tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/us-refugee-policy-21535/articlesUS refugee policy – The Conversation2022-02-18T13:06:38Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1722072022-02-18T13:06:38Z2022-02-18T13:06:38ZTens of thousands of Afghan evacuees made it to the US – here’s how the resettlement process works<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446012/original/file-20220211-15-1qrkp5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C26%2C5820%2C3961&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mohammad Attaie and his wife, Deena, newly arrived from Afghanistan, get assistance from medical translator Jahannaz Afshar at the Valley Health Center TB/Refugee Program in San Jose, Calif., on Dec. 9, 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Afghan%20Refugees%20Silicon%20Valley%20Clinic/3c7fcbd9779d475eb03b5a617cc36d20?Query=afghan%20refugee&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=4200&currentItemNo=15">AP Photo/Eric Risberg</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As of February 2022, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/30/white-house-working-to-expedite-afghan-resettlement-as-at-least-12500-remain-on-military-bases.html">some 65,000 Afghans</a> evacuated during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan have settled in U.S. communities. Several hundred more remain on military bases in the U.S., while <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/14/politics/afghan-refugees/index.html">nearly 2,800</a> are still waiting on U.S. bases abroad.</p>
<p>The Biden administration, which aims to have all Afghan evacuees off domestic military bases by the end of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/14/politics/afghan-refugees/index.html">February 2022</a>, has started the final push to place refugees with host communities.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.dhs.gov/allieswelcome">Operation Allies Welcome</a>, the official name for the American government’s Afghan assistance program, is the most significant U.S. resettlement effort since 1975, when <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/id-76-63.pdf">more than 140,000</a> people from Southeast Asia were resettled following the U.S. military withdrawal from Vietnam.</p>
<p>But the media spotlight has moved on, and most Americans have limited understanding of what it means for Afghans to transition to life in the United States. Our work as educators and researchers is focused on <a href="https://ssw.uconn.edu/person/kathryn-libal-phd/">migration, human rights and social work</a>. We <a href="https://ssw.uconn.edu/person/scott-harding-phd/">have studied</a> American <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/strangers-to-neighbours-products-9780228001379.php">volunteers’ role</a> in helping refugees and see public support as crucial for Afghans’ continued adjustment to the U.S.</p>
<h2>System under strain</h2>
<p>Evacuees brought to U.S. military bases go through rigorous security vetting and health checks. Once these are complete, evacuees await assignment to private groups that will assist in securing housing, work opportunities, education and health care.</p>
<p>Nine domestic agencies <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/us-resettlement-partners.html">partner with the U.S. government</a> to resettle refugees. Six of them are faith-based, reflecting <a href="https://theconversation.com/american-religious-groups-have-a-history-of-resettling-refugees-including-afghans-166628">a long history</a> of religious groups’ involvement in immigration policies. These include Jewish, Catholic and Protestant groups, but all offer help regardless of refugees’ religion.</p>
<p>These resettlement agencies are given a one-time payment of US$2,275 in federal funding for each refugee they support. Of this assistance, $1,225 may be used for housing and other basic necessities. The remainder of the funds covers administrative costs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two men shake hands in the sparsely furnished living room of a home." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446014/original/file-20220211-19-1kfqntl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446014/original/file-20220211-19-1kfqntl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446014/original/file-20220211-19-1kfqntl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446014/original/file-20220211-19-1kfqntl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446014/original/file-20220211-19-1kfqntl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446014/original/file-20220211-19-1kfqntl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446014/original/file-20220211-19-1kfqntl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Abdul, right, who left Kabul with his family, shakes hands with Jesse Robbins. Robbins and his wife, Thuy Do, have offered their vacant rental home to house Afghans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ted S. Warren</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Trump administration <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-politics-immigration-coronavirus-pandemic-0a649290b8a6628900598d4324c3d72b">severely limited refugee resettlement</a>, dropping admissions to a record low of 15,000 in 2021, compared with an average of 95,000 per year under previous administrations. Our current research examines the extraordinary strain this decrease put on the resettlement system.</p>
<h2>Innovations in aid</h2>
<p>To evacuate Afghans quickly, the State Department launched an initiative in September 2021 called the Afghan Placement and Assistance Program, which allows Afghans into the U.S. as parolees after security checks. <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/forms/explore-my-options/humanitarian-parole">Humanitarian parole</a> can be granted for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.”</p>
<p>Those paroled between July 31, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2022, are <a href="https://www.wrapsnet.org/documents/ORR%20Benefits-for-Afghan-Humanitarian-Parolees.pdf">eligible for refugee assistance</a> and other public benefits until March 31, 2023, or the end of their parole term. Afghan parolees who leave military bases before being assigned to a resettlement organization or placed with a community sponsorship group <a href="https://www.wrapsnet.org/afghans-granted-humanitarian-parole/">have 90 days</a> to request aid through the program.</p>
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<p>Yet the capacity of these organizations is not adequate to meet the large-scale rapid resettlement needs, as agencies struggle to build back from the previous administration’s cuts. The housing shortage for rapid resettlement is so profound that resettlement agencies and <a href="https://www.dshs.wa.gov/esa/csd-office-refugee-and-immigration-assistance/welcoming-afghans-washington-state">some states</a> have partnered with Airbnb to provide emergency housing, following the company’s commitment in August 2021 to support <a href="https://news.airbnb.com/afghan-refugees/">20,000 Afghan evacuees</a> worldwide.</p>
