US President Joe Biden has proposed to Congress that it increase the country's refugee admission cap to 125,000 for the next fiscal year that will begin on 1 October, according to a submitted report released by the State Department on Monday.
Africa and Near East/South Asia, which includes Afghanistan, will be two regions prioritised by the Biden administration, with 40,000 and 35,000 allocation limits assigned, respectively.
Biden also suggested taking in some 15,000 refugees from both East Asia and the Latin America/Caribbean region. Meanwhile, the allocation quota would give only 10,000 spots to newcomers arriving from Europe and Central Asia, while leaving the same number of spaces for “unallocated reserve”.
These 10,000 spare admissions can be used “if needed for additional refugee admissions from any region,” the document reads.
In the submitted report, the president’s office said that the numbers are based “on refugee resettlement needs and humanitarian policy priorities” and includes a target for “expected arrivals” of Afghan refugees following NATO's chaotic withdrawal from the country in late August.
The number of “vulnerable individuals” who are seeking settlement in the US from the so-called Northern Triangle countries – Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador – has also been taken into account by the proposal.
The new cap is marking a double increase from the current limit of 62,500 refuges which Biden set in May, raising it from former president Donald Trump’s 15,000 target.
Amnesty International USA Director Paul O’Brien, meanwhile, urged Biden to increase refugee admissions even further, to 200,000.
“Communities across the United States are ready to welcome their new neighbours, yet @POTUS continues to lag behind those eager to make this country their new home,” O’Brien wrote on Twitter Monday.
While approximately 40,000 refugees from Afghanistan have been resettled in the US in recent days, according to the Wall Street Journal report, thousands of Haitian migrants have also been gathering now in a massive makeshift camp under the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Many of them cited a recent earthquake and political turmoil that followed the killing of President Jovenel Moïse as a reason for their escape from the country, and claimed they were unwilling to return to their homeland.
On Sunday, the US started removing hundreds of the camping migrants from under the bridge and flying them back to Haiti in what was described as one of the largest expulsion operations in the history of the US.
Washington is planning to have seven expulsion flights every day beginning on Wednesday - four to Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince and three to Cap-Haitie - an anonymous US official told ABC News.
The Biden administration is facing a strong backlash over its imprudent immigration policy, that saw over 200,000 southwest border crossing in August – a four-fold rise from encounters documented a year ago.