The Global Refugee Crisis and U.S. Response

Judging by the United States’ response to the growing worldwide refugee crisis, we have

mainly pretended that it doesn’t exist. While the number of refugees and other displaced

persons has grown more than seven-fold from 2000 to 2025, the number of refugees allowed

into the U.S. has recently shrunk by 50% depending, and in 2026, the Trump Administration has decreased the cap on refugee admissions even further to just 7,500 (and reserved most of that for white South Afrikaans and Europeans).

Asylum Seekers

The trends for asylum seekers follows the same basic pattern. The number of asylees worldwide increased eight-fold, while number of asylum grants in the U.S. stayed flat until the last two years of the Biden Administration. Historically, up to 2015, we granted asylum to just under 3% of the world’s asylees each year. Starting in 2016, our share of asylees began to drop as we failed to keep pace with the growth in the number of asylees. We hit bottom at 0.4% in 2021 and our share grew back up to 1.2% in 2024. Given the current Administration’s attitude towards immigrants, we expect that the number of asylum grants to have dropped

precipitously in 2025 and our share of the world’s asylees to drop back to under 1%.

We anticipate that situation will stay this way until at least 2028.

Read more in our complete 2025 Annual Report.