<p>For this reason, the Biden administration created a parallel program to allow community organizations or groups of five or more individual volunteers to directly sponsor Afghans. These sponsors, many of whom are part of a new initiative called <a href="https://www.sponsorcircles.org/">Sponsor Circles</a>, <a href="https://www.sponsorcircles.org/about">must raise $2,275</a> on their own for each evacuee and commit to providing at least 90 days’ support, such as helping them secure housing and employment and building connections in their new community.</p>
<p>As of <a href="https://www.devex.com/news/us-tries-sponsor-circles-to-speed-afghan-refugee-resettlement-102378">late January 2022</a> approximately 30 Sponsor Circles had reportedly received approvals and another 100 were being certified.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Several seated young children play on a bare floor surrounded by metal frames draped in white tarps." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446024/original/file-20220211-24893-n2ct3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446024/original/file-20220211-24893-n2ct3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446024/original/file-20220211-24893-n2ct3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446024/original/file-20220211-24893-n2ct3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446024/original/file-20220211-24893-n2ct3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446024/original/file-20220211-24893-n2ct3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446024/original/file-20220211-24893-n2ct3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A group of children plays inside one of the large tents at an Afghan refugee camp on Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey on Sept. 27, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Andrew Harnik</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Here – for now</h2>
<p>While many Americans think of the arriving Afghans as “refugees,” most of these newcomers have a more tenuous legal status.</p>
<p><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_WZNPMln7QLxIXj1y-MzDsR_nsE4ape5/view">The Department of Homeland Security reports</a> that 70,192 have entered the country under <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/21_1110-opa-dhs-resettlement-of-at-risk-afghans.pdf">humanitarian parole</a>, which allows residence in the U.S. for two years without a visa.</p>
<p>Nearly 40,000 Afghan evacuees <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_WZNPMln7QLxIXj1y-MzDsR_nsE4ape5/view">who entered under humanitarian parole</a> have applied for refugee status or for <a href="https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/special-immg-visa-afghans-employed-us-gov.html">special immigrant visas</a>, which are for people who worked with the U.S. government or armed forces in Afghanistan. Another 36,433 Afghans have no clear pathway to permanent legal status, because of many factors such as not having worked at least one year for the U.S. government.</p>
<p>U.S. agencies brought in Afghans under humanitarian parole, rather than standard refugee procedures, because of the urgency of the evacuation. But the consequences may be profound.</p>
<p>Some parolees had to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/01/29/afghan-evacuees-refugees-washington-dc/">wait weeks or months</a> for the government or social service organizations to file paperwork granting them the right to work. Another <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/us/afghan-refugees-humanitarian-parole.html?smid=em-share">challenge for parolees</a> is <a href="https://immigrationimpact.com/2022/01/07/denials-afghan-humanitarian-parole-requests/#.Yg1l11jMLt2">securing family members’ admission to the U.S.</a>, which requires a high level of proof of threat to that particular individual. </p>
<p>Many Afghan parolees should eventually qualify for asylum, but applying is a lengthy and complex process that generally requires significant legal assistance. <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/Quarterly_All_Forms_FY2021Q4.pdf">More than 400,000 asylum cases</a> are pending in the <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-and-asylum/asylum">U.S. asylum system</a>. </p>
<p>Refugee resettlement organizations and voluntary groups that could normally help with filing asylum claims are already stretched thin. Evacuees’ advocates have <a href="https://rcusa.org/resources/rcusa-applauds-passage-of-fy22-cr-calls-on-congress-to-pass-the-afghan-adjustment-act/">called for approval</a> of the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would allow Afghans to apply for lawful permanent resident status without waiting for the asylum system to rule on their cases or processing of special immigrant visa applications.</p>
<p>Governors, businesses, celebrities, universities, military members, veterans and individuals across the U.S. have stepped in to <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22883775/afghan-refugee-private-sponsorship">support recent Afghan evacuees</a> – many in locales with no history of resettling refugees. The responsibilities of resettlement, however, extend beyond helping evacuees in their first few weeks, to helping them secure a stable future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172207/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nine agencies, most of them faith-based, are resettling Afghan evacuees in the US. But the system is under strain.Kathryn Libal, Director, Human Rights Institute, Associate Prof. Social Work and Human Rights, University of ConnecticutScott Harding, Associate Professor of Social Work, University of ConnecticutLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/878982017-11-23T15:01:36Z2017-11-23T15:01:36ZThreat of expulsion hangs over thousands of Eritreans who sought refuge in Israel and the US<p>Bahabolom must be one of the luckiest men alive. Now in Switzerland, granted refugee status, and studying French and German, his extraordinary journey nearly cost him his life. “I was like a football – kicked from one country to another,” he told me from Zurich, which is now his home.</p>
<p>Bahabolom – or “Bob” as he’s known – set off from Eritrea (probably Africa’s most repressive state) back in 2009. Via Sudan and Egypt, he crossed the Sinai before entering Israel. “I got a job as a dishwasher and then a cook, in Tel Aviv,” he told me. “But I couldn’t get asylum – I was only given a conditional release and had to report to the authorities every three months.”</p>
<p>In 2013 this changed. He was told to choose between three years in prison, being returned to Eritrea or deportation to Rwanda. Faced with this dilemma he chose Rwanda and – armed with Israeli travel documents and US$3,500 – he flew to Kigali. </p>
<p>“We arrived at two in the morning. At the airport we were met by a man who called himself ‘John’. He was a black man – I think he was a Rwandan official.” He was taken to a house, where his Israeli travel documents were taken from him. “I protested,” says Bahabolom, “but John didn’t care. We had been promised by the Israelis we could live and work, but it didn’t happen.”</p>
