Religious groups react to rumors the U.S. will stop admitting refugees. What would it mean for U.S. values?

The Council on Foreign Relations writes that a rise of “anti-immigrant political movements in many affluent countries where refugees have sought asylum or been resettled” limits the ability for people to seek asylum. Many of the dangers refugees seek to escape have not disappeared; asylum claims have plummeted. In Europe, there were 74,000 fewer 1st-time asylum-seekers in 2018 than 2017, according to the European Commission. 

“We are once again in a humanitarian refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions,” Walter Mondale, former Minnesota senator and vice president, wrote in The Washington Post. Like many others, he urged Americans to voice their support for an increase in refugee admissions. Mondale repeated the words he spoke at a Geneva convention 1979: “Let us do something meaningful, something profound, to stem this misery.”