"As Europe struggles to absorb huge flows of asylum seekers and migrants from Syria, Iraq, Eritrea, and elsewhere, there are calls for the United States, which runs the largest official resettlement program in the world, to welcome more Syrian refugees. Responding to these calls, the Obama administration has announced its intention to raise the annual ceiling on U.S. refugee admissions to 85,000 for the fiscal year that began October 1 and to 100,000 the following year, up from 70,000 for the year that ended September 30. Within that 85,000 cap, the administration has committed to resettle at least 10,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year—a substantial increase from the approximately 2,000 Syrian refugees resettled in the United States since civil war broke out in 2011. The proposed U.S. refugee ceiling of 85,000 is quite modest when compared to up to 800,000 migrants projected to seek asylum in Germany by the end of 2015.3 And the number of refugees worldwide is at a record high, with millions from Syria alone now housed in makeshift camps and other, often tenuous arrangements in neighboring Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. The U.S. refugee ceiling has at times been much higher, for instance 231,700 in 1980 and 142,000 in 1993."