{"id":44310,"date":"2020-11-21T16:22:23","date_gmt":"2020-11-21T16:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=44310"},"modified":"2020-11-21T16:22:23","modified_gmt":"2020-11-21T16:22:23","slug":"refugee-advocates-urge-biden-to-rebuild-us-asylum-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=44310","title":{"rendered":"Refugee advocates urge Biden to \u2018rebuild\u2019 US asylum system"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Refugee advocates in the United States are calling on President-elect Joe Biden to reverse some of Donald Trump\u2019s most restrictive immigration policies, including historic-low admission quotas for asylum seekers, when he takes office in January.<\/p>\n

Rebuilding the US refugee programme may take time, said Becca Heller, executive director of the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) advocacy group, but it is critical for thousands of asylum seekers waiting for their claims to be heard.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe refugee program may take some time to rebuild, but the thousands of refugees who have already been waiting in limbo for years don\u2019t have any more time,\u201d Heller told Al Jazeera in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n

The US Refugee Admissions Program was severely limited under the Trump administration, which has enacted increasingly restrictive refugee admission quotas and slashed<\/a> refugee acceptance by more than 80 percent from the last year of former President Barack Obama\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n

IRAP released recommendations on Friday for the incoming Biden administration to address refugee and asylum seeker admissions into the country \u2013 and \u201crebuild\u201d that federal admissions programme.<\/p>\n

The recommendations, Expanding Complementary Pathways for Refugees and Displaced Persons: A Blueprint for the US Government (PDF<\/a>), point to six main areas where action can be taken, including family reunification, private sponsorship and labour pathways for refugees.<\/p>\n

Increased targets<\/h2>\n

Biden has signalled his openness to expanding refugee admissions.<\/p>\n

He promised to set a refugee admissions target of 125,000 a year and work with Congress to establish a minimum admissions number of at least 95,000 refugees annually in June, on World Refugee Day, in line with historical averages.<\/p>\n

This would be a sharp change from Trump\u2019s measures: the Republican president\u2019s final presidential determination on refugee admissions to the US set the cap at 15,000, the lowest<\/a> since the Refugee Act of 1980 was enacted.<\/p>\n

Biden also reportedly plans on restoring DACA<\/a>, the Obama-era programme that protects from deportation undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children, and end the so-called \u201cMuslim Ban\u201d that now bars travellers from 13 countries, not all of which have a Muslim majority.<\/p>\n

The incoming Biden administration is also expected to put in place a 100-day freeze on deportations<\/a> until updated guidance is issued.<\/p>\n

US President-elect Joe Biden removes his face mask to speak in Wilmington, Delaware, on November 16 [Kevin Lamarque\/Reuters]<\/figure>\n

IRAP\u2019s recommendations are lengthy, given the complexity of US asylum and refugee resettlement programmes, which work with a wide array of organisations, from the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) to local governments.<\/p>\n

Many local resettlement agencies receive funds in line with the number of refugees that arrive in the US.<\/p>\n

That means that lower refugee resettlement admissions during the Trump administration have financially strained many of these groups, causing some to close<\/a>, which could make resettlement more difficult in certain areas.<\/p>\n

But IRAP welcomed Biden\u2019s initial promises and emphasised that the \u201cnew administration should make efforts on Day One to put programs in place that reunite families and protect those in danger\u201d, Heller said.<\/p>\n

Among its recommendations, the group wanted Biden to issue executive orders that address \u201cundue delays\u201d and state that \u201cfamily unity is a national priority\u201d.<\/p>\n

It also wanted Biden to help mitigate issues resulting from Trump\u2019s restrictive policies, which have created bottlenecks and kept families apart \u2013 either through forcible separation or extended application processing times.<\/p>\n

\u2018A messy patchwork\u2019<\/h2>\n

JC Hendrickson, senior director of public policy at the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a global relief organisation that helps with refugee resettlement in the US, told Al Jazeera he welcomed Biden\u2019s promises to expand refugee admissions and rescind Trump policies.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the US asylum system needs a good hard look. It\u2019s a messy patchwork of different laws and statutes and regulations,\u201d Hendrickson told Al Jazeera in an interview.<\/p>\n

The IRC has released its own recommendations, both on issues on the US-Mexico border and the refugee admissions programme, including a new, in-depth study of the programme.<\/p>\n

No such study has been conducted since 2005, and Hendrickson said the global need for resettlement has increased during the past 15 years, spurred in large part by conflict, economic fluctuations, climate change and other issues.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many asylum seekers who reach the US-Mexico border come from countries that are grappling with these issues, whether it be security concerns from organised crime or the recent hurricanes that have battered Central America.<\/p>\n

But at the border, they meet \u201cpolicies being determined by cruelty\u201d that limit \u201caccess to long-standing pathways\u201d to safely seek asylum, Hendrickson said.<\/p>\n

That includes the \u201cRemain in Mexico\u201d policy that forces asylum seekers to stay in Mexico until their court hearings can be held in the US.<\/p>\n

While Biden has much to do in his first 100 days \u2013 an early measure for judging a new president\u2019s effectiveness \u2013 Hendrickson said it will be necessary to create \u201ca series of new policies\u201d to protect asylum seekers.<\/p>\n

Addressing the issues in the US asylum and refugee systems facing \u201cis a huge task\u201d, he said. \u201cThe world will be watching how we manage this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Refugee advocates in the United States are calling on President-elect Joe Biden to reverse some of Donald Trump\u2019s most restrictive immigration policies, including historic-low admission quotas for asylum seekers, when he takes office in January. Rebuilding the US refugee programme may take time, said Becca Heller, executive director of the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotlight_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}