joining us this morning is randy caps, he's the u.s. programs director of research at the migration policy institute here to talk about u.s. refugee policy. randy caps, what is the official policy of letting refugees into the united states right now? >> good morning, greta. officially the policy is, if someone has been persecuted against or fears persecution due to race, nationality, religion, then they can be admitted as a refugee.

>> let's look at the trump administration's policy. 15,000 cap in this fiscal year of 2021. the biden administration planned to raise the cap to 62.5 in fy 2021. fy2021. what happens happened? >> well, right now we don't have clarity on what that cap is going to be. we had an announcement early in the biden administration that they would raise it to 62.5. then we had an announcement in the middle of this month that it would remain at 15,000. and right now we're waiting to find out what it actually will be. >> i want to show our viewers, and have you react to the white house press secretary jen psaki last week on the challenges with raising the caps. >> i can say we have every intention of putting out an increased cap. we hope to do that soon in advance of may 15th. i'm obviously not going to get into private conversations between the president and members of his national security team, but i will say that one of

the things that has been on the president's mind, that i think was covered in a number of the stories, are the challenges to our resources. we've talked about this a little bit. so one of those is refugee processing in a global, big global system. and there were muscles that have been atrophied over the last few years. it's not just the federal government but a lot of important organizations around the world that help address this. his concern was, in part, is that system prepared? by setting a larger cap, which we have every intention of doing, we are sending a message. get your muscles back in action so we can welcome more refugees and continue to strive toward the goal that he has always maintained of 125,000 refugees for next year. our policy has not changed on that front. we've always wanted to reach 125. it's just a matter of what we think we can get to this year. >> randy capps, what is she referring to when she says muscle are atrophied?

>> u.s. immigration services has people they send out to screen refugees. they work with the international organizations that she referred to, to find refugees in camps and other places around the world, find out if they meet the legal definition of a refugee and also to help conduct security screenings for them. a lot of those officers were recalled during the trump administration. many of them have been deployed to the border to screen asylum cases there. and, in general, that system for screening refugees overseas really did atrophy over the last few years. >> according to your group, u.s. asylum and refugee laws state the following. resettled refugees and those granted asylum are eligible to apply for a green card after one year. refugee status is provided to people who are vetted abroad and approved for resettlement, as you were talking about. they must demonstrate persecution or credible fear of persecution.

what is the demand to come to the united states from refugees? and where across the globe? >> well, the refugee crisis is worldwide now. we have over 70 billion refugees, according to most estimates. that's the most since world war ii. the demand as you know limited. and you have countries like venezuela, south america, africa, democratic republic of congo. of course, you have syria and iraq. you have afghanistan. you have a big refugee crisis in myanmar or burma in southeast asia. it's a lot of different hot spots in the world that are generating historically large numbers of refugees. >> what do they have to do to demonstrate persecution or credible fear of persecution? >> well, they would have to document -- in many cases, they wouldn't actually have written documents but through their

stories and what could be confirmed with conditions in certain countries that they, for instance, are fleeing, you know, the violence in syria, which is government-sponsored violence. the violence in the democratic republic of congo. clearly, it's ease toy make the case from venezuela. sometimes it's government sponsored persecution. sometimes it's persecution by other ethnic or religious groups, but they would have to demonstrate that that persecution exists and that either they were subject to it or that it was likely to affect them if they had to stay in their countries. >> how long does the process take, on average, for someone to claim asylum and then actually get to the united states? >> yeah. it could take a year to two years. it's not just proving that they have a well-founded fear of persecution. it's also passing multiple security tests that the u.s. has administered since -- well, basically since the 9/11 attacks in 2001. we've really beefed up the

