Nearly half of the more than 63,000 refugees welcomed into the United States in the fiscal year 2016 so far were Muslim, with a majority of new Muslim arrivals coming from war-torn Syria and Somalia. According to a Pew Research Center analysis of State Department data, America has received 28,957 Muslim refugees since Oct. 1, 2015, the beginning of the fiscal year. That’s 46 percent of the total number of refugees entering the country. It’s already the highest number of Muslim refugees the United States has received since 2002, the first year for which data on self-reported religious affiliations among refugees is available. (Muslim refugees have been admitted to the U.S. much earlier than 2002). Most of these new arrivals came from Syria (8,511) and Somalia (7,234). Others came from Iraq (6,071), Burma (Myanmar) (2,554), Afghanistan (1,948) and other countries (2,639).
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