Following up on his campaign promises, US president Donald Trump is expected to halt the country’s intake of refugees the world over, and block immigration to the US from a selection of Muslim-majority countries.
The refugee ban seems squarely aimed at Syria. During his last presidential debate against Hillary Clinton, Trump had pointed the finger at Syrians as threat to the US, saying, without citing evidence, that his opponent would be ”taking in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, who probably in many cases—not probably, who are definitely […] in many cases, ISIS-aligned.”
It was an absurd estimate. There are not tens of thousands of Syrian refugees pouring into the country. Since 2012, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a total of 14,333 Syrians have been resettled in the US, a number that pales in comparison with most other refugee hosts:
Comparing the percentage of refugees against the total population of each host country, the smallness of the US’s share of Syrian refugee resettlements is even more striking: