According to Pew Research, the U.S. admitted a record number of Muslim refugees in fiscal year 2016. From Oct. 1, 2015, through Sept. 30, 2016, 46% of the nearly 85,000 refugees entering the country were Muslim, totally 38,901, which marks the highest number of Muslim refugees admitted since data became available in 2002.
The source of more than half the Muslim refugees came from Somalia (9,012 refugees) and Syria (12,486 refugees) while the remainder came from Iraq (7,853), Myanmar (3,145), Afghanistan (2,664) and other miscellaneous countries (3,741).
Last year, the Obama administration set a goal of accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees in the U.S. which was met at the end of August. Following the Paris attacks last November, thirty U.S. governors threatened to prevent Syrian refugees from resettling in their states though they had no legal power to do so. Since then, three of those governors — Michigan’s Rick Snyder, Massachusetts’ Charlie Baker and Tennessee’s Bill Haslam —now say they are in favor of accepting Syrian refugees. Last June, a federal court threw out a Texas lawsuit that had attempted to ban all Syrian refugees from resettling in the state.
Obama has called the reticence to admit Syrian refugees “shameful” and “not American.”