security in all the different national security agencies have to weigh in. it's a multi-agency process. it's very cumbersome. it takes a lot of time. >> and then once they are in the united states, how often are they checking in with authorities? >> well, once they're inside the united states, it's very expensive management. at the beginning during the first few weeks, they're basically resettled by a voluntary agencies, which are nonprofits that have some government funding matched by private funding that provide the basic instance for the first few weeks or months. then they have case managers at the office of refugee resettlement. they don't necessarily have to check in with them, but the office of refugee resettlement can provide services up to five years and then they have to check in with u.s. citizenship and immigration services after about a year when they become eligible to get a green card and go through that process. >> we showed the numbers

comparing what the trump administration wanted to do in 2021 with the biden administration's hopes. what was the impact of the refugee policy under -- what was it, and what was the impact of it under the trump administration? >> well, at the end of the obama administration, the last year they admitted about 85,000 refugees. and they had planned on a cap of 115,000. the trump administration, one of the first things that they did was to ban admission from certain muslim countries or predominantly muslim countries. countries like somalia and yemen were outright banned. and that started to bring the refugee numbers down. in most years, they didn't fill that cap. at the same time, there's less

money going to those voluntary agencies that cooperate with the u.s. government to resettle the refugees because they're funded based on the number of refugees they resettle. that part of the system atrophied. then they withdrew their refugee screening officers and redeployed many of them on asylum cases at the border. finally, the third component in the government is the u.s. department of state, which arranges the travel and provides that initial settlement assistance during the first few weeks and there were also massive cuts over the course of the trump administration, state department lost 15 to 20% of its total staff. >> is that money being restored under the biden administration? >> well, yes. the appropriations are still there. so, you know, they're working on rehiring, as i understand it, they're working on redeploying.

we have sufficient appropriations to resettle the number of people we were resettling during the obama administration. there weren't substantial budget cuts as much as staff cuts and, in fact, indeed the biden administration has suggested they want to fund office of refugee resettlement at over $4 billion as opposed to 2.5 billion in the current budget. they want to put more resources into it. >> we're talking with randy capps of the migration policy institute about refugee policy in the country. we want to get your questions and thoughts on it as well. if you're a republican, 202-748-8001. democrat, 202-748-8000. independent, 202-748-8002. if you're a refugee in the united states, we want to hear your story. dial in at 202-748-8003. you can also text us with your first name, city and state at that same number.

quasi in gettysburg, pennsylvania, an independent, we'll go to you first. good morning. >> caller: good morning. my question simply was why the u.s. can't afford to be more selective with choosing the refugees who come here. i was thinking that, you know -- i'm thinking refugee policy could be altered to become more like canada's, more selective, but accepting of the fact that a refugee is fleeing persecution. >> randy capps? >> yes, quasi, it's true that canada has a different, more selective overall immigration policy, but they also do take a large number of refugees. not as many as we have historically. although i believe it's more at the moment. but proportionate to their population they accept more than

we do historically. but there's two different groups here. immigrants in general are selected more on education and skills in canada and more on family ties in the u.s. and that system is a little more selective in canada. refugees is a subgroup and in both countries they try to select a mix of people by look ing at those who are most in need. >> we'll go to bob in boldenville, massachusetts, republican. >> caller: good morning. >> good morning. >> caller: i would like to say, you know, venezuela, guatemala and el salvador, we give them money. money that we given them goes into the pockets of the wealthy politicians, does nothing for the people or anyone in the country. all these people fleeing these countries, they're not political refugees. they are financial refugees. they're coming here because america is a really great place

to live. it's a great place to make a living. and maybe they are starving where they are, because their government doesn't take care of them. and none of them work to take care of their country. you're overwhelming our school systems with all the illegal immigrants. we have to shut down classes of all kinds, cancel sports so that we can hire dozens of teachers to teach these illegal immigrants, and then they're putting 15 and 16-year-olds in with freaking 5 and 6-year-olds because they have no education at all. >> randy capps? >> well, bob, yes, you're correct when you're talking about the governments, central america there's problems with corruption and poor governance. there's a lot of controversy over how we distribute the kind of aid that the biden administration wants to ramp up. in general we've tried -- the u.s. government has tried to provide that assistance through nongovernmental organizations and other sources so that it can't be