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AfghanEvac THE LEDGERThe running record

The Ledger · A data record from AfghanEvac

Who America lets in.

Every fiscal year since the Refugee Act of 1980, the United States has decided how many refugees to welcome. Here is the whole arc, from the 207,120 admitted in 1980 to the near-total shutdown of 2025, and where Afghans stand inside it.

Last updated July 17, 2026

The long view

Forty-five years of admissions, one bar per fiscal year.

Refugee admissions are a choice the president makes every year, and the record shows how sharply that choice can swing. Hover or tap any bar for the number and the story of that year.

U.S. refugee admissions by fiscal year
Admitted Deliberate collapse
Fiscal years (Oct–Sep). Bars in red mark the two deliberate shutdowns: the first Trump term’s drawdown to record lows, and the 2025 suspension.
207,120Admitted in FY1980, the first year of the modern program and still its ceiling in practice.
11,411Admitted across FY2020–2021 at the program’s historic low point.
38,102Admitted in FY2025, almost all of it before the January 20 suspension order.

Where Afghans fit

The Afghan channel, built fast and shut off faster.

Afghans have rarely come mainly as refugees. Most who reached safety after 2021 came through parole and the Special Immigrant Visa, the channel earned by working alongside U.S. forces. That is the channel now closed.

76,000

Afghans brought to the U.S. through Operation Allies Welcome parole after the 2021 withdrawal.

MPI
18,319

Afghan Special Immigrant Visas issued in FY2025, the SIV program at full stride.

State Dept.
0

Afghan SIVs issued in FY2026 after Proclamation 10998 stripped the SIV exemption, effective Jan. 1, 2026.

State Dept.
7,597

Afghan refugees admitted in FY2025, the second-largest nationality, nearly all before the January suspension.

RCUSA / RPC
A note on the numbers. These are the cleanest figures available across three different pathways, so they are not one apples-to-apples series. The exact Afghan year-by-year totals live in the State Department’s own archive, in the “Arrivals by State and Nationality” and “Amerasian and SIV Arrivals” files, which The Ledger is preserving in full so this record cannot quietly disappear.

Sources and method

Where these numbers come from

Total admissions for FY1980–FY2024 are from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Homeland Security Statistics, 2024 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, Table 13. FY2025 (38,102) is from Refugee Council USA’s FY2025 Refugee Arrivals Report, drawn from State Department Refugee Processing Center data. Afghan figures are from the State Department’s Afghan SIV status reports, the Migration Policy Institute, and Refugee Council USA. Different agencies reconcile counts slightly differently; where sources disagreed we used the fiscal-year, RPC-based figure for consistency.

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