We add this to the complex immigration situation going on….
One would assume that this will now drop into Vice President Harris’s in box….
Democrats are pushing the administration to explain why President Joe Biden has not signed paperwork raising the cap on the number of refugees allowed in the United States, which has put hundreds in limbo even as the Biden administration had promised to reverse former President Donald Trump’s policies.
The concern comes as the White House is dealing with an influx of migrants on the southern border and as Republicans are attacking Biden on his handling of the issue.
The Biden administration announced back in February it would raise the ceiling on the number of refugees coming into the United States from 15,000, a low during the Trump administration, to 62,500. They also announced they would change who would be eligible to come. But, the formal paperwork, which must be signed by the President, has gone unsigned.
“I wish (Biden) would do it. Obviously, we need to establish as much normality as we can at the border and — to have a normal process is the better way to go,” Sen. Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, told CNN. “I know we’ve communicated with the White House as recently as yesterday, so I know they know our concern.”….
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Every year — in consultation with Congress– the President has to approve of the number of refugees that could be permitted into the country. The number is a ceiling. In this case it does not mean the administration must admit all 62,500 refugees it says it could allow.
The Trump administration reconfigured the caps when Trump was in office so that it affected who could come. The program they designed had delayed the approval of a lot of refugees from Africa who no longer qualified under the administration’s requirements. When the Biden administration announced in February they would reverse those restrictions, groups began moving ahead with processing those refugees.