Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com writer Patrick Goodenough has long been obsessed with the issue of refugees coming to the U.S. -- specifically, that there are too many of them in general, too many non-Christians and not enough Christians. That obsession has continued through this year as well.
In April, Goodenough complained that "the Biden administration is reversing its decision announced on Friday to keep the number of refugees to be resettled in fiscal year 2021 at the record-low 15,000 cap set by President Trump last fall," which came after "after refugee resettlement groups expressed “shock” and outrage” over the administration’s “broken promise” to significantly raise the 15,000 ceiling set by President Trump for the fiscal year. Goodenough once again defended Trump (as he is wont to do), this time over Secretary of State Antony Blinken's claim that refugees from Africa and the Middle East had effectively been blocked under Trump:
But those claims distort the facts.
It is true that Trump’s PD of October 27 last year did not set out specific allocations for refugees from each of the five regions traditionally used in the U.S. refugee program: Africa, East Asia, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Near East and South Asia.
But the criteria that it did use would have covered refugees from all parts of the world, including Africa and the Middle East. They included: those fleeing religious persecution; those falling into a category listed in the 1990 Lautenberg Amendment and its 2004 extension, the Specter Amendment; and those falling into a category in the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act of 2007.
The fact remains, however -- whether Goodenough wants to admit it or not -- that Trump sought throughout his administration to drastically cut the number of refugees allowed into the U.S., particularly from Africa and the Middle East.
And even with that denial, Goodenough went on to complain in a May 4 article that "President Biden’s new determination on refugee admissions, announced on Monday, indicates that when it comes to resettling refugees in the U.S., his administration is prioritizing those from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia over other parts of the world."
As the Biden administration's refugee policy firmed up even more as the year continued, Goodenough found new reasons to complain in a Sept. 21 article:
The Biden administration informed Congress on Monday that the United States will admit up to 125,000 refugees in fiscal year 2022, doubling the ceiling of 62,500 that it had hoped to resettle in FY 2021.
An admission ceiling of 125,000 refugees would be the highest set by any administration in almost three decades.
[...]
The move comes after Trump administration reduced the annual refugee admission cap for five consecutive years, each time setting a new record low ceiling: 50,000 refugees in FY 2017, 45,000 in FY 2018, 30,000 in FY 2019, 18,000 in FY 2020, and 15,000 in FY 2021.
But Goodenough found something to cheer in an Oct. 6 article -- that Biden couldn't reverse Trump's unusually low refugee quotas in time to get more refugees in before the fiscal year ended:
Despite a last-minute escalation during the final month of the fiscal year, the Biden administration in FY 2021 oversaw the smallest resettlement of refugees since the modern-day refugee admissions program was established in 1980.
A total of 11,411 refugees were admitted to the United States during the year that ended on September 30 – 403 fewer than the previous record low, recorded during the last full fiscal year of the Trump administration.
The month of September alone saw one-third of the annual number of resettled refugees arrive – 3,774 refugees out of the total 11,411. The largest contingents came from the Democratic Republic of Congo (1,442 refugees), Syria (705), and Sudan (360).
Goodenough went on to join his CNS co-workers in grumbling about refugees coming from Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal, making a big deal abou h ow "Many of those are “parolees” – Afghans who did not work for the U.S. and so are not eligible for SIVs, but who have been granted temporary admission on humanitarian grounds."
