Trump Cuts Obama’s Syrian Refugee Surge by More Than 60 Percent

WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 16: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about immigration reform in th
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President Trump has reduced the number of Syrian refugees entering the United States by more than 60 percent compared to former President Obama’s surge of Syrian nationals arriving in the country.

Since Trump’s inauguration, he has reduced the levels at which Syrian refugees are arriving in the U.S. Between January 20, 2017, and June 2019, only about 2,419 Syrian refugees have entered the country — nearly 97 percent of which are Muslim and 1.4 percent of which are Christians and Catholics.

Compare this level to Obama’s surge of Syrian refugees between January 20, 2014, and June 2016 when about 6,368 Syrian nationals were granted entry to the country. Almost 99 percent of the Syrian refugees admitted by the Obama administration during this period were Muslim and less than 0.8 percent were Christians and Catholics.

The Obama-to-Trump Syrian refugee flow to the U.S. represents a 62 percent reduction in overall levels from the terrorist-sanctioned country.

Most recently, Syrian refugee Mustafa Mousab Alowemer, who arrived in the U.S. in 2016 when Trump warned against resettling refugees from the war-torn country, was arrested and charged with plotting to bomb a Christian church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Breitbart News exclusively reported that Alowemer was in the process of seeking a green card to permanently stay in the country and eventually be eligible for American citizenship.

The reduction of mass migration from Syria is the result of Trump’s two most successful legal immigration reforms: his decreased cap on annual refugee resettlement and his travel ban.

For Fiscal Year 2019, a cap of 30,000 refugee admissions has been set — the lowest cap since 1980 — which is merely a numerical limit and not a goal intended for the federal government to reach. The cap has made the U.S. no longer the top refugee spot for the world’s migrants with Canada and the nations of the European Union now leading the globe in refugee admissions.

Similarly, Trump’s travel ban — which has cut legal immigration from Chad, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen by about 80 percent — has ensured that mass migrations from terrorist-sanctioned countries are halted.

Refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers about $1.8 billion a year and about $8.8 billion over the course of five years, research by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has revealed. Since 1980, the U.S. has admitted more than 3.5 million foreign refugees, with nearly 100,000 refugees arriving in 2016, alone, under Obama.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. 

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