Simon Cox Blog: It’s Official: Fewer Persecuted Christians Find Refuge in America Under Trump

Wednesday, 12 July 2017

It’s Official: Fewer Persecuted Christians Find Refuge in America Under Trump

We’ve hit the president’s new resettlement ceiling of 50,000. Here’s who made it in.

Approximately 14,000 fewer Christian refugees will arrive in the United States this fiscal year, as President Donald Trump’s policies lead to the fewest resettlements in a decade.

Today, resettlement agencies hit Trump’s new ceiling of 50,000 refugees, three months before the end of the federal government’s fiscal year on September 30. And as CT predicted, Christians fell far short of last year’s intake.

“At this point, World Relief expects that the only additional arriving cases after today will be individuals who have a close family member already in the US,” Matthew Soerens, US director of church mobilization for the National Association of Evangelicals’ humanitarian arm, told CT. (“Close family” means a parent, parent-in-law, spouse, child, adult son or daughter, son- or daughter-in-law, or sibling, according to State Department guidelines.)

A total of 22,637 Christians have been given refuge in the US in 2017, compared to 36,822 last year, according to State Department data.

The numbers include 1,795 Baptists, 358 Methodists, and 5 Lutherans, along with those who simply identified as Christian (7,751), Protestant (2,034), or evangelical Christian (425).

Last fiscal year, the US welcomed 2,363 Baptists, 1,127 Methodists, and 31 Lutherans. About 15,630 refugees in fiscal year 2016 identified as Christian, 2,884 as Protestant, and 354 as evangelical Christian.

The numbers are down across the board—2017 saw fewer Muslims (21,763 down from 38,533 in fiscal year 2016), Hindus (1,080 down from 1,967) and Buddhists (1,520 down from 3,108). There were 403 Jehovah’s Witnesses, down from 699 last year.

“Over the past decade, more of those admitted to the US have ...