Americans might be able to bring a refugee to the U.S. on their own dime if talks between the Obama administration and the nation’s leading refugee advocacy group come to fruition.

The U.S. Department of State is considering a pilot program that would let citizens sponsor a refugee from their country of choice by paying for airfare, housing, clothing, food and other resettlement costs. Conversations began in July and are expected to continue in the coming year, said Naomi Steinberg, director of the Refugee Council USA.

The program, modeled after a similar one in Canada, is designed to crack open new sources of funding as growing anti-refugee sentiment in Congress threatens to cut resettlement programs.

“It puts Americans in the driver’s seat,” said Matthew La Corte, policy analyst at the Niskanen Center, a Washington-based libertarian think tank that was an early supporter of the program. “It allows them to say ‘I have a spare bedroom. I was thinking of buying a new car but I’ll instead take that $10,000 and put it toward bringing a Syrian refugee over.”’

Such a program would mark one of the biggest structural changes to U.S. refugee policy in three decades, and would allow Barack Obama or future presidents to skirt opposition by shifting financial responsibility to everyday Americans. Civil war in Syria, conflict in Africa and more open European borders have combined to displace more than 65 million people worldwide, the deepest refugee crisis since World War II.

About a million people entered Germany last year, and Prime Minister Angela Merkel has said other European countries must do their part. The U.S. admitted 85,000 refugees in fiscal 2016, and only about 12,600 from Syria.

Obama’s announcement last month that America would accept 110,000 refuges from around the world in 2017, a 30 percent increase over this year, was met with fierce opposition by Republican lawmakers. More than half of U.S. governors have called for a ban on Syrian refugees until stricter national security-screening is put in place, and Congress has introduced bills that would restrict funding. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has characterized Syrian refugees as “Trojan horses” for terrorism.

“The American people do not support these radical plans, which amount to a complete betrayal from their leaders in Washington,” Senator Jeff Sessions, who has been one of the most vocal opponents of resettlement policies, said in a statement last month. The Alabama Republican is a key adviser to Trump.

Away from the political arena, the private sector is becoming increasingly involved. Last month, billionaire George Soros, a major funder of liberal causes, announced he would spend as much as $500 million to help refugees globally. The White House announced recently that 51 companies, including Airbnb Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Ikea and United Parcel Service Inc., have pledged money or services to help refugees.

Looking North

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