YAP: Opening New Pathways to Resettlement in the US

In September 2022, President Joe Biden announced his administration’s goal of resettling up to 125,000 refugees over the next 12 months. This ambitious announcement came in the aftermath of drastic cuts to refugee admissions under the Trump administration.

Refugee admissions plummeted from 85,000 refugees in the last year of the Obama administration to just over 11,000 in 2020. As resettlement agencies drastically lost vital sources of federal funding, over 100 resettlement offices were forced to close under the Trump administration. Once resettlement agencies lost that capacity, they struggled to rebuild and welcome new refugees.