<p>The following day a smuggler arrived and offered them the chance of going to Uganda. With few options, Bahabolom took it. “It was a hard journey: we crossed the border illegally, on foot.” But once in Kampala his situation was no better. Registration as a refugee was impossible, he couldn’t work and finally he decided to move on again. </p>
<p>Armed with a large sum of money, Bahabolom managed to get a flight to Turkey and from there crossed into Greece in 2015. “It was very difficult. We suffered a lot,” he explained. Finally, in September that year he made it to Switzerland and safety.</p>
<p>Bahabolom’s story is by no means unique. If the Israeli authorities have their way it is about to be replicated by thousands of Eritreans and Sudanese refugees, most of whom live in Tel Aviv. According to the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/press/2017/11/5a0f27484/unhcr-concerned-israels-refugee-relocation-proposals.html">UN refugee agency</a> these asylum-seekers and refugees now face the grim choice of relocation to countries in Africa such as Rwanda, or imprisonment in Israel. </p>
<h2>‘Infiltrators’</h2>
<p>The plan is the latest iteration of a programme designed to expel the vast majority of Africans seeking asylum in Israel. The Israelis refuse to consider them refugees – instead terming them <a href="https://www.ardc-israel.org/refugees-or-infiltrators">“infiltrators”</a>. Rwanda will <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.823734">reportedly</a> be paid $5,000 per refugee.</p>
<p>The policy was initiated in December 2013 and by June 2017, some 4,000 Eritrean and Sudanese had been pressed to agree to be “voluntarily” relocated to Rwanda and Uganda. The UN is at its wits end trying to deal with this crisis. “This is not burden sharing,” Sharon Harel of the UNHCR told me. “It is burden shifting. These people are treated as refugees in orbit.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196174/original/file-20171123-17985-1ox07py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196174/original/file-20171123-17985-1ox07py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196174/original/file-20171123-17985-1ox07py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196174/original/file-20171123-17985-1ox07py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196174/original/file-20171123-17985-1ox07py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196174/original/file-20171123-17985-1ox07py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196174/original/file-20171123-17985-1ox07py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Women soldiers in Eritrea, where people can face almost indefinite conscription.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Soldiers_of_Eritrea_%28women%29.jpg">Temesgen Woldezion, Merhawie via Wikipedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Much of Israeli decision-making takes place behind closed doors. Refugee agencies complain that they have no access to the evidence that has been placed before the courts who have endorsed the government’s actions. The UNHCR <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/press/2017/11/5a0f27484/unhcr-concerned-israels-refugee-relocation-proposals.html">complains</a> of the “secrecy surrounding this policy and the lack of transparency concerning its implementation” which has made it difficult to monitor what happens to the refugees when they are deported to Africa.</p>
<p>Gilad Liberman, an Israeli human rights activist who has traced what happened when they landed in Rwanda, says that almost all the refugees are only allowed to remain in the country for a day or two. “They are then smuggled out of the country to Uganda. None are given visas to remain,” he says. This was confirmed to me by the UNHCR, which has only recorded seven refugees, who arrived from Israel, who were given an official status by Rwanda and even they only received temporary visas, which soon expired.</p>
<p>The plight of the refugees deported by Israel to Africa is well <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/israel/i-was-left-nothing-voluntary-departures-asylum-seekers-israel-rwanda-and-uganda-enhe">documented</a>. A <a href="http://hotline.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Deported-To-The-Unkown.pdf">report</a> by the Hotline for Refugees and Asylum Seekers – one of the Israeli NGOs active in this area – traced the men and women who had been sent to Rwanda. The refugees the NGO interviewed accused the Israeli officials of making false promises to them. In reality their travel documents were confiscated and they were held captive in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, until they could be smuggled into Uganda.</p>
<p>This is the experience that has been reported by a Ugandan-based agency, <a href="https://africamonitors.org/">Africa Monitors</a>. They found that many of the traffickers are Eritreans themselves – an allegation <a href="http://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/human-trafficking-and-trauma-in-the-digital-era">supported</a> by other researchers. A pattern is emerging of a complex network of trafficking that can finally be <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2012/545">traced back</a> to the Eritrean government itself, which uses its countrymen and women as a means of extracting funds in return for their onward journey to Europe and beyond. </p>
<h2>Living in limbo in the US</h2>
<p>If the position of Eritreans in Israel is precarious, their status in the US is currently little better. While many are granted asylum, some are not. Those who are denied asylum have instead been released to sponsors, awaiting “final removal” back to Eritrea. In the past, the Eritrean government has routinely <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-cuts-off-visas-for-countries-that-refuse-deported-immigrants/article/2634314">refused</a> to grant them travel documents to allow them to be deported. </p>
<p>John Stauffer, president of <a href="http://eritreanrefugees.org">The America Team for Displaced Eritreans</a>, which works with the refugees, told me this changed in <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-cuts-off-visas-for-countries-that-refuse-deported-immigrants/article/2634314">September</a>. “Under pressure from the Trump administration, the State Department has now refused to issue visas to Eritreans in Eritrea for travel to the USA as a means to pressure the regime to accept deportees from the USA. The US embassy in Asmara would not issue them.” </p>
<p>As a result, it seems, the Eritrean authorities have buckled, and Eritreans who were not granted asylum are being issued with documents that will allow them to be returned to Asmara. Asylum seekers are being ordered to report to immigration officers in the US and some are then re-detained. Desperate not to be sent back to imprisonment or torture in the country from which they fled, some are travelling north. “They are using the backroads to cross into Canada,” says Stauffer. </p>
