ceiling from 85,000 in fiscal year 2016 to 110,000 in fiscal year 2017, according to CNN.