The Algorithm That Can Resettle Refugees

In January, the U.S. State Department lifted refugee resettlement restrictions for 11 of the “high-risk” countries once targeted under President Donald Trump’s infamous travel ban. Now, displaced families fleeing unrest and oppression in areas on that list, likely to include places like Syria, Egypt, and Iraq, are again able to enter the U.S.—but only on a strict case-by-case basis. And as the number of refugees the country accepts shrinks—in 2017, the U.S. took in its lowest amount in more than a decade—the global refugee crisis grows.

According to the United Nations Human Rights Council, a global resettlement agency, the number of global refugees reached its highest level in measurable history by the end of 2016: Today, 65.6 million people live in some state of displacement. Most refugees in the last decade came from Syria, Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They’ve been recently joined by an estimated 800,000 Rohingya Muslims who have been expelled from their native Myanmar. Every minute around the world, 20 people are forcibly displaced.