The new President of the United States Donald Trump has suspended by decree all arrivals of refugees into the country. The measure was to come into force on January 27 but is already applied.
Thousands of refugees waiting to come to the United States are seeing their hopes dashed after the draconian measures against immigration taken by Donald Trump upon coming to power. The American president had suspended by decree on Monday for 90 days all arrivals in the United States of refugees, a measure which was to come into force from January 27.
But according to a State Department document consulted Wednesday by AFP, “all previously planned refugee trips to the United States are canceled.” “No travel reservations will be made, processing of files and all activity before departure are suspended,” it is written in the note dated Tuesday.
The UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) is also being asked not to move refugees to transit centers. This concerns thousands of people across the world – such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma and Sudan – some of whom already had their plane tickets in their pockets and who endured a long admission process.
Refugees already settled in the United States will, however, continue to benefit from the services provided, and the measure does not concern a special visa program, particularly for Afghans who worked for the United States before the fall of the local government in 2021.
Drastic measures criticized
Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who is a member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, was alarmed by the measures taken by Donald Trump, stressing that welcoming refugees was “a fundamental American value”.
-“The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has long enjoyed bipartisan support and is a tool to save the lives of the most vulnerable refugees, while strengthening the security of Americans by promoting stability around the world,” he said. she said in a press release. She also expressed concern that Afghans were also being left in limbo with canceled flights.
President Donald Trump, faithful to his campaign promises, issued on the first day of his mandate a flurry of decrees ranging from the proclamation of a state of emergency on the Mexican border to the questioning of land and announced a vast program of expulsion of illegal immigrants, in order to fight against what he described as an “invasion” of migrants.
“Over the past four years, the United States has been inundated with record migratory flows, particularly under the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP),” the American president wrote in his decree, emphasizing that the States -United States “do not have the capacity to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular refugees”.
Indeed, the previous administration of Joe Biden had made welcoming refugees a priority. In fiscal year 2024, some 100,000 refugees resettled in the United States, the highest number in three decades, according to official figures. Now, in the same decree, the Republican president has even revoked a measure taken by his predecessor concerning the admission of so-called “climatic” refugees linked to natural disasters.
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