International Refugees Wait as U.S. Dithers Print Page International refugees bound for the United States are still in limbo. Last year, promising developments seemed about to open the door to increased admissions, but they've stalled out, leaving the fate of tens of thousands of people hanging. It's time for U.S. leaders to bring lagging action in line with high-minded goals. In 2004, President Bush took the lead on refugees in two important ways. First, he directed the State Department to admit 70,000 refugees into the United States in fiscal year 2005. Refugee advocates welcomed this goal. Though it would have helped only a tiny portion of the world's 13 million refugees, it nevertheless represented a substantial increase over the 53,000 refugees admitted in 2004. Next, in the budget proposal President Bush submitted to Congress for 2006, he asked for $893 million for the Migration and Refugee Assistance account. That's about $129 million more than the amount Congress provided for 2005. These actions gave hope at a critical time. After 9-11, when the United States clamped down on all immigration, it cut off what was a small but steady flow of refugees. It thus reversed a long American tradition of opening our arms to the victims of persecution and war -- men, women and children who are the very "huddled masses, yearning to be free" of the Statue of Liberty inscription. In 2002 and 2003, refugee admittances sank to fewer than 29,000 annually after an average throughout the '90s of about 88,000 a year, which was already far below a 1970s peak of more than 200,000 a year. Admissions have since resumed but at a creeping pace. In 2005, despite the White House order to admit 70,000 refugees, the State Department has the budget to resettle barely more than half. Not surprisingly, at the end of July, 10 months into the fiscal year, fewer than 38,000 refugees had been resettled in the United States. Budget cut as costs rise Part of the problem is that Congress gave the State Department only $764 million for migration and refugee assistance in fiscal year 2005, a cut of about 2.2 percent from 2004. (It should be noted that an April supplemental bill for Iraq reconstruction later provided $80 million more for refugee assistance. And while the budget has been cut, the cost to the State Department per refugee has increased. It rose from $2,200 in 2001 to about $3,500 last year, due largely to more thorough background checks and rising fuel prices. In addition to being screened and transported, refugees -- who often flee with little more than the clothes on their backs -- need to be provided initially with housing, medical care and social services to help them adjust to a completely unfamiliar land. Many refugees come not knowing English, how to drive or how to transfer whatever skills they have. Before the post-9-11 drop-off in admissions, refugees made up only 5 percent to 10 percent of the annual inflow of immigrants. But they were a highly visible minority. Though many arrived impoverished, they have formed vibrant, civic-minded communities throughout the United States. Here in Orlando, the most noticeable refugees arriving in the 1960s were Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro's regime. Among them was a 15-year-old boy named Mel Martinez, who arrived as part of Operation Peter Pan, a Catholic Church-led effort that helped more than 14,000 Cuban children escape from communism. Today Martinez is a U.S. senator. In the 1970s a new group arrived in Central Florida. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, about 1,100 Vietnamese refugees found homes in the Orlando area, ultimately creating many thriving businesses and a healthy cultural life. Today more than 9,000 people of Vietnamese ancestry live in Brevard, Lake, Orange, Osceola, Polk, Seminole and Volusia. Unfortunately, war and political persecution still force people to leave their homes, which is why it remains as important as ever to welcome refugees. Just last year, Lutheran Services Florida, one of the organizations the State Department uses for resettlement work, placed about 400 refugees in Tampa, Miami and Orlando. Among them were families from Liberia, such as that of Deborah Dennis, who recently told her story to the St. Petersburg Times. After rebels killed her father, she hid in the bushes without food or shelter, and then lived in an overcrowded Ivory Coast camp for 10 years. She arrived here last year with her husband and children, and local church is now helping the family settle in Tampa. Many are not so lucky. About 386,000 victims of internal strife in Liberia have fled that country recently. Other refugees who now need the help of wealthy nations include Sudanese who have fled ethnic cleansing in Darfur during the past two years, and the 100,000 North Koreans who have escaped to China, where they try to survive under the radar of the Pyongyang-friendly Chinese government. Many 'warehoused' After fleeing their home countries, most refugees end up stateless for long periods of time. In fact, some 8 million of the world's refugees are "warehoused" -- that is, stuck in the limbo of refugee camps for more than five years. Sadly, this not-my-problem practice of putting refugees out of sight is on the rise. Among the largest groups of refugees warehoused for five years or more are the 1.9 million Afghans in Iran and Pakistan, and the 1.6 million Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. Often confined to squalid and remote camps, warehoused refugees are denied the right to work at regular jobs, own property or move freely. This dramatically increases their vulnerability to both disease and internecine violence. In Africa, where more than 2 million refugees have been warehoused, disasters in camps are commonplace. In August 2004, for instance, Hutu extremists massacred 180 Congolese in a camp in Burundi. Most of the victims were women and children. The United States is not above warehousing, particularly when it comes to asylum seekers -- those who apply for the right to stay after arriving on U.S. shores, as escapees from our near neighbors Cuba and Haiti often do. (Like refugees, asylum-seekers must prove a credible fear of persecution if they return home.) Under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, recently passed by Congress, the government planned to spend $10 million in 2005 to construct facilities for about 50 Cuban and Haitian asylum seekers detained at Guantanamo Naval Base. At $200,000 per refugee -- plus an additional $3 million a year to operate the facility -- that makes the detainees some of the most expensively warehoused refugees in the world. It is crucial that lawmakers match U.S. rhetoric on helping refugees with action. They can begin by funding the number of refugee resettlements promised by the president for this year, and by fully granting the refugee budget requests for 2006. Congress is considering the main refugee-appropriations bill for the upcoming fiscal year. The Senate wants to ratchet up the $893 million President Bush requested for the Migration and Refugee Assistance account -- to $900 million. The House bill, however, provides only $791 million. A joint committee will sort out the discrepancy, probably in the coming weeks. The federal government's push to increase funding is a promising start. Still, many leading refugee-advocacy groups say funding should be higher, noting that $985 million would provide for resettlement of 90,000 refugees, which would bring us back to our 1990s level. For six months after 9-11, the United States understandably stopped admitting refugees to cut the risk of giving terrorists entry to U.S. soil. But today we know that not a single 9-11 hijacker entered the United States as a refugee. It's time to return to a more sensible humanitarian policy. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that terrorists would choose the refugee path to attempt entry into the United States. There are too many simpler, faster ways to immigrate legally. Or, by just sneaking in, they avoid the whole immigration process -- long waits, longer odds, multiple interviews and extensive background checks. Failing our mission Refugees, in particular, are vetted up and down. And they cannot even choose their country of resettlement. The United Nations is just as likely to resettle a refugee in Europe or Australia as the United States, which would then conduct additional interviews and background checks. The United States used to rightly pride itself on leading the world in rescuing refugees, but for the past few years has been sending the signal that they are no longer welcome. Earlier this year, it looked like there was hope for change. Let's not fail refugees now. Sam Ryan is a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. He can be reached at ryan@lexingtoninstitute.org. Copyright © Lexington Institute. All rights reserved. |