Fourteen months after the Obama administration backed a push at the U.N. for global responsibility-sharing for refugees and migrants, the Trump administration has pulled out of the initiative.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said it “is simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty.”
The weekend announcement comes amid a sharp drop in the number of refugees admitted to the United States during the first two months of fiscal year 2018.
A total of 3,108 refugees have been resettled since Oct. 1 – a drop of 489 percent from the first two months of the last fiscal year (Oct.-Nov. 2016), when the Obama administration admitted 18,300 refugees.
The most striking change between the refugee admissions in the two-month period this year and last was the relative differences in size of the contingents from Syria, Somalia and Iraq.
In Oct.-Nov. 2016, 2,259 Syrians (97.6 percent Muslim, 1.7 percent Christian), 2,463 Somalis (99.9 percent Muslim) and 2,262 Iraqis (75 percent Muslim, 17.3 percent Christian, 7.4 percent Yazidi) were resettled.
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