WASHINGTON -- The United States will strive to take in 110,000 refugees from around the world in the coming year, the White House said Wednesday, in what would be a nearly 30 percent increase from the 85,000 allowed in over the previous year.
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The increase reflects continuing concern about the refugee crisis stemming from Syria's civil war, and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet it's still far short of what advocacy groups say is needed to address an unprecedented crisis that saw some 1 million people pour into Europe last year.
Of the 110,000, 40,000 will come from the Middle East and South Asia, where the origins of the crisis have been most pronounced. An additional 35,000 will come from Africa, 12,000 from East Asia, 4,000 from Europe and 5,000 from Latin America and the Caribbean, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
The administration did not release a country-specific breakdown. The total includes 14,000 unallocated slots that can be given to refugees from any region once Congress is notified.
Secretary of State John Kerry had previously suggested that the U.S. target would climb to 100,000 in the coming year but that the figure was a floor, not a ceiling. He briefed lawmakers on the revised figure Tuesday.
The 110,000 goal covers a 12-month period that starts next month. In the 12 months ending Sept. 30, the U.S. goal was 85,000, and in the three years before that, the target was 70,000 per year.
The White House has tried to emphasize that the refugee program is safe and doesn't pose a major threat to national security. That concern was heightened last year after terrorist attacks in European cities, including some connected to people who had spent time in Syria.
Officials said potential refugees would continue to be subject to a rigorous screening process that typically lasts more than a year and involves in-person interviews, and examination of biographical and biometric information.
The announcement came two weeks after the U.S. said it had met President Barack Obama's goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees despite early skepticism that it would reach its goal. Millions of Syrians have been displaced by a civil war that has killed roughly 500,000 people.
Republican governors have pushed back vehemently and tried to refuse to let the refugees into their states, leading to a clash with the administration, which has maintained that states can't legally bar refugees who otherwise meet the criteria for entry.
The U.S. has tried to encourage other countries, too, to increase their contributions to alleviating the refugee crisis. The official said increasing the U.S. target this year reflected that strategy and Obama's belief that all nations need to do more to help the neediest.
As part of that effort, Obama plans to host a summit on refugee issues with world leaders next week during the U.N. General Assembly gathering in New York. The White House said the summit would spotlight the need to increase money for aid agencies, resettle more refugees, and provide education and job assistance.
The refugee crisis has become a major political issue in Europe, where countries have been inundated by migrants after harrowing journeys that have killed scores. Concerns about refugees have played into the broader debate about immigration in Europe and were a major factor in Britain's recent vote to leave the European Union.
The U.N. refugee agency chief, Filippo Grandi, said Tuesday that while the U.S. is "by far the largest donor government to refugee programs worldwide," more needs to be done. In an interview, he said the U.N. was discussing those needs with the U.S. "all the time."
Burmese influx
The country that is sending the most refugees to the U.S. at the moment is not Syria or any other Middle Eastern country, but Burma.
The Southeast Asian nation, also known as Myanmar, sent 18,386 refugees to the United States in 2015, more than 26 percent of the total and surpassing Iraq, the previous leader that last year sent 12,676 refugees. Burma sent nearly 4,000 more refugees than it had in 2014, according to an analysis from the Migration Policy Institute.
The primary cause for the exodus from Burma is long-standing ethnic conflicts in the eastern part of the country where tens of thousands of ethnic Karen and Karenni have fled persecution from the former military regime that ran the country for a half-century. Most of them ended up in refugee camps in Thailand and have been resettled in countries around the world, including the United States.
The ethnic conflicts were on the agenda Wednesday when Obama met with Burma's state counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, who is in Washington for a two-day visit.
"They've been there for generations, and for some all they've ever known are the refugee camps," said Derek Mitchell, who served as U.S. ambassador to Burma from 2012 until earlier this year. "This is an ethnic conflict that is going on 70 years and drives this country."
Data for fiscal 2016 is not yet complete, but a report last month from the Pew Research Center showed Burma narrowly edging out Congo for the most refugees to the United States. Both countries had sent more than 10,000 refugees through early August, with Syria ranking third with more than 8,500.
Kathleen Newland, co-founder of the Migration Policy Institute, said the large numbers from Burma and Congo are to some degree vestiges of U.S. policy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when lawmakers halted refugees from countries with links to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida.
"One of the things that the government did was to look around the world for refugees from non-al-Qaida-linked countries," she said. She added that she expects the numbers from Burma to decline in coming years as the crisis in the Thai camps eases and U.S. commitments shift elsewhere, such as to Syria.
Human-rights advocates said the plight of Burma's refugees is a prime reason the Obama administration should resist lifting the national emergency designation established by executive order in 1997 that allows the United States to restrict companies from doing business with specific entities in that country. Obama said Wednesday that the U.S. is prepared to lift sanctions "soon" to help boost investment in the country of 53 million people.
"It is a state of emergency when it comes to humanitarian issues," said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. He said, "15,000 refugees are resettled in the U.S. every year. It's a leading source of refugee resettlement. Those are spots we can't give to Syrians or Iraqis."
Information for this article was contributed by Josh Lederman, Jamey Keaten and Kevin Freking of The Associated Press; and by David Nakamura of The Washington Post.
A Section on 09/15/2016