<p>For Eritreans who have already endured complex journeys, travelled thousands of miles and crossed so many borders, it’s a crushing experience. Paulos’s brother, Tesfa (not their real names) is in detention, awaiting imminent deportation based on travel documents that the Eritrean government has now provided to US authorities. He told me he is deeply fearful for what lies in store and disillusioned with America. </p>
<p>“The USA was for us always a country of refuge. People looked to the USA for moral leadership. Now my brother is facing deportation and torture. Who is there to look up to?” asks Paulos.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87898/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Plaut does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Israel is deporting thousands of Eritrean asylum seekers to Rwanda, while in the US, many face being sent back to the country they fled.Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/828122017-09-20T03:15:38Z2017-09-20T03:15:38ZThe South Vietnamese who fled the fall of Saigon – and those who returned<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186855/original/file-20170920-16398-vikgg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vietnamese at a camp in Guam seeking repatriation, September 1975.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 319, Box 19, declassification number 984082</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than 120,000 people fled Vietnam after the North Vietnamese captured Saigon on April 30, 1975.</p>
<p>This chaotic evacuation has been captured in <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/last-helicopter-evacuating-saigon-321254">iconic photos</a>, <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/lastdays/">documentary films</a> and <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/lastdays/firstdaysstoryproject/">oral histories</a>. How did the Vietnamese seeking safety actually get from small boats or rooftop helicopters to the United States?</p>
<p>First, they went to Guam. </p>
<p>In response to the emergency, the U.S. military established a refugee camp on this small island in the Pacific. On Guam, the U.S. government planned to assess the crisis and process individuals while preparing camps on the mainland for the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jamerethnhist.33.2.0057?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">incoming Vietnamese</a>. However, approximately <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/470200">1,500 Vietnamese</a> had another idea – refusing resettlement in the U.S. and returning home.</p>
<p>I first learned of these events when I discovered images of the repatriates in the U.S. National Archives and found “<a href="http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-9741-9780824867171.aspx">Ship of Fate</a>,” the memoir of a South Vietnamese naval officer, Tran Dinh Tru. His story and that of other repatriates shows the real risks of repatriation if there are no guarantees of protection. This is an important lesson today given the U.S. government’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/us/politics/trump-refugee-quota.html">current steps</a> to make it harder for refugees to enter the country. </p>
<h2>Captain Tran Dinh Tru</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185896/original/file-20170913-20319-120vuc8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185896/original/file-20170913-20319-120vuc8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185896/original/file-20170913-20319-120vuc8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185896/original/file-20170913-20319-120vuc8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185896/original/file-20170913-20319-120vuc8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185896/original/file-20170913-20319-120vuc8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185896/original/file-20170913-20319-120vuc8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185896/original/file-20170913-20319-120vuc8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trần Đình Trụ in Orange County, September 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jana Lipman</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tru was a respected <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/lastdays/firstdaysstoryproject/interviews/escaped-Communists-wanted-return/raw/">career South Vietnamese naval officer</a>. In the chaos of April 1975, Tru evacuated with other naval officers, and he organized for a ship to save his wife, who was stranded far outside Saigon. However, the ship failed to rescue his wife. Like many family members across South Vietnam, she was left behind with their three children to navigate the new political landscape. </p>
<p>Waiting on Guam alone, Tru despaired that he would never see his family again. </p>
<p>Tru was one of more than 1,500 Vietnamese on Guam who did not want to resettle in America. They called themselves the repatriates, and they wanted to return to Vietnam for a range of reasons. </p>
<p>Many were young South Vietnamese sailors who were aboard South Vietnamese ships as the North Vietnamese advanced on Saigon, and their captains had directed the ships out to sea and never returned to port. These young men did not see themselves as refugees. </p>
<p>In other cases, older men and women decided they did not have the stamina to start again in America. Others, like Tru, had family members who had missed connections, and they faced <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1975/10/03/archives/vietnamese-on-guam-explain-why-they-want-to-return-home.html">indefinite separation</a>.</p>
<p>The repatriates turned to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the U.S. government and the Guamanian public to make the case that they should be allowed to return to Vietnam. They wrote letters to the Guam newspaper and built massive billboards within the camp demanding their return. The UNHCR and the U.S. could not guarantee their safety on return, and so they made no plans for their repatriation. Frustrated with the lack of action, many of the repatriates escalated their protests.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185992/original/file-20170914-8980-17xkteg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185992/original/file-20170914-8980-17xkteg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185992/original/file-20170914-8980-17xkteg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185992/original/file-20170914-8980-17xkteg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185992/original/file-20170914-8980-17xkteg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185992/original/file-20170914-8980-17xkteg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185992/original/file-20170914-8980-17xkteg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185992/original/file-20170914-8980-17xkteg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Repatriates have their heads shaven at a 36-hour hunger-quiet strike, September 1975.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 319, Box 19, declassification number 984082</span></span>
