Daily US Times: President Biden has lifted the US annual refugee cap, bowing to backlash from his fellow Democrats after he initially opted to stick by the Trump-era figure.
The president is raising the cap from 15,000 to 62,500 after outrage from refugee agencies and progressives.
President Biden said the lower figure “did not reflect America’s values”.
Reports said Mr Biden was concerned about letting in more people amid a record influx at the US-Mexico border.
The new figure of 62,500 “erases the historically low number” set by former President Trump, Biden said on Monday.
The Democratic president also said his administration intended to raise the number of refugees admitted next year to 125,000.
But Mr Biden acknowledged the “sad truth” that the United States would not achieve either target this year or next, arguing that his administration had to “undo the damage” of the previous one.
The US president said that the lower ceiling “did not reflect America’s values as a nation that welcomes and supports refugees”.
About 2,000 refugees were let into the United States between October and March, according to the Refugee Processing Center.
The Biden administration has been accused of seeking to deflect blame on to the former Trump administration for having, as the White House says, “dismantled” the immigration system down at the US-Mexico border.
Former president Donald Trump did gradually slash the refugee cap through his tenure, bringing the number down from 110,000 in President Barack Obama’s last year in office to the record low of 15,000.
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