The Trump administration is on pace to resettle fewer than half of its own reduced target for refugees, according to an analysis by the International Rescue Committee, an aid group advocating for displaced people.
Last September, Donald Trump slashed the cap on admitting refugees to the US to 45,000 people, far fewer than the average of about 75,000 over the last decade, and less than half of Barack Obama’s 110,000 target for 2017.
But according to the IRC, the US will resettle only 21,292 refugees in fiscal year 2018. State Department figures show that 53,716 were resettled in fiscal year 2017.
The figures emerged as Donald Trump addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, telling business and political leaders he welcomed investment but not directly addressing the immigration policies that have drawn angry rebukes from world leaders.
“Now is the perfect time to bring your business, your jobs, your investments to the United States,” he said. “When the United States grows, so does the world.”
In 2016 Obama raised the refugee cap, in part to try to help some of the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing civil war in Syria. The IRC compared refugee demographics across years and found that, if its projections hold, only 13% of refugees arriving in the US this year will identify as Muslim, compared to 48% in 2017.