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<p>The repatriates built a makeshift stage. Men shaved their heads in front of a banner that proclaimed boldly in English, “Thirty-Six Hours, Hunger Sit-In, Quiet, Hair Shaving Off, To Pray for a Soon Repatriation.” The repatriates also organized hunger strikes, militant marches through the streets of Guam and eventually set fire to buildings in the refugee camp. </p>
<p>This was a situation no one had anticipated. The repatriates did not want to go to the United States, the Guamanian government did not want them to stay on Guam and the U.S. government did not know what to do. Notably, the new Vietnamese government did not want them back. </p>
<h2>The ship of fate</h2>
<p>In the end, the U.S. government granted the Vietnamese a commercial ship, the Viet Nam Thuong Tin, to return home. Tru agreed to be the captain due to his experience and skill. The Vietnamese repatriates knew the communist government saw them as hostile interlopers, traitors and possible CIA plants, but they still felt strongly that they must return. </p>
<p>The voyage took roughly two weeks, and the atmosphere on the ship was tense and cautious.</p>
<p>When the ship arrived in Vung Tau, a southern Vietnamese port, the Vietnamese government saw Tru as suspect and counterrevolutionary. They ignored his repeated wishes to reunite with his family, and the government imprisoned Tru in its network of “reeducation camps,” where he suffered for 13 years. These camps punished South Vietnamese men who had fought against North Vietnam and allied themselves with South Vietnam and the United States. They combined prison labor and forced ideological training. They were marked by hunger, indefinite detention, and ongoing physical and psychological hardship. </p>
<p>My research into the limited reports of these events shows that the repatriates’ sentences ranged from months to many years. As captain, Tru suffered their arbitrary brutality the longest.</p>
<p>Tru eventually resettled in the United States with his family in 1991.</p>
<p>It’s worth noting that Tru’s long voyage is unusual. Most of the more than 120,000 Vietnamese who fled Vietnam sought and soon <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-04-23/remembering-california-refugee-camp-gave-vietnamese-new-life-us">gained resettlement</a> in the United States. President Gerald Ford’s administration allowed them to enter as “parolees” – a loophole in U.S. immigration policy, which did not make provisions for refugees at that time.</p>
<p>However, by the time Tru was released and decided to immigrate to the United States, he was able to do so through the U.S. <a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2005/56936.htm">Humanitarian Operation program</a>. The U.S. government designed this program for South Vietnamese officers and reeducation camp survivors in the late 1980s, and it expedited immigration processes for this population who had suffered directly because of their affiliations with the United States. The U.S. accepted over <a href="http://www.tolerance.org/sites/default/files/kits/vac_brief_history.pdf">70,000 Vietnamese</a> who had been imprisoned in Vietnam. </p>
<p>In my view, the Vietnamese repatriates’ story challenges us to recognize the risks and fears individuals face in moments of crisis, and ponder the difficult decisions that must be made at the end of a war.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82812/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jana Lipman received funding from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation Research Travel Grant in 2011 and the General and Mrs. Matthew B. Ridgway Military History Research Grant from the US Army Military History Institute in 2010.
</span></em></p>Not all who fled Vietnam at the end of the war wanted to be resettled in the US. But those who returned faced an unwelcoming government.Jana Lipman, Associate Professor of History, Tulane UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/734512017-02-22T04:53:11Z2017-02-22T04:53:11ZDutton blows Turnbull’s credibility – for now and perhaps for later<p>Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s explicit linking of the arrangements to send Australia’s offshore refugees to the US and to accept some from Costa Rica presents not just an immediate credibility problem for Malcolm Turnbull but, potentially, a more serious longer-term one.</p>
<p>It contradicts the prime minister’s flat – if unconvincing – denial of such a link. It also raises the question, why would people believe Turnbull on anything remotely related to this issue in the future?</p>
<p>And that could be important if the Trump administration were to ask Australia to boost its military commitment in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Turnbull says any such request would be considered on its merits.</p>
<p>If there was a request and Australia were to agree, he would deny that the acquiescence had anything to do with his managing to twist Donald Trump’s arm to accept the deal Australia did with the Obama administration to take people from Nauru and Manus Island.</p>
<p>But that denial – always likely to be questioned – would be an even harder sell now.</p>
<p>In September, after the Costa Rica arrangement was announced, Turnbull was asked whether it had any material impact on the government’s ability to find homes for people on Nauru and Manus Island.</p>
<p>“It is not linked to any other resettlement discussions,” he said. “The announcement today is not connected to any other arrangements.”</p>
<p>This became the mantra, including after the deal about Nauru and Manus Island was announced following the presidential election. Dutton said on November 14: “The Costa Rica arrangement had nothing to do with this deal and it’s not a people swap.”</p>
<p>On Tuesday’s Bolt program on Sky, Dutton predicted the first offshore refugees would move in the next couple of months. Asked then when the first people from Costa Rica would arrive, Dutton said: “Well, we wouldn’t take anyone until we had assurances that people were going to go off Nauru and Manus … We want an outcome in relation to Nauru and Manus.”</p>
<p>“One of the lessons we’ve learnt from past arrangements, say the Malaysian deal for example that Julia Gillard entered into, we accepted all the people from Malaysia, not one person went from Australia. So we’re not going to be sucked into that sort of silly outcome.”</p>
<p>It should be said this is more than a bit rich. The people didn’t go because the Coalition opposition blocked the “swap”.</p>
<p>Bolt pressed Dutton on the arrangements with the US. “So it was a deal? It was, we’ll take yours if you take ours.”</p>
<p>Dutton said it wasn’t a “people-swap deal” but added: “I don’t have any problem with that characterisation if people want to put that”.</p>
<p>It’s always defied common sense to think there was no link between the Costa Rica and Nauru/Manus Island deals, and the government was taking the public for mugs to try to argue that. Now it is paying the price.</p>
