How Does the U.S. Refugee System Work?

Syrian refugees who crossed the Evros River wait to be transferred by police to a first reception center in Greece. Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters


Last updated October 10, 2018

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The United States has long accepted refugees fleeing persecution or war. From taking in hundreds of thousands of Europeans displaced by World War II to welcoming those escaping from Communist regimes in Europe and Asia during the Cold War, the United States has helped define protections for refugees under international humanitarian law. Beginning in 1980, the U.S. government moved from an ad hoc approach to the permanent, standardized system for identifying, vetting, and resettling prospective refugees that is still in use today.

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The size of the U.S. refugee program has often fluctuated. But the war in Syria and the resulting migration crisis in Europe has increased policymakers’ scrutiny of arrivals from the Middle East, beginning with the administration of President Barack Obama. President Donald J. Trump ratcheted up that scrutiny with a ban on refugees from certain countries and sharp cuts to overall refugee admissions, renewing debate over the national security implications of refugee policy.

What is a refugee?

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There is sometimes confusion between the terms migrant, refugee, and asylum seeker. Migrant is an umbrella term for people leaving their homes and often crossing international borders, whether to seek economic opportunity or escape persecution.

As defined by U.S. law as well as the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugees are migrants who are able to demonstrate that they have been persecuted, or have reason to fear persecution, on the basis of one of five “protected grounds”: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.

Watch: What’s the Difference Between a Migrant and a Refugee?

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Under the U.S. system, refugees are those seeking entry from a third country. Asylum seekers are those who meet the criteria for refugee status but apply from within the United States, or at ports of entry, after arriving under a different status. Asylum seekers follow a different protocol than those applying for refugee status.

For how long has the United States accepted refugees?

The United States has long accepted migrants who would be identified under current international law as refugees. In the wake of World War II, the United States passed its first refugee legislation to manage the resettlement of some 650,000 displaced Europeans. Throughout the Cold War, the United States accepted refugees fleeing from Communist regimes, such as those in Eastern Europe, China, and Cuba.

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But the country’s official federal effort to resettle refugees, the U.S. Refugee Admission Program (USRAP), was not created until passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. Prior to 1980, legislation that authorized acceptance of refugees was passed primarily on an ad hoc basis, responding to ongoing mass migrations. After the fall of South Vietnam to Communist forces in 1975, when the United States began taking in hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asian refugees, Congress saw the need for a more standardized system.

The 1980 legislation, signed by President Jimmy Carter, established permanent procedures for vetting, admitting, and resettling refugees into the country, incorporated the official definition of the term “refugee,” increased the number of refugees to be admitted annually to fifty thousand, and granted the president authority to admit additional refugees in emergencies.

How many refugees are allowed into the country?

The number of refugees admitted into the United States has generally declined from more than 200,000 at the start of the program in 1980 to approximately 22,500 in 2018. Levels of refugee admissions fluctuated dramatically during that period, falling through the 1980s and spiking again in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.


In 2016, President Obama increased an earlier approved ceiling of eighty thousand to allow an additional five thousand refugees as part of an effort to address a growing migration crisis caused by worsening conflict in Syria. Obama also proposed that the United States set a ceiling of 110,000 refugee admissions for fiscal year 2017.

President Trump reversed President Obama’s proposed ceiling by capping the number of refugees allowed into the country in fiscal year 2017 at fifty thousand. He lowered this ceiling further for 2018, to forty-five thousand, and again for 2019, to thirty thousand, by far the lowest cap since the introduction of the program. The Trump administration argued that the reduction was necessary to direct more government resources to the backlog of applications from nearly eight hundred thousand asylum seekers who had reached the United States’ southern border. Critics counter that the asylum and refugee programs have little bearing on one another.

Where are they from?



Refugees admitted to the United States from former Soviet countries increased sharply for the decade beginning in 1989, and from 2006 to 2016, the highest number of refugees came from Myanmar, Iraq, and Bhutan, in descending order. In 2018, the countries with the highest number of refugees admitted to the United States were the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Ukraine, and Bhutan, in descending order.

A January 2017 executive order by President Trump called for temporarily prohibiting the entry of nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—a tightening of visa restrictions on those countries imposed by the Obama administration. It also indefinitely barred all Syrian refugees. The Trump administration revised the order twice amid legal challenges to the so-called travel ban, and in April 2018 the Supreme Court allowed the third version of the order to stand.

Trump also heavily criticized a resettlement deal with Australia finalized by Obama, in which the United States would take 1,250 refugees currently being held by Australian authorities in offshore detention centers. Many of these refugees are from Iran and Somalia, countries included in the third iteration of the travel ban. By September 2018, Washington had resettled just over 350 refugees; applicants from Iran and Somalia had been rejected.

How are refugees screened and approved?





What government agencies are involved?


Through its Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) branch, DHS is the primary agency responsible for the security vetting of refugee applicants; USCIS makes the final determination on whether to approve resettlement applications. Its security review uses the resources and databases of numerous other national security agencies, including the National Counterterrorism Center, FBI, Department of Defense, and multiple U.S. intelligence agencies.

Once settled in the United States, refugees are generally in the hands of charity and other volunteer agencies that specialize in resettlement. The State Department’s Reception and Placement Program provides funding to go toward refugees’ rent, furnishings, food, and clothing. After three months, this responsibility shifts to HHS, which provides longer-term cash and medical assistance, as well as other social services, including language classes and employment training. Following the reductions to the refugee admission ceiling, all nine nongovernmental agencies that assist with resettlement have downsized, closing offices or laying off staff.


Where are refugees resettled?

Refugees are resettled in one of approximately 190 communities across the country, though there are several states that generally resettle higher numbers than others. According to the State Department, Texas, Washington, and Ohio took in the highest number of refugees in fiscal year 2018, making up 20 percent of all refugee admissions that year. The ten states with the highest intake resettled just under half of all refugees admitted in 2018. Two states—Hawaii and Wyoming—took in no refugees.

What roles do state and local governments play?



Have refugee populations posed security risks to the United States in the past?



In 2016, in the wake of a spate of deadly terrorist attacks in Europe, various U.S. intelligence officials warned that the self-proclaimed Islamic State was seeking to use refugee flows to smuggle its fighters into the United States. Trump administration officials have reiterated concerns over the vetting process. In September 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “We must continue to responsibly vet applicants to prevent the entry of those who might do harm to our country.”



This 2017 report from the Pew Research Center examines recent trends in refugee arrivals.

Refugee arrivals to the United States increased dramatically after the 1980 Refugee Act, explains this 2016 Congressional Research Service report [PDF].

President Trump’s executive order on immigration reshapes the nation’s refugee policy in significant ways, explains this New York Times article.

This U.S. State Department graphic [PDF] illustrates the multi-step vetting process that all refugees must pass through before being admitted into the country.

President Trump’s executive order misunderstands how to most effectively fight foreign terrorism, argues Jacob N. Shapiro in Foreign Affairs

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