9.2b Refugees and Asylum Seekers
People immigrate for many reasons, including to find work, reunite with family, pursue freedom, seek opportunities, and escape danger. For example, refugees are individuals who have been granted protection in another country because their lives and safety are at risk in their own country. Their lives or safety is at risk due to their “race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion” (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 2022). There are 43.4 million refugees worldwide (UNHCR, 2024). The United States used to be a leader in refugee resettlement but become more restrictive since 2017 (Ward & Batalova, 2023). Since the Refugee Act of 1980, the United States has resettled approximately 73,300 refugees annually (Ward & Batalova, 2023). However, the number decreased to 25,500 in 2022 (Ward & Batalova, 2023). About 10% of immigrants to the United States each year have refugee status (Erickson, 2020).
Photo 9.5
Ukrainian Refugees Fleeing the Russo-Ukrainian War
Like refugees, asylum seekers are fleeing persecution. However, their new country has not yet decided whether they will be allowed to stay as refugees, sent to another country, or sent back to their country of origin. Worldwide, there are 6.9 million asylum seekers (UNHCR, 2024). At least two million asylum applications await processing in the United States (Bush-Joseph, 2024). Only 36,615 people were granted asylum in the United States in 2022 (American Immigration Council, 2024). The backlog results from several factors, including the lack of comprehensive immigration reform from the U.S. Congress since 1986 (Galston, 2024) and the unprecedented number of asylum seekers (Bush-Joseph, 2024). About a third of those granted asylum in 2021 were people fleeing political violence and economic crisis in Venezuela (Turkewitz & Herrera, 2023), human rights abuses in China (Palmer, 2024), and gang violence and the aftermath of natural disasters in El Salvador (Menjívar & Cervantes, 2018).