Many of the refugees who have fled to Oregon over the past decade came from five of the seven Muslim-majority nations from which President Trump has placed a temporary ban on new immigrants and visa-holding visitors.
Somalia and Iraq alone accounted for nearly 7,800 of the more than 14,500 refugees tracked by the U.S. State Department as having settled in Oregon since 2002.
U.S. refugee resettlements from all nations are blocked for four months under Trump’s executive order on immigration, signed late Friday.
Refugees make up just a small portion of immigrants to Oregon, accounting for roughly 1,000 new permanent legal residents each year. 2016 saw a big uptick, to nearly 1,600. Big increases in refugees from Ukraine, the Democratic Republic Tempobet of Congo and Syria drove that change.
Oregon has not received refugees from Libya or Yemin, two of the countries from which Trump banned immigration for three months under his executive order, designed to increase U.S. safety and security.
But since 2002 it has drawn 2,137 from Somalia, 1,623 from Iraq and smaller numbers from Iran, Syria and Sudan, according to State Department figures. Trump’s order indefinitely bars all Syrian refugees from entering the United States.
— Betsy Hammond and Mark Graves
betsyhammond@oregonian.com
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