Refugees and population migrations

DEFINITION: Refugees are people forced to live outside their homelands. This can stem from war and government persecution. These persons often face high risk of maltreatment based on ethnicity, race, religion, or associations with social or political groups.

SIGNIFICANCE:Under international law, any person driven from their home country due to armed conflict or persecution can be designated as a refugee. While refugees are provided certain protections under international agreement, the sheer number of displaced people around the world creates a significant geopolitical challenge. Both the movement of refugees and reactions to them can shape social and political trends on a large scale.

While people have fled war and persecution throughout history, the concept of refugees is a relatively modern one. Importantly, while the term "refugee" is often used interchangeably with terms like "migrant" and "asylum seeker," there are, in fact, substantial differences. In legal terms, a refugee is a person who is forced to leave their home country due to armed conflict or persecution that poses mortal danger to them. An asylum seeker is a person who has left their country for similar reasons but has not yet legally been classified as a refugee. "Migrant" is a much looser term, but in general, it refers to a person who has voluntarily left their home country to live elsewhere, usually in hopes of improving their standard of living.

It is also important to distinguish refugees who cross international borders from internally displaced persons (IDPs). These are people who migrate within their own countries’ boundaries to escape high levels of persecution or other threats such as civil wars or natural disasters. Worldwide aid agencies, such as the International Red Cross and Red Crescent and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), often work in conjunction with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on behalf of both IDPs and refugees.

The UNHCR was established by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in December 1950, in response to the European humanitarian crisis in the wake of World War II (1939–45). The mandate of the agency has always been to safeguard refugees and to assist with relocation. At the end of 2023, the UNHCR employed approximately 20,300 people in 136 different nations and territories and sought to assist more than 31.6 million refugees, along with millions of stateless individuals. The UNHCR also connects with other international and national agencies to help refugees and displaced peoples, organizing camps for people in exile, providing transportation, and assisting with resettlement in host nations.

The term “refugee” was defined in the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Key tenets of the convention are that refugees should be provided with procedures for obtaining passports and should be assured they will not be returned to the countries in which they have experienced persecution. This international codification was important because it provided uniformity to a confusing array of national laws focusing on refugee issues. For example, the United States had enacted the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, and other countries had their own individual legislation, but there was little uniformity among different legal jurisdictions. The UN ratification process ensures that as member nations become signatories to conventions, there is movement toward international legal conformity.

During the early 1950s, UN members were highly aware of the atrocities of World War II, including the Holocaust, and encouraged a treaty focused on nationality, race, religion, and sociopolitical groups, with little attention to gender, sexual orientation, or other human differences that may result in persecution. The 1951 UN convention granted rights to refugees and provided them with a process for formalizing new citizenship statuses. However, it applied only to people who had become refugees because of events occurring before 1951. Ongoing wars and humanitarian crises during the 1950s and 1960s meant that the original convention needed an extension. For this reason, the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees removed the 1951 cutoff date and ensured ongoing protection of refugees.

Twenty-First Century Refugees

By the early twenty-first century, widespread political and social unrest around the world was placing large numbers of people at risk of harm, and in many years the number of refugees and other displaced people increased worldwide. A 2005 estimate by the UNHCR suggested that approximately 8.4 million of the estimated 191 million migrants of that year could be considered refugees. In early 2008, the UNHCR stated that 31.7 million people were of concern to the international organization, including 11.4 million refugees, 13.7 million IDPs, 3 million stateless people, 2.8 million returned refugees and IDPs, 740,100 asylees, and 68,700 unspecified others. In the 2010s, the number of global refugees increased significantly, driven by conflicts such as civil war in Syria, drug cartel–related violence in Latin America, and government-led genocide against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. By 2015, 65.3 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced, of which 21.3 million were refugees, 40.8 million IDPs, and 3.2 million asylees. At that time, more than 10 million were considered "stateless"—having no nationality.

The increasing number of refugees through the 2010s and into the 2020s was often conflated in the public eye with similarly large numbers of migrants seeking to enter many Western nations. Many observers noted that along with war and conflict, people were often driven to leave their countries of origin due to large-scale economic and environmental forces. Though many of these people did not meet the international criteria to be classified as refugees, they nevertheless were often labeled as such in the media. This sometimes included so-called climate refugees driven out of their homes by the effects of climate change and natural disasters. Regardless of their reasons or official status, the wave of displaced people created a backlash in many destination countries. Nationalist and xenophobic sentiment increased in many countries around the world, and some countries sought to limit their intake of refugees.

Events in the 2020s caused refugee populations to grow even more significantly. As the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated recession strained aid resources around the world, new international developments continued to create more waves of refugees. For example, in February 2022, the Russian military launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, setting off one of Europe's biggest humanitarian crises since 1945. By mid–April 2022, more than 5 million people had fled Ukraine, prompting many countries in Europe and elsewhere to arrange plans for resettlement. Further, the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic created new health challenges for these vulnerable populations, while straining resources and supply chains essential to administering supplies and care to refugee populations.

By the end of 2023, the UNHCR reported that 117.3 million people around the world were forcibly displaced—nearly double the amount of such populations in the mid-2010s. This included 31.6 million people officially classified as refugees under UNHCR mandate, as well as 6 million Palestinian refugees under the UN Relief and Works Agency mandate, 6.9 million asylum-seekers, and 68.3 million IDPs. The largest populations of refugees in 2023 fled from Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, and Ukraine.

Refugees in the United States

The United States is one of the countries that provide monthly asylum data to the UNHCR. Other non-European nations that provide such information are Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. The United States has not always welcomed asylum seekers. An infamous example was the attempt by the German vessel St. Louis to carry 937 Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution in Europe to the United States in May 1939. After crossing the Atlantic, the ship docked in Havana, Cuba, where its captain tried to disembark all his passengers so they could await US immigration decisions while in a safe location. Cuba refused entry to all but twenty-eight of the passengers. A few days later, the US State Department denied entry to the remaining travelers. The refugees were shipped back to Europe, where more than six hundred of them later died in Nazi death camps.

Later in the twentieth century, US policy on refugees became more welcoming. Indeed, many international treaties focusing on refugees were mirrored by American legislative initiatives. For example, the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 was signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower only a few years after the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was drafted. This US law upheld the UN definition of refugee and allocated quotas to different refugee groups, focusing primarily on Europe but also covering some regions in the Middle East and Far East. Almost two decades later, another special refugee act was signed by President Gerald R. Ford. The Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975 was enacted in response to conditions in South Vietnam immediately after the Vietnam War ended and Saigon was occupied by Communist forces. The 1975 law provided additional refugee quotas and funds for Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees seeking to escape violence directed toward them because of their collaboration with the US military.

Within a few years of passage of the 1975 act, it became apparent to American government employees that it was inefficient for the United States to enact individual pieces of legislation to deal with each humanitarian crisis that arose. It made more sense to devise an overarching law that would always be in place to provide a process for dealing with new crises as they arose, in an efficient and timely manner. For this reason, the Refugee Act of 1980 came into being. This act created the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which administers programs and services for refugees within the United States. The new law also established a method for setting refugee quotas by empowering the president and Congress to perform this task. Refugees and asylees are treated slightly differently in the act, which does not set a quota for the latter.

The United States recognizes two types of exile status: refugees and asylees. Refugees receive their designation outside the United States and often reside in refugee camps for many years prior to acceptance by the United States. Asylees are typically individuals who announce their status at the US border when they arrive by land, sea, or air. They then often live in detention facilities for many months, if not years, while their claims are processed. Asylum granted in this manner is known as "affirmative asylum." When an individual's eligibility for asylum is not affirmed through a formal filing but rather through immigration court to prevent deportation, this is known as "defensive asylum." Spouses and children of asylees may receive asylum status without having to prove risk of harm in their home country. After the creation of the US Department of Homeland Security in 2003, refugee and asylee claims were processed by the department’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services branch.

United States refugee policy and number of admitted refugees have continued to vary over the years. Geopolitical events and the attitudes of different presidential administrations have contributed to this variety. For example, the years following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks saw a scaling-back in the number of refugees to the country. The administration of President Donald Trump, who took office in January 2017, also cut back sharply on refugee admissions in the late 2010s and attempted to enact a number of new policies, including a ban on the admission of people from several Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, Iraq, and Libya, into the US.

After President Joseph Biden took office in January 2021, he attempted to reverse many of the Trump administration's refugee policies, but many existing restrictions, including some related to the COVID-19 pandemic, initially remained in place. However, multiple international developments in the early 2020s forced the US to take action. For example, in August 2021, the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan nearly twenty years after the US military invaded the country; in the aftermath of the Afghan government's collapse and the subsequent Taliban takeover, the US agreed to take in Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban. By February 2022, nearly 70,000 Afghan refugees had been resettled in the US. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 also prompted calls for the US to admit more refugees fleeing war, and in March 2022 the Biden administration announced plans to admit at least 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. By 2024, Biden aimed to admit 125,000 refugees to the US—the largest number since 1992.

Refugees and asylees have come to the United States from around the world. Historically, a small number of source countries generally predominated each year, depending on the locations of global trouble spots. Refugees can apply for legal permanent resident (LPR) status after one year of residency within the country.

Refugee Challenges in the United States

Living in the United States can be difficult for refugees. They typically arrive after experiencing considerable hardship in both their home countries and countries in which they have resided while awaiting acceptance into the United States. When they finally reach the United States, they generally have little money, few possessions, and limited understanding of American culture and what they need to know to find homes, food, education, and social services. The support they receive from government and private aid agencies seldom lasts for more than a few months, and within a short period of time, they must find work to support their families. This can be incredibly difficult for individuals who may have spent years living in refugee camps, especially if they possess minimal fluency in English and have limited job skills.

Refugee families often have young children who have received negligible schooling for several years and are consequently baffled by what they are expected to do in American schools, often in an unfamiliar language. Refugee families also often have little understanding of the American legal system and may unknowingly contravene laws of which they are unaware, such as driving license requirements and child-abuse codes. Parents who were powerful figures in their homelands can easily become marginalized in the United States, where they may receive little respect from either Americans or their own offspring.

Furthermore, refugees may face racism, xenophobia, and other forms of discrimination. While many communities are welcoming to refugees, others—or certain individuals within the community—may view newcomers with suspicion or outright hostility. Such feelings are thought to be more common when the host community is itself struggling with economic challenges, which can make people resentful of any perceived competition for jobs. The turbulent social climate of the early twenty-first century provided an example of how xenophobic attitudes can proliferate and fuel so-called refugee fatigue.

For all of these reasons, the settlement process can be demoralizing for refugees who have newly arrived in the United States. In fact, some refugees find that life in the United States is so difficult that they choose to return to the dangerous circumstances of their home nations, rather than struggle to rebuild their lives in a culture that is almost completely alien to them. For instance, the early twenty-first century saw some highly publicized accounts of Iraqi refugees who left the United States for the uncertainties of life back in Iraq. However, many groups have sought to aid refugees in acclimating to their new homes and establishing themselves in society.

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