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Diocese of Lexington Launches Refugee Resettlement Program

comm.uky.edu

A new resettlement program will bring more than 50 Congolese and Syrian refugees to Lexington in 2017. The Catholic Diocese of Lexington got accepted into the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops Refugee Resettlement Program.

President Elect Donald Trump has talked about additional immigration restraints. Director of Catholic Charities in Lexington, Ruslyn Compton doesn’t anticipate any immediate impact.

“We’ve been resettling refugees, the Catholic Church has been, for the last 30 years," Compton said. "And there have been Republican presidents, there’ve been Democratic administrations, but refugees have always been resettled. And, the number in the 1980’s was much larger than it is right now. It was 250,000 refugees in the 1980’s.”

Some 110,000 refugees are slated to resettle in the U.S. before next October. Compton says the new administration could establish a different number of refugees and the countries of origin going forward from October of 2017.

Stu Johnson is a reporter/producer at WEKU in Lexington, Kentucky.
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