<p>It remains unclear what the Americans honouring the deal will amount to, given it is up to them how many of the people they finally accept after Trump’s “extreme vetting” process.</p>
<p>Dutton’s proposition that the refugees from Costa Rica can’t come until he’s sure some of the offshore people are going suggests he feels the need to take out insurance.</p>
<p>Fairfax’s <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/peter-duttons-reckless-comments-could-put-us-deal-at-risk-20170221-guiepd.html">Michael Gordon has suggested</a> Dutton could have handed Trump an excuse to junk the Manus/Nauru deal if he was so minded.</p>
<p>Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, in Washington for wide-ranging talks with the Trump administration, said on Wednesday: “The agreement is progressing and our officials are working together with United States officials to vet the applicants for settlement in the United States.” She wouldn’t be drawn on detail.</p>
<p>Asked whether she would characterise it as a swap deal, Bishop said: “That’s not the way I would categorise it.”</p>
<p>The government continues to fall victim of its own spin.</p>
<iframe src="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/tm592-67b71d?from=yiiadmin" data-link="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/tm592-67b71d?from=yiiadmin" height="100" width="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" data-name="pb-iframe-player"></iframe>
<iframe src="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/e2my3-67bf00?from=yiiadmin" data-link="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/e2my3-67bf00?from=yiiadmin" height="100" width="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" data-name="pb-iframe-player"></iframe><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73451/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s explicit linking of the arrangements to send Australia’s offshore refugees to the US and to accept some from Costa Rica presents not just an immediate credibility problem…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/639892016-08-31T02:15:37Z2016-08-31T02:15:37ZThe U.S. wants Costa Rica to host refugees before they cross the border. Here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135993/original/image-20160830-28235-gme6bz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">San José, Costa Rica.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/4-_Vue_San_Jose.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Violence in Central America continues to push its citizens to seek refuge.</p>
<p>In July, the U.S. government announced <a href="http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2016/07/260507.htm">a plan</a> for Costa Rica to temporarily host up to 200 refugees from Central America while they are processed for placement in the U.S. or elsewhere.</p>
<p><a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/journey-inside-crucible-violence-central-america/#!">Violence</a> is an ongoing problem in what is known as the Northern Triangle – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. In El Salvador, gang and drug violence, combined with a lack of government capacity to respond, have led some to call it the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/22/el-salvador-worlds-most-homicidal-place">homicide capital of the world</a>. Youth are particularly at risk for being recruited by gangs, driving many to flee.</p>
<p>As an anthropologist, I have studied migration in Costa Rica since 2005. Over the past 10 years, my work has focused on how immigrants and refugees <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/plar.12136/abstract">adapt to Costa Rica</a> and its increasingly restrictive <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/imre.12073/full">immigration policies</a>. </p>
<p>This summer, I spent a month in Costa Rica interviewing nongovernmental organization staff, government officials and refugee applicants to learn more about the increase in refugees from other Central American countries. The new scale and diversity of refugees is challenging tiny Costa Rica’s capacity to manage these populations and ensure protection of their human rights. The U.S. plan to send more refugees their way will only add to this challenge.</p>
<h2>A temporary host for refugees</h2>
<p>The plan for Costa Rica to temporarily house refugees is in addition to an existing program that helps <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/CAM">Central American minors</a> gain refugee status in the U.S. It aims to help those most at risk of harm in the Northern Triangle countries. Creating a mechanism to screen and process refugees in Costa Rica will allow those most as risk to quickly leave El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala, but also discourage them from attempting the dangerous journey north through Mexico to the U.S. border.</p>
<p>For months, the Obama administration has been working with the United Nations refugee agency to set up what is called a <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/07/26/us-expands-initiatives-address-central-american-migration-challenges">protection transfer arrangement</a>. Under this plan, applicants will be prescreened. Those with immediate protection needs will be moved to Costa Rica. Costa Rica will provide temporary humanitarian visas to up to 200 refugees at a time, for up to six months. From there, they will be processed for refugee status in the United States or other countries. </p>
<p>While the plan offers a short-term solution for protecting those most vulnerable to violence, it does not address the magnitude of the migration. In the first six months of the current fiscal year, the U.S. border patrol apprehended <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/01/opinion/a-tale-of-two-migration-flows.html">120,700</a> people from the Northern Triangle countries attempting to enter the U.S. Some of those who cross the border will apply for asylum, but the majority will be sent back to their countries of origin and the violence they were fleeing.</p>
<p>U.S. refugee and asylum application processing often takes <a href="http://www.state.gov/j/prm/releases/factsheets/2013/210135.htm">more than a year</a>. It is unclear what funding will be available under the new program if refugees have not been placed after six months. These refugees will not be able to work in Costa Rica under the temporary humanitarian visas and will probably not be eligible for the country’s public health care system. The Costa Rican immigration advocates I met had many questions about the program: Where will the refugees live? How will they eat? And, what will this mean for the government’s resources for other refugees already in Costa Rica?</p>
<h2>A refugee haven</h2>
<p>Costa Rica is a major destination for migrants and refugees in the region, and <a href="http://www.cipacdh.org/pdf/Resultados_Generales_Censo_2011.pdf">immigrants account for 9 percent</a> of the country’s population of 4.8 million. Like the United States, Costa Rica has seen a dramatic increase in arrivals of refugees from Northern Triangle countries, particularly El Salvador, since 2012. Asylum applications in Costa Rica have quadrupled, from 209 in 2012 to 889 in 2015, according to unpublished data from the Refugee Unit within Costa Rica’s General Directorate of Migration.</p>
