The rise of Nationalism and the election of Donald Trump have resulted in an attitude shift and policy changes that directly affect the way the United States handles both refugees and immigration in general.

Perhaps the most infamous of these policies was Trump’s 2017 executive orders stopping all refugee admissions and temporarily banning people from eight countries, such that “most citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea [were] barred from entering the United States, along with some groups of people from Venezuela.” (Note: This is his third travel related ban, two of which were temporary and have since expired).

However, the US Court of Appeals overturned this indefinite ban after the state of Hawaii sued over grounds that “Mr. Trump had exceeded the authority Congress had given him over immigration and had violated a part of the immigration laws barring discrimination in the issuance of visas”. The Supreme Court has decided to hear the case in order to determine whether this ban is legally within presidential authority.

With a Supreme Court ruling due in June 2018, we wanted to examine refugee statistics to understand who’s applying for asylum in the United States, who’s getting accepted, and how our refugee policies compare to other nations.