Here We Go Again: Refugee Resettlement Remains at Risk
During the last Trump Administration, the lowest number of refugees were resettled in U.S. history. Almost 40% of local refugee resettlement offices closed. Billions of dollars in tax and business revenue were lost, our national security suffered irreparable damage, and our promises of refuge to the world’s most vulnerable communities were found null and void.
Nothing has changed.
As we approach the Trump Administration’s second inauguration, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program remains at risk. Things will likely be worse: they’ve spent eight years refining legal strategies, drafting regulatory recommendations, and hand-selecting staff. This time, they know what they are doing.
They’ve promised a closed border and mass deportations. They’ve promised to pause refugee resettlement—completely and indefinitely—as soon as they take office.
If it’s anything like last time, refugees will pay the cost of our inaction.
Family reunifications will stall. Long-lost brothers next in line will be lost to time. Those that have waited years—and passed security screening after security screening, medical check after medical check—will be told to wait ‘just a bit longer’ and feel the truth that a promise delayed is a promise denied.
Local communities will also suffer. States will lose out on critical tax revenue. Main streets in desperate need of revival will miss out on new refugee-run small businesses. Essential services—like community hospitals—will lose a key dual-language labor pool. Pews that would’ve held refugee congregants will remain empty; desks that would’ve welcomed refugee students will lie vacant.
Cities and towns will lose their ability to resettle refugees. Like any enterprise, refugee resettlement has a bottom line: refugee arrivals do not. As refugee arrivals decline, so does funding for resettlement. Four years of low-to-no arrivals will result in shuttered programs, laid-off staff, and mass office closures everywhere from Skokie, Illinois to Spokane, Washington.
To make matters worse—when America doesn’t resettle, no one does. Other country’s resettlement commitments will decline. After Donald Trump first took office, global resettlement decreased by 60%. Refugee resettlement is at risk of fading into history: of becoming a mirage, an ideal of the past.
We’ve had eight years to prepare for a new reality of executive volatility and norm-breaking policy-making.
Yet here we are again. Why?
Because refugee admissions remains in the hands of one man—and one man only:
The President.
The President alone determines if, when, and which refugees enter the Country. There is no Congressional check on Presidential power outside of required “consultations.” No balance between branches. If President-elect Trump wants to pause refugee admissions, he can. Under existing law, there’s nothing we can do about it.
When it comes to refugee resettlement, this pattern of power can be seen across the globe: refugee programs centralize “go / no-go” decision-making in their government’s executive components. As nationalist and far-right political contingents gain control over more governments world-wide, the risks to refugee resettlement grow existential.
We’ve known this.
We’ve known this is a fundamental flaw—an achilles heel—in the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program since the very beginning.
For the first three years of the Refugee Program—1980, 1981, and 1982—Congress enshrined a maximum refugee ceiling of 50,000 refugees per year. While this was written as a ceiling in statute, it was interpreted as a floor—a minimum—by Congressional contemporaries intent on meeting the newly-passed refugee goal.
It was seen as a “minimum annualized” “normal flow” critical for “forward planning” and to “prevent disruptions.” Coincidentally, 50,000 refugees is also the point of minimum viability for the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program: the minimum number of refugees the U.S. must resettle each year to keep office doors open and lights on.
We knew this, when the Guaranteed Refugee Admissions Ceiling Enhancement Act (“GRACE” Act) was introduced for the first time. This bill would require that the U.S. admit a minimum number of refugees each year, no matter who sits in the Oval Office. We knew this when it was most recently reintroduced in 2024—and gained only eighteen total cosponsors, with zero cosponsors in the House.
We know this—and yet, we’ve never made a serious effort to set a floor for refugee admissions and save resettlement.
The GRACE Act has never made it through a single chamber of Congress. Never been up for a single committee vote. Never been seriously incorporated into a single must-pass vehicle. No Republican—in the House or the Senate—has ever signed on as a cosponsor. If the GRACE Act is going to work, appropriators on both sides of the aisle need to support the bill. A President cannot admit refugees if Congress doesn’t appropriate funds to do so.
Some will say no Republican ever would—or ever will.
We beg to differ.
