Educational Resource
Refugee Council USA: Background United States Resettlement Program (2012)
Refugee Council USA Background: United States Resettlement Program (USRP)
Millions of refugees around the world are forced to flee their homes due to violence and persecution. Once they cross a border to seek safety, refugees have three options: integrate in the country to which they first fled (or country of asylum), return to their home country, or be resettled to a third country. These options are known as “durable solutions.” Often, refugees cannot stay in the country of asylum or return to their home country. For those refugees, resettlement is key to ending their limbo state. Resettlement is one of three “durable solutions.” Less than one percent of refugees are ever resettled in a third country. However, resettlement is an important tool of refugee protection, both for individual refugees and as a means of encouraging countries of asylum to keep their doors open.
The United States has a long history of welcoming refugees; from Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s, people fleeing from the former Soviet Union, Darfuri refugees fleeing genocide and violence, to Iraqi refugees displaced by the war. Since 1975, the U.S. has resettled approximately 3 million refugees. USRP was formalized with the Refugee Act of 1980 and since then annual admissions have ranged from a high of 207,116 in 1980 to a low of 27,100 in 2002. In fiscal year 2011 the U.S. 56,424 admitted refugees. Each year, the President, in consultation with Congress, determines the number of refugees (known as the Presidential Determination or PD) who may be admitted to the United States from overseas. The PD for fiscal year 2012 is 76,000 refugees.