<p>Officials expect that number to continue rising. In the first six months of 2016, the Costa Rican Refugee Unit responsible for processing applications had received 897 applications from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Most came from El Salvador. </p>
<p>In the 1980s, Costa Rica took in around <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9KoU94NPMr0C&pg=PA143&lpg=PA143&dq=basok+1990+welcome+some&source=bl&ots=Fntb6wP1pa&sig=qNKkWx3FvVCr5DwO4Sc6D7cIoCY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiejp38wtXOAhVJ02MKHT8bAM8Q6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=basok%201990%20welcome%20some&f=false">20,000 Salvadorans</a> and a similar number of Nicaraguans fleeing war in their countries. After Hurricane Mitch devastated the region in 1998, Costa Rica created amnesty for migrants from devastated countries like Honduras and Nicaragua.</p>
<p>Central Americans moving to Costa Rica today often already have established social networks in Costa Rica – friends and family they can count on to help them settle in and adapt to the country. Travel to Costa Rica is also less expensive and less dangerous than the journey to the United States. So, Salvadorans often move to Costa Rica as a family unit. This means Costa Rica does not see many unaccompanied minors, an issue that has caused great <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/10/opinion/charles-blow-the-crisis-of-children-at-the-border.html">concern in the U.S.</a> </p>
<p>But, Central Americans are not the only refugees Costa Rica is receiving. Large numbers of Colombians arrive in Costa Rica each year, fleeing <a href="http://www.refworld.org/country,,UNHCR,,COL,,577a185d4,0.html">violence</a> and impunity in their country. Immigration officials expect to continue to see around 500 Colombian refugees arriving each year, despite the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-37180752">newly signed peace accord</a>. Costa Rica has also seen a large increase in Venezuelans fleeing <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/07/05/484756549/venezuela-is-in-crisis-its-economy-is-in-a-tailspin">economic crisis</a>. </p>
<p>Finally, Costa Rica has become a transit hub for Africans, Haitians and <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-34920120">Cubans</a> looking to make it to the U.S. Similar circumstances have plagued <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/06/22/483081488/via-cargo-ships-and-jungle-treks-africans-dream-of-reaching-the-u-s">African migrants</a> who have arrived by boat via Brazil. Unofficial estimates suggest that there are as many as 5,000 Africans and Haitians in Costa Rica, the majority living in makeshift refugee camps at the country’s borders. </p>
<h2>An imperfect model</h2>
<p>Costa Rica has become a popular destination and transit country because of its relatively open borders and policies, its reputation as a champion of <a href="http://www.corteidh.or.cr/index.php/en">human rights</a> and its relatively low levels of <a href="https://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTLAC/Resources/FINAL_VOLUME_I_ENGLISH_CrimeAndViolence.pdf">crime, violence</a> and <a href="http://www.ticotimes.net/2013/06/24/central-america-remains-the-poorest-region-in-latin-america-despite-success-reducing-extreme-poverty">poverty</a>. In some ways, the Costa Rican system may offer an example to other countries about how to handle the Central American refugee crisis. </p>
<p>For example, the Costa Rican administration has sent high-level immigration officials to El Salvador and Honduras to better understand the conditions in gang-plagued neighborhoods. Applicants are almost never held in detention, unlike the thousands of Central American women and children <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/03/20/471148251/when-asylum-seeking-women-and-children-immigrants-are-welcomed-like-criminals">detained in the U.S.</a> And they receive a work permit even while waiting for a decision in their cases, although the 200 refugees housed under the U.S. plan would not be eligible for work permits.</p>
<p>The Costa Rican system is far from ideal. Costa Rica has a tense relationship with the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans who have migrated there in the past three decades. Nicaragua, though not part of the Northern Triangle, has the second highest emigration rate in Central America behind El Salvador. Nicaraguans are more likely to move to Costa Rica than to the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sergio-ramirez/nicaraguans-migrating-costa-rica_b_5614269.html">United States</a>. In Costa Rica, they face intense xenophobia and discrimination. Media coverage of other refugee groups arriving in Costa Rica has added to these tensions and <a href="http://reliefweb.int/report/costa-rica/refugee-and-costa-rican-youth-use-radio-tackle-xenophobia-schools">misperceptions</a> among Costa Ricans.</p>
<p>Over the past 10 years, the country has <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/imre.12073/full">increased restrictions</a> on immigration, hoping to discourage low-income economic migrants from Nicaragua from entering. These restrictions echo the national security logic of U.S. policies. These increasing restrictions make the already complicated process of applying for residency even more difficult for migrants and refugees. Refugees from El Salvador, Colombia or elsewhere also face difficulties enrolling their children in school and accessing social services.</p>
<p>The Costa Rican immigration system is unequipped to deal with the magnitude of recent refugee applications. For example, as of my last visit this summer, the Costa Rican Refugee Unit had only five full-time employees to process the almost 900 applications they have received so far this year. This has resulted in long waits for decisions and frustration for applicants. </p>
<p>The U.S.-Costa Rica program announced in July as part of a plan to expand refugee applications from Central America is only a piecemeal, temporary solution. It neither addresses the underlying conditions of violence that refugees seek to escape nor strengthens regional governments’ abilities to deal with the arrival of these vulnerable populations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63989/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caitlin Fouratt received funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Institute of International Education. </span></em></p>A new program seeks to divert Central Americans who are fleeing violence from crossing the U.S. border. An expert on Costa Rica explains why the tiny country was chosen and the challenges they face.Caitlin Fouratt, Professor of International Studies, California State University, Long BeachLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/619522016-08-01T03:06:37Z2016-08-01T03:06:37ZA record 65.3 million people were displaced last year: What does that number actually mean?<p>We continue to witness violent attacks – bombings and murders in France, Germany, Turkey, Afghanistan and Iraq; fighting in South Sudan and the continued civil war in Syria. These conflicts have renewed interest in the global refugee crisis and the movements of displaced persons around the globe.</p>