Republican voters support refugees. 71% of U.S. voters believe the United States should have a refugee program—including 58% of Republicans. Among those Republicans that personally know a refugee, support increases by almost 20 percent.
Republican state governors and legislators support refugees. During the first Trump Administration, 18 out of 26 Republican governors pledged their support for refugees—despite the President’s opposition. Republican state legislators in Utah have voted–largely unanimously–for bills that would support refugees as they transition into the public school system, learn English, apply to college, and find jobs that take full advantage of their professional skill sets. Republicans in Georgia have similarly worked to expand access to education for refugees. Republicans in Nevada’s Senate voted unanimously to expand language access services for refugees during the Covid-19 pandemic. Republicans in Virginia voted unanimously to allow qualified refugee doctors to fill critical healthcare gaps.
Republican members of Congress support refugees. Republican Senators Graham, Moran, Murkowski, Wicker, Tillis, Mullin, Cassidy, Risch, and Crapo all cosponsored a bill that would allow Afghan refugees a pathway to permanency, following the 2021 evacuation. Senator Young has long been an advocate for Rohingya refugees, due to Indiana’s Burmese population. After visiting a U.S. base hosting Afghan refugees, Senator Johnson testified that “the vast majority are here wanting what we want: freedom and opportunity to raise their families in safety and security with opportunity.” Senator Paul has previously asked President Trump for refuge for a persecuted Christian in Pakistan. Senator Grassley called for Iowa to welcome Ukrainian refugees. Senators Cornyn and Collins cosponsored the “Bridging the Gap for New Americans Act,” a bill that would support refugees as they seek employment opportunities equal to their professional skill sets. Senator Cotton introduced bills to support refugees from Hong Kong and religious refugees from Syria. And that’s only in the Senate.
Immigration reform is notoriously stalled in Congress. But saving refugee resettlement doesn’t have to be.
Here at Save Resettlement, we’re realist idealists.
We know what it takes to pass pro-refugee bills in overwhelmingly red legislatures during the post-Trump era.
The incentives for action have to be greater than the incentives for inaction.
Right now: they’re not.
We don’t talk to Republicans—the right Republicans—as much as we should, though significant bipartisan progress has been made through efforts to advance legislation that would allow our Afghan allies to remain in the U.S. permanently.
Like much of the humanitarian sector, we don’t work on a ten or twenty-year timeline. We’re rightly focused on mitigating the cost of damage happening now. But we stay reactionary at our own expense. Leaders and donors need to do more to incentivize and enable long-term policy and advocacy strategies focused on systems-level cures. And they need to do so now.
We don’t talk about the costs of historically-low refugee arrivals enough. There are only a handful of articles covering the closures of local resettlement offices during the first Trump Administration. Resettlement offices are the connective tissue between Members of Congress and the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Constituents, city council members, mayors, state legislators, and governors need to call for a refugee admissions floor—especially as offices in their districts close and their cities and towns lose the ability to resettle refugees. As employers lose key workers, churches lose devoted congregants, and schools lose star students, the cost of closing resettlement offices will grow clear. The incentives for action will increase—at some point, overwhelming the incentives for inaction. At home is where it hurts.
Local electeds and their constituent communities need to know that their refugee resettlement offices will likely be forced to cut programming, lay off staff, or close altogether over the next four years.
If they don’t know that resettlement is at risk, why would they act? Why would they attempt what we have categorised as a bipartisan impossibility? Why would our members of Congress prioritise a resettlement floor amidst the chaos that is sure to come?
Over the Next Four Years
Over the next four years, Save Resettlement will track three things: refugee arrivals, funding support for resettlement, and the continued presence of resettlement offices—state by state, week by week. The cost of resettlement’s collapse needs to be clear.
We’ll call city council members, mayors, state legislators, and members of Congress that represent resettlement agencies—and let them know that it’s now or never for a refugee admissions floor. We’ll talk to movable Republicans. And we’ll do it for as long as it takes.
The Trump era is only beginning. The executive branch will continue to swing back and forth between resettlement-friendly faces and resettlement foes every four to eight years.
This isn’t a historical abbreviation; this is our new reality. It’s time we acted like it.
If you don’t want resettlement to be caught here—again—subscribe to Save Resettlement.
Website coming soon. Next week: Resettlement at risk in Alabama.