Refugee Inflow to Drop by 40 Percent for 2020; 30K Resettled in U.S. This Year

The refugee inflow into the United States is set to be reduced by at least 40 percent for 2020 compared to this year’s admission totals, where 30,000 refugees were resettled across the nation.

President Trump has signed off on the refugee resettlement program’s cap for Fiscal Year 2020, the Associated Press confirmed. For the year, no more than 18,000 refugees will be resettled in the U.S. — an at least 80 percent reduction to former President Obama’s refugee inflow. This is merely a numerical limit and not a goal federal officials are supposed to reach.

Compared to this year, Trump will be reducing refugee admissions by at least 40 percent. For Fiscal Year 2019, which ran between October 1, 2018, and September 30, 2019, a total of 30,000 refugees were resettled across the U.S.

More than 12,900 refugees resettled this year came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Another 4,900 arrived from Burma, and more than 4,400 arrived from Ukraine.

The majority of these refugees are either Christians, Catholics, Protestants, or other sects of Protestantism. Meanwhile, the nearly 1,200 refugees who arrived from Afghanistan this year are Muslim.

More than half of all refugees resettled this year arrived in 12 states. Texas absorbed the most refugees with nearly 2,500 being resettled there. Washington, New York, California, Ohio, Kentucky, North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Illinois each absorbed more than 1,000 refugees this year.

As Breitbart News has reported, the U.S. has permanently resettled more than 1.7 million foreign nationals and refugees through a variety of humanitarian programs — a foreign population larger than the size of Philadelphia, which has 1.5 million residents.

Refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years, according to the latest research. Over the course of five years, an estimated 16 percent of all refugees admitted will need housing assistance paid for by taxpayers.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.