Despite President Donald Trump’s efforts to reduce refugee resettlements, the US has this week raised its intake of displaced people.

The US State Department this week quietly lifted the department’s restriction on the number of refugees allowed to enter the US.

Observers say this could result in a near doubling of refugees entering the country, from about 830 people a week in the first three weeks of this month to well over 1,500 people per week by next month.

According to refugee advocates, tens of thousands of refugees are waiting to come to the United States.

The State Department’s decision was conveyed in an email on Thursday to the private agencies in countries around the world that help refugees manage the nearly two-year application process needed to enter the United States.

In the email, a department official said that the refugee groups could begin bringing people to the United States “unconstrained by the weekly quotas that were in place.”

Although it came the same day as an appeals court rejected government moves to limit travel to the US from six predominantly Muslim nations, the move by the State Department said its move had nothing to do with the court ruling.

The department’s quotas on refugee resettlement were largely the result of budget constraints imposed by Congress in a temporary spending measure passed last year.

But when Congress passed a spending bill this month that funded the government for the rest of the fiscal year, the law did not include any restrictions on refugee admissions.

President Trump has said he wants to lower the threshold on the number of refugees entering the US from 110,000 to 50,000.

Mr. Trump’s executive orders on immigration, the first of which was issued in January, also aimed to suspend all refugee admissions for at least four months.

Federal judges have blocked the orders, but the confusion over them has contributed to a falloff in refugees entering the US.

While 13,255 refugees were admitted in August, that number dropped to just 2,070 in March.

So far during the 2017 US fiscal year, 45,732 people have been admitted, just a few thousand short of President Trump’s mooted cap.

Refugee groups now say that entries into the US could increase so rapidly that the total number of refugees admitted by Sept. 30, the end of the US fiscal year, could exceed 70,000.

That is well below the 84,994 refugees admitted in the last fiscal year.

Refugee advocates welcomed the State Department’s decision but many feared that any reprieve would be temporary.

They say that more concerning is the slowdown in security screenings by the Department of Homeland Security, whose checks are required for refugees to enter the US.

However, even Republicans in Congress have said that few of President Trump’s proposed budget cuts to foreign aid and the State Department’s budget would be adopted into law.

During a visit to Syrian refugee camps in Turkey this week, the US’ ambassador to the United Nations Nikki R. Haley appeared to urge the US Congress to reverse President Trump’s proposed cuts in aid to refugees.

Laurie Nowell
AMES Australia Senior Journalist