Number of refugees coming to US drops by two-thirds despite failure of Trump travel bans

Donald Trump’s orders to limit refugee resettlement may have been thwarted by massive protests and a watchful judiciary, but refugee admission rates have dipped since then anyway.

There were roughly one-third the number of refugee arrivals in April compared to October of last year, according to State Department data analysed by the Pew Research Centre.

"This decline has been felt by 46 of the 50 states, and only four states had a higher number of refugees in April 2017 than they had in October 2016”, Phillip Connor, a research associate at Pew, said. “What is significant here is that we had a decline nationally for the first five months straight of the fiscal year, which is the longest consecutive decrease on record".

Mr Trump issued an executive order in January to limit the number of refugees allowed into the United States to 50,000 in 2017, roughly half the ceiling that his predecessor sought. He had also called for a 120 day stall on allowing refugees to enter the US unless the State Department had formally approved their travels. Both orders have been tied up in the courts.

The reduced rate of incoming refugees has led some state refugee resettlement assistance organisations to lay off staff and scale down their operations at a time when the world is experiencing the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. More than 5 million Syrians have registered as refugees with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which processes applications and sends them to the State Department and other similar agencies in different countries.

When the State Department receives referrals from UNHCR the applications are vetted by several agencies including the Department of Homeland Security’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services. The process can take up to 24 months before the US approves new refugee resettlement in the United States.