On Tuesday, Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigrant Forum, called into Boston Public Radio to discuss the latest headlines regarding the Trump administration’s attempts to slow immigration to the United States.
Noorani spoke on this weekend’s news that President Donald Trump officially lowered the number of refugees allowed to settle in the U.S. annually to 18,000.
"Remember, during the Reagan years that number was 200,000. I think our nation’s population since the Reagan years has grown by 40%, but the numbers of refugees we resettle every year has plummeted by 80%,” he said.
In the month of October, no new refugees resettled in the U.S.
“Things are completely out of whack,” Noorani said.
The National Immigrant Forum director also spoke on a Trump administration policy currently being debated in Oregon courts that would require all immigrants to prove they would have U.S. health insurance with a month of arrival, or the resources to pay for medical costs.
“The Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University found that recent immigrants without insurance accounted for less than one tenth of 1 percent of U.S. medical expenditures in 2017,” Noorani said. "So the administration is creating a policy to address a problem that just does not exist."
"A lot of times we talk about the president’s approach on undocumented immigrants, or refugees or asylees,” Noorani said. "What the administration has done to slash legal immigration is dramatic. Their focus on low income, legal immigrants, I think is going to have long-term implications for the country."
