Far fewer refugees are poised to come to the United States this year than any time since the resettlement program was created in 1980.
That’s according to an analysis of refugee arrival data that the Associated Press is releasing Monday that predicts, based on the current pace, that about 20,000 refugees will come to the U.S. this year, less than half of the 45,000 that President Donald Trump had approved.
Last year, Trump issued various executive orders — challenged in the courts — that sought to limit the number of refugees entering the U.S. In 2017, 53,716 refugees came — less than half the 110,000 cap that President Barack Obama had set.
AP’s count, which uses figures from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, measures from the start of the 2018 federal fiscal year, Oct. 1, through March 15. According to the government’s figures, 9,669 have come in that period.
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The AP analysis also noted trends:
>> The share of Christian refugees has grown to more than half the refugee population. Conversely, Muslim refugees have seen their share drop from 45 percent of the total incoming refugee population in 2016 to about 15 percent so far this year.
>> Refugees from Iraq, Somalia and Syria together made up about one-third of all incoming U.S. refugees from 2013 to 2017. So far this year, that share has dropped to less than 4 percent.
This has played out in Lincoln, where so far this year only six Iraqi refugees have come — down from 292 during the same time period in 2017. On average over the prior five years, Lincoln took about 114 Iraqi refugees during the first six months of each year.
The refugee count does not include Iraqi translators and other helpers to the U.S. military who get refugee services but enter the United States through an entirely separate program.
>> Refugees from Myanmar have dropped. Omaha took about 166 Burmese refugees during the same period for each of the prior five years. So far, 32 have come.
>> Zero Somali and zero Syrian refugees have come to Omaha this year. Last year, 91 Somalis and 63 Syrians were resettled here.
>> Refugees from Bhutan, however, have not seen their numbers drop locally. Omaha took an average of 72 Bhutanese during the same time period in each of the prior five years. So far this year, 95 have come.
“There’s certainly a pretty dramatic shift” in the mix and number of refugees being allowed in, Kathleen Newland, a fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, told AP.
Refugee arrival numbers fluctuate from year to year but not usually this much.
A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department attributed the drop to additional refugee vetting procedures that have slowed processing time.
Trump has cited national security as a reason for slowing down refugee resettlement.
The spokesperson said it is too early to tell what final 2018 numbers will be.
Refugee resettlement figures fluctuate based on a number of factors, and any fluctuation has consequences. A drop in arrivals affects refugees overseas who thought they were approved to come and cannot yet leave; resettled refugees separated from loved ones; the agencies that serve them that must adjust financially to a decline in federal stipends that help pay for services.
The Refugee Empowerment Center, the smaller of Omaha’s two resettlement agencies, said it was not experiencing fewer arrivals. So far this year, the agency resettled about 100 refugees; last year in total the agency resettled 201.
“Business as usual,” said Marilyn Sims, executive director.
Lutheran Family Services bore the brunt of a refugee slowdown last year when the agency laid off 15 refugee resettlement staffers. The agency was able to place six of them in other positions but that left the resettlement team “really bare bones,” said Lacey Studnicka, director of advancement and community services.
Studnicka said “some very generous donations” have helped LFS hang on to its remaining refugee resettlement team.
LFS has received 150 refugees so far this year, 41 percent of its projected 2018 total of 365. Last year, LFS resettled 790 refugees.
One silver lining, Studnicka said, is that the agency has sponsors waiting to help ease refugees’ often difficult adjustment process. During 2016, when nearly 85,000 refugees came to the U.S., Omaha agencies scrambled to serve them all and not every refugee or refugee family got enough attention.
Studnicka now has a waiting list of sponsors and has been able to line up sponsors for every incoming refugee household.
She remained hopeful that the pace of refugee arrivals would pick up.
But Helen Akot remains heartsick. The Omaha mother of seven has a 23-year-old son, Richard, in Africa, where her family is from.
A paperwork snag kept Richard from being able to join the Akots, who are from South Sudan, when they left the refugee camp in Kenya where they had been living for a decade. They came to Omaha in 2016.
“I’ve been waiting. I’ve been waiting,” Akot said, her voice breaking with emotion.
She described a head-spinning process of clearing administrative hurdles only to have bureaucratic delays require certain checks — like a medical clearance — to have to be done again.
“Right now we don’t even know what happened, what is the wait. He did fingerprinting three times now,” she said.
Her son calls when he can from a borrowed cellphone. But he’d told her in a call last week that things were getting dangerous in the camp and that he might have to find somewhere else to live.
“He’s not doing good. He’s really, really sad,” Akot said. “Insecurity is increasing. The people who attacked us are now (in the camp). He has nowhere to eat, nowhere to sleep. Two days I tried to call back and didn’t get him. I’m really feeling weak.
“He’s my son,” she added. “He’s my relative. Everything.”
