Trump’s Policies Are Harming Refugees Worldwide

His administration's near-ban on refugee admissions is having a destructive domino effect in front-line countries.Since the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S. resettlement program has provided safe harbor to more than 3.4 million refugees. This number might look large, but it represents relativel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Foreign Policy in Focus 2019, p.1-1
Main Author: Frelick, Bill
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
Access to education
Diplomacy
Humanitarian aid
Kenyatta, Uhuru
Obama, Barack
Refugees
Relocation
Trump, Donald J
Vietnam War
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Summary:His administration's near-ban on refugee admissions is having a destructive domino effect in front-line countries.Since the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S. resettlement program has provided safe harbor to more than 3.4 million refugees. This number might look large, but it represents relatively few of the millions of refugees in the past four decades who were fortunate enough to be thrown this life preserver.Resettlement is not only about rescuing individuals. It's a critical tool, among others, the U.S. government has used to leverage support for countries on the front lines of refugee crises, and to convince them to uphold the rights of the vast majority of refugees living in camps and ghettos who may never be resettled.President Donald Trump's slashing of resettlement numbers to the lowest point in the program's history has upended the delicate burden-sharing equilibrium between the United States and front-line countries that has sustained millions of refugees during their protracted exile. Hundreds of thousands of refugee lives hang in that teetering balance.Plummeting resettlement numbers have had an enormous impact on all refugee groups - among them Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, and Sudanese - but perhaps on none more so than Somali refugees, nearly a million of whom live in austere and precarious conditions in Kenya, Yemen, and Ethiopia.
ISSN:1524-1939