A few days ago, Politico reported that senior figures in the Trump Administration argued for significant cuts to the U.S. refugee resettlement program in a meeting with Homeland Security officials. The proposal, Politico reports, would implement a “virtual shutdown of refugee admissions next year,” and, later in the meeting, Homeland Security officials reportedly proposed a less significant cut down to between 3,000 and 10,000 admissions. The report follows previous yearly cuts to refugee admissions by the Trump administration, with the latest this year reducing the number by a third of the previous year’s levels to 30,000. Pew Research notes in an analysis of data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that since the passage of the 1980 U.S. Refugee Act, the U.S. has taken in 3 million of the more than 4 million refugees resettled worldwide. 2017, however, marked the first year since then that the U.S. resettled fewer refugees than the rest of the world.

Joining us to talk about the news is executive director of local refugee resettlement organization RefugeeOne Melineh Kano.