Washington, D.C., February 6, 2024 — The International Rescue Committee (IRC) urges the Biden administration and U.S. Congress to work in a bipartisan manner to bolster America’s leadership in mobilizing global humanitarian aid, while also working to modernize the U.S. asylum system and other pathways to safety to provide for a more humane and orderly process.
The IRC welcomes the laudable inclusion of $10 billion in global humanitarian aid in the supplemental funding bill, which is desperately needed worldwide, as more than 300 million people are in dire need of life-saving assistance. This funding will save lives at a time when rising conflict, forced displacement, and the climate crisis continue to hit the world's most vulnerable. However, we are deeply concerned by the proposal to prohibit any of this aid from going to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which plays a central role in the humanitarian response in Gaza - a role that other aid agencies cannot replicate - as well as its critical work assisting millions of Palestinian refugees across the Middle East. All civilians in need of lifesaving humanitarian aid deserve access to it.
Moreover, certain provisions in the supplemental funding bill would constitute some of the harshest changes to U.S. asylum law in decades and would worsen, not solve, the humanitarian challenges at the U.S. border. Previous policies that pushed asylum seekers back into Mexico, like the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) and Title 42 were cruel and ineffective in better managing the humanitarian challenges at our southern border. Even though some aspects of the legislation would provide much-needed improvements to the asylum system, including support for border and interior host communities, hiring of additional asylum officers, and preserving humanitarian parole, these positive measures should not come at the cost of undermining fundamental refugee protections.