Poll: Voters Support Trump Admin Push To Decrease Refugee Resettlement

A reported plan to reduce the number of refugees annually settled by the government to 50,000 or fewer is supported by voters, according to a recent poll.

An executive order signed by President Trump in January capped refugee entry at 50,000 per fiscal year, and the Associated Press reported Wednesday that a Department of Homeland Security memo suggests reducing the cap to 40,000 refugees in the upcoming year. In Fiscal Year 2016, the U.S. resettled 84,995 refugees, and President Obama sought to increase the cap to 110,000 refugees.

A poll commissioned by NumbersUSA, a group which seeks to reduce immigration, shows that Americans wouldn’t have been supportive of this push by Obama. The poll found that just 18 percent of voters want to admit more than 100,000 refugees a year, while 39 percent of voters want none admitted and for the U.S. to “instead assist refugees in safe zones close to their home countries.”

Trump continues to push the policy of assisting refugees closer to their nation of origin.

“We seek an approach to refugee resettlement that is designed to help these horribly treated people, and which enables their eventual return to their home countries, to be part of the rebuilding process,” the president said at a Tuesday address at the United Nations. “For the cost of resettling one refugee in the United States, we can assist more than 10 in their home region.”

A combined 52 percent of voters want fewer than 50,000 refugees admitted, while 63 percent want fewer than 75,000, which NumbersUSA claims is a level supported by refugee resettlement agencies.

Pulse Opinion Research conducted the poll of 1,000 voters between August 24 and August 25 and it has a margin of error of 3 percent.