Refugees and the agencies that help them find a home in Tucson were “left in limbo” after President Biden flip-flopped on how many new refugees will come to the U.S. this year.
In his first weeks in office, Biden said he planned to raise the national refugee ceiling for this fiscal year and next. But on April 16, he ordered the historically low cap of 15,000 set by the Trump administration to remain in place. After a rebuke from advocates, refugee agencies and Democrats, Biden administration officials reversed course again, saying they plan to raise the cap by May 15.
“Everybody is just kind of left in limbo,” said Connie Phillips, president and CEO of Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest, one of three refugee resettlement agencies in Tucson. “It’s disappointing. I understand there’s many things that are in need of the administration’s attention, but it is disappointing that this has not been able to be taken care of.”
Biden’s delay in raising the cap comes at “a real human cost,” said Stanford Prescott, community engagement coordinator at the International Rescue Committee.
“Those are families that are currently being separated by this policy that could be reunited if this policy were to change,” Prescott said.
More than 30,000 refugees have been vetted to come to the U.S., many of whom would be reunited with their families, but they are unable to do so due to the current admissions ceiling, Prescott said.
More than 700 of these refugees had flights booked and were nearly on their way to reuniting with family members in the U.S., but their flights were canceled at the last minute, according to an International Rescue Committee report released on April 11. Many had already given away their belongings and left their homes.
For these refugees, it is not just about lost time, advocates said. After years of waiting in line, they finally received the long-awaited approval to begin their life in the U.S. But with further delays, they could face going through parts of the process all over again.
“They could be here in the U.S. restarting their lives, sending their kids to school, starting new jobs, learning English, but instead are in another place where they may not be in healthy or safe conditions,” Prescott said. “Yes, there is that time lost. But we have to recognize that that time is somebody’s life.”
Refugees are forced to flee their country because of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or being part of a particular social group. They are processed through a different system than asylum seekers who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Tucson has received refugees from countries around the world for decades. But the city saw an 85% drop in new refugees over the last four years, as former President Donald Trump slashed the arrival cap to new lows each year he was in office. Those years broke down the refugee program infrastructure nationally and locally, refugee agency officials said.
During the Trump administration, Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest saw resettlement numbers drop from 360 in 2016 to 68 in its 2020 fiscal year. It has resettled 21 refugees since last July and hasn’t had any arrivals in months, Phillips said. Recently, the agency anticipated receiving a few new refugees, but they were among those canceled, she said.
The International Rescue Committee saw a similar drop in arrivals, from 454 in 2016 to 81 in 2020. In its 2021 fiscal year, which began last October, the IRC has resettled eight new refugees, agency officials said.
Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona officials said its numbers went from 325 to 24 in those same years.
President Biden’s proposal to take in more refugees earlier this year brought “new hope” to refugees and the groups that support them, Phillips said. Resettlement agencies had begun gearing up for new arrivals. Now, those efforts are on hold.
In February, Biden said he intended to bring the arrival cap to 62,500 this year and welcome up to 125,000 new refugees in 2022, but he did not formally sign off on either.
The cap serves as a maximum, so it does not necessarily mean that many new refugees will come. If Biden does not change course, agencies expect less than 5,000 new refugees will actually come to the U.S. this year, Prescott said.
Waiting to rebuild
With details still uncertain, local agencies are stuck in a waiting game. “We haven’t been able to move forward on anything,” Phillips said.
Lower arrival numbers in recent years reduced funding for resettlement agencies, forcing some to let staff go, agency officials said.
Phillips said a normal case load requires about 25 case managers, but the agency is currently down to eight case managers. Since projections for this year and next remain uncertain, they are unable to add staff to plan for new arrivals.
Similarly, the refugee program staff count at Catholic Community Services dropped to five people who support a case load of around 300 refugees who are already in Tucson, said Anna Burke, program director at Catholic Community Services Migration and Refugee Services. Its refugee program, which began in the 1970s, provides job training, eviction prevention, and benefits and citizenship assistance for refugees.
Burke said it “definitely” has to hire more staff, but does not have the funding to do so until more refugees arrive. “It’s very dependent on funding,” she said. “Without the funding, there is no program.”
The International Rescue Committee was one of the few local organizations that was able to retain most of its staff. Prescott said it can serve new arrivals now.
But even if the cap goes up, agencies say change won’t happen overnight.
“It’s going to take a while to get there,” said Nejra Sumic, the national field manager at We Are All America, a group that supports local and national refugee initiatives. “Because, when you think about the infrastructure of the system, it truly has been dismantled to the bare bone.”
Steps taken so far aren’t enough
The U.S. has historically been a global leader in refugee resettlement and has the chance to be one again, Prescott said.
“As we’re working with some of these countries overseas to help manage these crises, there is a need for U.S. leadership on refugee resettlement to help set an example and to actually provide leadership in these areas,” Prescott said.
President Biden determines how many refugees the U.S. will welcome each year and from where. Historically, the U.S. has brought in refugees from regions such as Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
But Trump went against precedent, putting in place “discriminatory admissions categories” and “extreme vetting” policies that disproportionately impact refugees from Muslim-majority and African countries, said the International Rescue Committee report.
“It’s particularly problematic because many of those countries are the countries most in need of refugee resettlement,” Prescott said. “They are countries where wars and crises have created very dangerous conditions that people have had to flee from and this is another way of blocking those pathways.”
In his first few weeks in office, Biden took some promising steps, agencies said. He revoked Trump’s travel ban aimed at predominantly Muslim countries including Syria, Iran and Somalia, as well as African countries such as Sudan and Eritrea. On April 16, Biden administration officials said they would take it a step further by removing “discriminatory” eligibility categories.
But advocates say that is not enough. Earlier this month, more than 260 refugee leaders around the country sent a letter to Biden expressing their concern about the low cap, which comes after the “devastating impact” of “the past four years of anti-refugee policy.”
“I can’t express the amount of anguish and pain I have seen so many refugee families go through and the fight that it’s been for our refugee organizers around the country,” said Sumic, who endorsed the letter as a former refugee herself.
Sumic and her family were resettled to the U.S. from Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they were forced to flee because of their religion. During the Bosnian War, her father was held in a concentration camp. She said the only way she and her family were able to stay in touch with him was through letters delivered by the International Red Cross. Sumic later began an internship with the Red Cross, where she found her passion for advocacy work, she said.
“The United States is a generous country with a noble history of resettling refugees,” said refugee leaders in their letter to Biden. “We have been personal beneficiaries of this generosity and give back daily to the country that welcomed us.”
