Children, women account for most Syrian refugees to US

In December, a Syrian refugee family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, prepared a meal for another family about to arrive.Todd Heisler/The New York Times

President Trump’s indefinite ban on the entry of refugees fleeing war-torn Syria will primarily affect children and women.

Nearly three quarters of the Syrian refugees who were settled in the United States last year were either children or women, federal data show.

Of the 15,479 Syrian refugees admitted to the United States during 2016, about 48 percent were boys and girls under the age of 14, while another 25 percent were girls over the age of 14 or women, according to data from the US Department of State’s Refugee Processing Center.

The remaining 27 percent of Syrian refugees were males 14 or older.

Within that group, a sizeable number were boys or young men between 14 and 20 years old.

Men 21 years or older accounted for just 20 percent of all Syrian refugees admitted during 2016.

The picture is the virtually same if you consider Syrian refugees admitted in prior years, though the vast majority, about 86 percent, of Syrian refugees who have come to the US since conflict erupted there in 2011 came during 2016.