US immigration services are at breaking point under 128,000 backlog of asylum cases as global refugee crisis drives surge in applications, warns watchdog
Asylum cases backlog hit 128,000 at the end of last year as US struggles to cope with double the number of requests in past five years
Last year, the Obama administration pledged to accept 85,000 refugees from around the world in 2016, up from 70,000 last year
Number that will rise to 100,000 in 2017 to help alleviate the worst global refugee crisis since World War II
Most are Syrians fleeing the sixth year of conflict which has killed 250,000
Others are fleeing Central and South America such as unrest in Venezuela
By HANNAH PARRY
DAILYMAIL.COM
30 June 2016
The federal government is struggling to cope with a huge surge of asylum cases during a global refugee crisis as the request backlog soars by 1,400 per cent in just five years.
Unrest in areas of the Middle East and South America has seen numbers of refugees requesting asylum more than double in the same period – pushing the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, CIS, to breaking point.
Unable to cope, the backlog of cases has been steadily rising and by the end of 2015, there were more than 128,000 cases still pending, the agency’s ombudsman Maria M. Odom, said in her annual report to Congress.
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