President Biden has so far admitted far fewer refugees into the country than he promised, resulting in just a trickle of people fleeing persecution resettling in our area.

Forty refugees arrived in New York, and only one in New Jersey, in February and March. That’s about a third of the rate of admissions during former President Trump’s final fiscal year in office, and it represents a tiny fraction of admissions during the last fiscal year of President Obama’s term, when nearly 1,000 were resettled in both states every two months.

Biden had promised to quadruple Trump’s historically low cap on admissions, but has so far failed to file the necessary paperwork, resulting in hundreds of cancelled flights from abroad. Refugees generally live in camps and are intensely screened, sometimes for years, before they're approved to move to the U.S.