Lifting refugee cap is moral duty, and welcome news for Iranian family in Tacoma area
Facing pressure from fellow Democrats and embarrassing comparisons to Trumpian policies, President Biden did the right thing Monday by raising the annual cap on refugees admitted into the US.
Months of mixed signals, including failure to mention refugees in his Joint Address to Congress last week, gave way to Biden’s announcement that the ceiling will go up to 62,500. That’s more than quadruple the unconscionable cap of 15,000 he’d continued from the previous administration, but still far from the 110,000 high water mark during President Obama’s last year in office.
For now the new cap is mostly symbolic, since our country’s refugee capacity atrophied badly under Trump. But it serves as a declaration of values and begins to reduce uncertainty for resettlement agencies, such as Tacoma-based Lutheran Community Services Northwest (LCSNW).
For the past four years, the flow of displaced persons into Washington state from all but a few countries declined to a trickle, choked by President Trump’s xenophobic refugee cap and his ban on admitting people from several mostly Muslim countries.
By maintaining that cap, Biden frustrated Democratic allies and agencies like LCSNW, Pierce County’s only refugee placement provider. Also watching anxiously were members of the relatively small local population of refugees from long-suffering regions.
Among them: an Iranian mother and her adult son who arrived here in early 2020. Sedigheh Rezaei, 62, and Navid Niroomand, 36, fled Iran in 2013, followed by an agonizing seven-year wait in Turkey.
The Fircrest residents are eager for their Iranian friends, many still stuck in limbo, to enjoy our land of opportunity.
“I’m sure each country is not perfect,” Navid told us, alternating between English and his native Farsi, with a translator’s help. “But people can make a good life here.”
Trained as an engineer at an Iranian university, Navid gladly accepted blue-collar work in Pierce County, first making pallets at a wood products plant in Puyallup, now making doors at Milgard Manufacturing in Tacoma. His mother, an elementary school teacher in western Iran, works at a home furnishings store.
Being Christians in an Islamic republic made them targets of government repression. After fleeing Iran, they went through rigorous US refugee screening protocols. They were scheduled to fly to America four years ago, only to see the flight canceled when Trump entered the White House. Iran was one of the seven original countries on Trump’s restrictions list, which Biden has since wisely terminated.
“We were very worried,” Navid recalled about their protracted period of statelessness, “but we were not angry.”
At LCSNW, Puget Sound refugee placements dropped steadily between the Obama and Trump administrations — from 589 in 2015, to 360 in 2020, according to Mouammar Abouagila, the agency’s resettlement director.
More striking was how homogenous the new arrivals were. Agencies had little choice but to focus on family reunifications, primarily from Ukraine and Russia, rather than their usual mission of resettling people from the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia who face persecution, even death.
“In 2018-19, we were lucky to see one Iraqi refugee or one Somali,” Abouagila told us.
In our view, a renewed commitment to refugees of diverse ethnicities is a moral duty. But the US can’t fully reopen the pipeline right away; Abouagila noted that agencies must rebuild the infrastructure of jobs, transportation and volunteer support needed to help new arrivals put their best foot forward.
That’s really important in the Tacoma area, where LCSNW is striving to develop a stronger refugee network; more than 90 percent of its placements are historically centered in King and Snohomish counties.
To that end, Biden did well to reset admissions above 60,000 for the current fiscal year. He should raise the ceiling again, above 90,000, starting in October, and commit to rebuilding capacity through the US Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Meantime, the rest of us mustn’t be misled by a false narrative of open borders; we should cling to core values inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. Yes, the US needs comprehensive immigration reform, but until then we can’t slam the door on asylum seekers.
We certainly can’t keep turning our backs on refugees. They’ve undergone a painstaking, legal process to reach our shores through an established international system of resettlement —undaunted by years of waiting and yearning to breathe free.
“I love America,” Navid Niroomand said, “before and now.”
News Tribune editorials reflect the views of our Editorial Board and are written by opinion editor Matt Misterek. Other board members are: Stephanie Pedersen, News Tribune president and editor; Matt Driscoll, local columnist; and Jim Walton, community representative. The Editorial Board operates independently from the newsroom and does not influence the work of news reporting and editing staffs. For questions about the board or our editorials, email matt.misterek@thenewstribune.com
This story was originally published May 4, 2021 at 5:00 AM.