Despite announcing a lower refugee-resettlement ceiling for the coming fiscal year, the Trump administration continues to support the UN's Global Compact on Refugees, which is in total contradiction to the administration's refugee policies.
The final text of the Global Compact on Refugees was released late July. This refugee compact was expected to be adopted by UN member states (including the United States) at the 73rd General Assembly in New York later this week, but the vote is now expected to take place in December. The UN refugee compact seeks for more resettlement places while using expedited processing modalities; facilitating access to family reunification for resettled refugees and encouraging complementary pathways for refugees through private sponsorship programs (such as student scholarships, employment opportunities etc.) that would be additional to regular resettlement and are harder to monitor.
The Trump administration, on the other hand, announced the FY 2019 refugee ceiling of 30,000, down from 45,000 for 2018 (both ceilings count as the lowest ceiling determinations since the creation of the refugee resettlement program following the Refugee Act of 1980). The reasoning behind such low ceilings is two-fold: Improving the screening and vetting of resettlement candidates (which means slower admissions) and reducing the untenable asylum backlog by reassigning refugee officers to asylum cases.
The Trump administration's continued commitment to the UN agreement is puzzling. ...
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