I have been working with refugees for a better part of the last decade in Jordan and now Egypt. President Joe Biden needs to keep his promise on raising the refugee resettlement ceiling.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are three durable solutions afforded to registered refugees. The first is voluntary repatriation, or, going back to your country of origin. This is not an option for many refugees I work with who are fleeing protracted conflicts like Darfur, Syria, Somalia, Eritrea and South Sudan. Just in the beginning of April, fresh violence in Darfur saw over 100 killed, adding to a conflict which originated in 2003. Recently, Eritrean troops are entering Ethiopia and killing refugees there, showing how one is treated by their government once they flee.

The second solution is local integration into the host community. As the project leader of a research project that maps the legal entitlements owed to refugees, asylum-seekers and failed asylum-seekers in Egypt, I know that true local integration is impossible. Even though Egypt has signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, they placed many reservations on certain entitlements due to their status as a developing country. This means its impossible for refugees to work legally or, for African-origin refugees, enroll their children into the public school system. Real integration will never happen under these circumstances.

That leaves resettlement. We all know the awful numbers, less than 1% of all registered refugees are resettled annually. For those that do get the opportunity, a difficult vetting process can take months or years before they leave for America. The U.S. was once a beacon for resettlement, taking in the largest number of any country.

Trump decimated this program and our standing internationally.

Biden needs to keep his promise to raise the ceiling, however dismal it may be, in order to grow the program to once again become the world leader in refugee resettlement. Millions of lives count on it.

Elena Habersky

Dallas, Pennsylvania