Refugee Program Accepts 3 Syrian Women and Children For Every Man

Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump has been warning against accepting Syrian refugees. Last year, he said of refugees, “They’re all men. You look at it. There are so few women and there are so few children. And not only are they men, they’re young men.” We showed at the time that this claim was inaccurate, but with the fiscal year closing tomorrow, we have the information necessary to test it as a prediction—and yet no matter how you look at it, it’s unequivocally false.

Figure 1 shows how the State Department groups the ages of the 12,500 Syrians that it has resettled this year. As can be seen, the breakdown skews heavily toward children. In fact, half of all Syrian refugees in the United States are 13 years old or younger. This demonstrates that the flow is overwhelmingly families with small children.

Figure 1: Ages of Syrian Refugees in FY2016

 

Source: State Department

As Figure 2 shows, nearly three quarters of the Syrian refugee flow is women and young children under the age of 14. Nearly 90 percent of Syrian refugees who came this year were outside of the “young men” demographic—men ages 14 to 30. Donald Trump is simply confused.

Figure 2: Age and Gender Distribution of Syrian Refugees FY 2016

 

Source: State Department

The United States has a history of accepting refugees from war-torn areas. We shouldn’t allow inaccuracies about the threats posed by refugees to dissuade us from continuing in that tradition.