President Obama on Tuesday formally authorized the State Department to admit 85,000 refugees fleeing humanitarian crises worldwide in fiscal 2016, which begins Thursday. That is up from 70,000 in fiscal 2015.
The increase “is justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest,” Obama wrote in his presidential determination on refugee admissions.
However, the increase is not specifically allotted just to Syrian refugees, and instead is spread around the world.
The breakdown of how many qualifying refugees will be allowed admittance to the U.S. by region is as follows: Near East/South Asia, 34,000; Africa, 25,000; East Asia, 13,000; “Unallocated Reserve,” 6,000; Europe and Central Asia, 4,000; and Latin America/the Caribbean, 3,000.
The biggest regional increase went to Africa, which last year had 17,000 slots. The “unallocated reserve” pot jumped 4,000 and Europe/Central Asia gained 3,000 spots. Near East/South Asia, which encompasses the Middle East, only got 1,000 new visas. Latin America/the Caribbean lost 1,000.
The undesignated category “shall be allocated to regional ceilings, as needed,” according to the memo. “Upon providing notification to the Judiciary committees of the Congress, you are hereby authorized to use unallocated admissions in regions where the need for additional admissions arises,” Obama told Secretary of State John Kerry, to whom the annual memo is addressed.
After he notifies Congress, Kerry may “transfer unused admissions allocated to a particular region to one or more other regions, if there is a need for greater admissions for the region or regions to which the admissions are being transferred.”
