Julie Hirschfeld Davis, New York Times, Aug. 1, 2018

The White House is considering a second sharp reduction in the number of refugees who can be resettled in the United States, picking up where President Trump left off in 2017 in scaling back a program intended to offer protection to the world’s most vulnerable people, according to two former government officials and another person familiar with the talks.

This time, the effort is meeting with less resistance from inside the Trump administration because of the success that Stephen Miller, the president’s senior policy adviser and an architect of his anti-immigration agenda, has had in installing allies in key positions who are ready to sign off on deep cuts.

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The program’s fate could hinge on Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state. His department has traditionally been a strong advocate for the refugee program, but Mr. Pompeo is now being advised by two senior aides who are close to Mr. Miller and share his hard-line approach, according to the people briefed on the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal internal deliberation about a decision that has yet to be completed.

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{snip} A “migration crisis” was gripping the country, the official said, and the administration was instead prioritizing asylum cases in which a person is already in the United States and claims a credible fear of returning home.

Refugees, by contrast, are generally people outside the country who have met that bar and are seeking resettlement in the United States.

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The official noted that there was a backlog of 700,000 asylum cases, asserting that “most asylum seekers are illegal immigrants,” and that there were high costs and “enormous security challenges” in admitting people to the United States on humanitarian grounds.

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Another steep reduction in refugees would be the latest piece of a multipronged effort by the president — devised and driven in large part by Mr. Miller — not just to crack down on illegal immigration, but also to fundamentally change the face of legal immigration in America.

The approach would move away from a system that prioritizes diversity, family ties and providing protection for persecuted people and toward one singularly focused on merit and skills. {snip}

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The White House is considering lowering the cap on refugees admitted to the United States to 25,000 for the 2019 fiscal year. The cap for 2018 was 45,000 refugees, but the administration is on pace to admit far fewer; just over 18,000 were admitted through the first 10 months of the

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Mr. Trump has nominated a third like-minded person, Robert Mortensen, to take the top refugee post at the State Department. But his work at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that pushes for less migration, and his anti-immigrant writings and messaging have incited outrage among refugee groups who say he should be disqualified. He has yet to be confirmed.

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Proponents of scaling back the refugee program argue that they are merely acknowledging that the government does not have the capacity to vet and admit the numbers of refugees it has in the past.

They point to this year’s low numbers — the State Department said 16,230 had been resettled as of the end of June, putting the program on pace to admit only around 21,000 this year — as evidence, although those figures followed a year in which refugee admissions were frozen for months on end while officials conducted reviews that Mr. Trump ordered.

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But throughout its history, the refugee program has been seen instead as a component of American foreign policy. It has allowed the military to protect translators in Iraq who have risked their lives to work for American forces, for instance, as well as others who have aided United States missions around the world. Resettlement of those groups has also slowed to a trickle this year.

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