Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
5 Facts about refugees in America
5 Facts about refugees in America
Jan 3, 2026 4:56 AM

Today is World Refugee Day, an annual observance created by the United Nations to memorate the strength, courage and perseverance of millions of refugees.” Here are five facts you should know about refugees and refugee policy in the United States.

1. The U.S. government defines “refugee” as any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

2. Thefirst refugee legislation in the United Stateswas theDisplaced Persons Act of 1948, which brought 400,000 Eastern Europeans to the U.S. Other refugee-related legislation included theRefugee Relief Act of 1953(which brought in 214,000 refugees munism) and theFair Share Refugee Act of 1960(which mostly brought those still living in displaced persons camps after World War II). The U.S. government also used the Attorney General’shumanitarian parole authorityto bring refugees into the country, beginning in 1956 with Hungarian nationals and ending with hundreds of thousands of Indochinese refugees in the 1970s.

3. The number of refugees admitted into the U.S. each year is decided by the President. Before the beginning of each fiscal year, the President, in consultationwith Congress, establishes anoverall refugee admissions ceilingas well as regional allocations. So far in So far during the 2017 fiscal year, 45,732 people have been admitted. The total number of refugees authorized for admission in 2015—the last year for which official statistics are available—was 69,920. The largest regional allocation was from Burma (18,386), Iraq (12,676), Somalia (8,858), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (7,876).

4. Since 1975, the U.S. has resettled more than3 million refugees, with nearly 77 percentbeing either Indochinese or citizens of the former Soviet Union. Since the enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980, annual admissions figures have ranged from a high of 207,116 in 1980, to a low of 27,100 in 2002. In 2013, theleading countries of nationalityfor refugee admissions were Iraq (28 percent), Burma (23 percent), Bhutan (13 percent), and Somalia (11 percent). Seventy-five percent of refugee admissions in 2013 were from these four countries. Other leading countries included Cuba (6.0 percent), Iran (3.7 percent), Democratic Republic of Congo (3.7 percent), and Sudan (3.1 percent).

5. TheOffice of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)is the federal government agency charged withproviding benefits and servicesto assist the resettlement and localintegration of refugee populations. Some of the ORR programs include Refugee CashAssistance and Refugee Medical Assistance (for up to 8 months); Refugee Social Services, such as job and language training (for up to 5 years); and temporary custody and care to panied refugee children. But according to a recent paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, by the time refugees who entered the U.S. as adults have been here for 20 years, they will have paid, on average, $21,000 more in taxes to all levels of government than they received in benefits over that time span.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Election Season in the Spiritually Vacant State
“When the value-bearing institutions of religion and culture are excluded, the value-laden concerns of human life flows back into the square under the politics of politics,” wrote Richard John Neuhaus, “It is much like trying to sweep a puddle of water on an even basement floor; the water immediately flows back into the space you had cleaned.”Although he made ment thirty-twoyears ago, the late Fr. Neuhaus could be describing the current election season. While there is much that could be...
5 facts about fathers and Father’s Day
This Sunday is the day Americans set aside to honor their fathers. Here are 5 facts you should know about dads and Father’s Day. 1. After listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909, Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Wash. wanted a special day to honer her father, a widowed Civil War veteran who was left to raise his six children on a farm. The first Father’s Day celebration, June 17, 1910, was proclaimed by Spokane’s mayor because it was the...
Lessons on Work as Service from a Hotel Housekeeper
When es to basic definitions of work, I’ve found fort in Lester DeKoster’s prescient view of work as“service to others and thus to God” — otherwise construed as “creative service” in For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles. Our primary focus should be service to our fellow man in obedience to God, whether we’re doing manual labor in the field or factory, designing new technology in an office or laboratory, or delivering a range of “intangible” services...
Metropolitan Tarasios on the Orthodox Council in Crete and Catholic-Orthodox relations
On June 16, His Eminence Metropolitan Tarasios of Buenos Aires spoke at Acton University at DeVos Place in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His remarks touched on a wide range of subjects including the ing Orthodox Christian council in Crete, which begins on June 19, Catholic-Orthodox relations, and other topics. The American-born bishop serves in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. According to his official biography, Met. Tarasios was born Peter (Panayiotis) C. Anton in Gary, Indiana, in 1956 to Peter and Angela...
Millennials Lacking Hope for Entrepreneurship
Today at the FEE (Foundation for Economic Education), Zachary Slayback has an excellent overview of the decline in entrepreneurship among those under 30 since the late 1980s. He writes, Between local, state, and federal regulations placed on everything from who isallowedto braid hairtowho can tell you what color to paint a wall and where to place a doorand a schooling culture and system that encourages young people to waste away the first 22-30 years of their lives away from the...
Philadelphia’s Socially Acceptable Way to Disdain the Poor
Philadelphia may like to think of itself as the “city of brotherly love,” but its latest tax increase is not so friendly to the poor. Last week the city council passed a regressive soda tax proposal that will levy 1.5 cents per liquid ounce on distributors. According to Quartz, the tax will apply to regular and diet sodas, as well as other drinks with added sugar, such as Gatorade, lemonades, and iced teas. This tax on sugary drinks is what...
Why Do You Need a License to Braid Hair?
There are numerous forms of crony capitalism, but one of the most subtle and damaging to the economically vulnerable are occupational licensing laws. For millions of Americans, occupational licensing continues to serve as a barrier to work and self-sufficiency. Take, for example,Melony Armstrong. When Armstrong began her hair braiding business, she was required tohave a cosmetology license, which required 1,500 hours of training and $10,000 in tuition. What makes this state occupational licensing requirement so unreasonable? None of the training...
A Crash Course in Capitalism and Socialism
Unclear on how capitalism and/or socialism got started? John Green provides a 12-minute crash course that answers how we got from the British East India Company to iPhones and from Karl Marx to Swedish-style socialism. Warning: Green’s style and digressions can be a bit grating, but overall the material is worth watching. (I’d also mend increasing YouTube’s speed setting to 1.5 or 2 for faster viewing.) ...
Whose Status Do You Want to Raise?
In a ment about neo-reaction (forget about that for now, this isn’t about neo-reaction), economist Arnold Kling says “a major role of political ideology is to attempt to adjust the relative status of various groups.” One e of this is that, … every adherent to an ideology seeks to elevate the status of those who share that ideology and to downgrade the status of those with different ideologies. That is why it matters that journalists and academics are overwhelmingly on...
A Gideon v. Wainwright Reminder
Over the past decade media coverage of the problems surrounding indigent defense has been increasing. For example, The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is currently suing the state of Utah for failing to uphold that 6th Amendment which now provides opportunities for government provided criminal defense. The ACLU is claiming that Utah fell short of its obligation to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who cannot afford to hire one. While the merits of the case have yet to be properly...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved