According to the UNHCR, there are 70.8 million forcibly displaced people in the world today. This includes 25.9 million refugees and 3.5 million asylum seekers.

President Trump has decided the United States of America, the most powerful nation in the world, will admit 18,000 refugees in fiscal year 2020.

Michael. D Shear and Zolan Kanno-Youngs of The New York Times write that the action is “greatly dimming the United States’ role in accepting persecuted refugees from most parts of the world.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) said in a statement: “I’m disappointed to see that the Administration has once again decided to decrease the number of refugees we allow into our country.” Thank you for your leadership, Senator.

The president is also permitting state and local governments to block refugees from settling in their communities. Which creates a political fight that divides the country — a fight the president relishes.

To put a human face on it, Dianne Solis at the Dallas Morning News talks to refugees in Texas — which has more refugees than any other state — about their feelings towards the new cap. Isaac Alingabo, who left war-torn Congo, said “first and foremost” he thanks President Trump for allowing him and his family into the U.S., but “he added that more people from his country are worthy of consideration for refugee status, and he hopes America opens its arms to them.”

Before I head to the Texas Tribune Festival, welcome to the Friday edition of Noorani’s Notes.

Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].

MAKE AMERICA POORER AGAIN – President Trump can’t intend to maximize economic growth while at the same time seeking to reduce legal immigration, writes Eric Levitz in New York Magazine. Declining birth rates and aging populations “are afflicting much of the developed world … To this point, the aging of the baby-boom generation has done less damage to America’s prosperity because our nation has been exceptionally attractive to — and welcoming of — working-age immigrants from overseas.”

RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION – At the United Nations this week, President Trump stated that “protecting religious freedom is one of my highest priorities.” However, plans to reduce the refugee cap will directly affect religious groups seeking asylum in the U.S., Elana Schor reports in the Associated Press. “The fact that [President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are] even considering zeroing out a program that has literally thousands of persecuted Christians waiting to come in [suggests that] this is a program they don’t value as much as they could or strategically use as much as they could,” said Jenny Yang, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief.

NOT ALL RELIGIOUS LEADERS – There are, in fact, many religious leaders trying to show the White House what our refugee and immigration policies could look like, reports Marlen Garcia at the Chicago Sun-Times. Inspired by Pastor Eric Costanzo’s op-ed in The Christian Post, Garcia writes, “Many religious leaders across America are on the same page when it comes to human rights and compassion for immigrants and refugees.” As I told Marlen, “religious leadership is going to knit the country back together,” because these are the men and women who “articulate that we can be a nation of grace and a nation of laws.”

DALLAS RESERVE – In 2018, a team of economists from the Dallas Federal Reserve wrote that “For most of its history, Texas has relied on migration to populate its expansive landmass and power its economy.” With Sabrina Tavernise of The New York Times reporting that the U.S. population “gained immigrants at the slowest pace in a decade last year … a notable slowdown that experts said was quite likely linked to a more restrictive approach by the Trump administration,” the Lone Star State has reason to worry. Launching a two-day conference, Dallas Federal Reserve President Robert Kaplan said in his opening comments, “If you think you are actually going to cut the number of immigrants and grow GDP, those two things do not go together,” Kerry Curry reports for The Dallas Morning News.

LOST IN TRANSLATION – Immigration officials have been using Google Translate, rather than qualified translators, to screen refugee social media accounts, Yeganeh Torbati reports in ProPublica. “It defies logic that we would use unreliable tools to decide whether refugees can reunite with their families … We wouldn’t use Google Translate for our homework, but we are using it to keep refugee families separated,” said Betsy Fisher, strategy director at the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Thanks for reading,

Ali