<p>The United Nations Human Rights Council <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/press/2016/6/5763ace54/1-human-113-affected-forced-displacement-hits-record-high.html">announced</a> in June that 65.3 million people were forcibly displaced from their homes in 2015. This is a record number and is equal in population to the U.K. or France.</p>
<p>People who have been forced to leave their homes, their nations and occupation against their will are often referred to as “displaced.” And 65.3 million is a lot of displaced people. They are found across the globe in response to crises that range from the social to the environmental, and include Syrian refugees <a href="https://theconversation.com/where-have-4-8-million-syrian-refugees-gone-57968">fleeing civil war</a>, <a href="http://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/us-immigration-policy-program/rising-child-migration-united-states">Central American children</a> crossing international borders to reach family and security in the U.S., <a href="http://www.forcedmigration.org/research-resources/expert-guides/colombia/alldocuments">Colombians</a> moving internally to avoid warfare and violence and <a href="http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/332494/opinion/photos-displaced-earth-climate-refugees-in-the-philippines">Filipinos</a> who are forced to relocate in response to changing climates and environmental disasters. </p>
<p>The UNHRC’s report identifies important global patterns that we must acknowledge. But, the overwhelming size of the displaced population reported confounds a complex issue and creates new fears. The numbers overwhelm and make it difficult to define potential solutions. </p>
<h2>Conflict, insecurity and migration</h2>
<p>In our book, <a href="http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/cohmig">“Cultures of Migration,”</a> we argue that all migrants, including refugees, face conflicts and insecurities. Conflicts and insecurity can be physical and violent as in the Syrian civil war or nonmaterial and discriminatory and based in social and cultural differences. These nonmaterial challenges included those faced by migrants and refugees as they settle in Europe and the U.S. Insecurity complicates migration, and migration is no longer a decision made to in response to finding a good job or access to high wages. Migration, forced or otherwise, is complex and challenging. There is no guarantee of success, and over time new conflicts and insecurities arise. </p>
<p>Displaced people, like all migrants, balance conflicts and insecurities at places of origin and of destination. Two examples help illustrate our point. Since 2011 Syrian refugees have fled violence and civil war. Yet their desire to leave has a long history, and reflects dissatisfaction with the Assad regime, restrictive <a href="https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/arab_migration_globalized_world.pdf#page=23">national laws</a> and a weak economy. </p>
<p>In Sudan, refugees fled their homelands to escape violence during more than 40 years of civil war between South and North over food, natural resources, religion and political control. In 2013, a new civil war in the south brought a crisis, creating more than one million refugees fleeing the violence associated with the political struggles between competing <a href="http://www.cfr.org/global/global-conflict-tracker/p32137#!/conflict/civil-war-in-south-sudan">strongmen</a>. </p>
<h2>Big numbers</h2>
<p>Thinking in large numbers abstracts the challenges, conflicts and insecurities that displaced people face. About half of the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/press/2016/6/5763ace54/1-human-113-affected-forced-displacement-hits-record-high.html">world’s refugees</a> are living under the UNHCR’s mandate and protection in Afghanistan and Somalia. Nevertheless, it is people fleeing smaller crises like the coup in Turkey, the drought in Central Asia and religious persecution in Myanmar among others that make up many of the displaced. In addition, more than 40 million refugees remain within their native homelands, including Colombians, Iraqis and South Sudanese who are fleeing their villages to escape violence, warfare and religious persecution. </p>
<p>How do we comprehend 65.3 million displaced people when they have little in common?</p>
<p>It is hard to envision so many displaced people. The mathematician <a href="http://io9.gizmodo.com/how-to-comprehend-incomprehensibly-large-numbers-1531604757">Spencer Greenberg</a> notes we have no problem thinking in small numbers. Even 100 things – a large crowd, for example – is manageable. Nevertheless, “when we’re talking about millions of things our ability to visualize completely fails.” </p>
<p>To cope, we use metaphors in place of statistics. Often, displaced people are described as waves crashing upon the beach or <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/isis-spreading-cancer-waves-refugees-nato-commander-432319">spreading like a cancer</a>.</p>
<p>Critics who exaggerate the numbers of displaced people and refugees overwhelm and terrify their audience. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-syrian-refugees-isis-2016-4">Donald Trump</a>, the U.S. Republican presidential nominee, warns U.S. citizens to lock their doors, lest they fall victim to terror. Milos Zeman, the Czech president, describes the movement of refugees to Europe as an <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/czechrepublic/12070377/Wave-of-refugees-to-Europe-an-organised-invasion-says-Czech-PM.html">“organised invasion.”</a> These arguments deny the realities that the displaced and refugees face and prey on a shared <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/07/14/immigration-and-crime/">fear of outsiders</a>. </p>
<h2>Good, bad and the morality of migration</h2>
<p>One way to confront our fears of large numbers is to reduce them to discrete, manageable categories. However, categories typically carry judgments and create expectations. And too often in the discussion of refugees the categories divide people into “good” and “bad” groups based in shared perceptions, and what Stephanie Pappas calls our <a href="http://www.livescience.com/52240-psychology-of-migrant-crisis.html">“caveman instincts.”</a></p>
<p>“Good” <a href="http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/blog/2015/aug/28/lets-not-do-good-migrantsbad-migrants-thing">refugees</a> are the people who flee their homelands to avoid violence and seek shelter and a new way of life. “Bad” refugees threaten our shared values and lifestyle.</p>
<p>The differences that define “good” and “bad” refugees misrepresent the conflicts that motivate movement. The need to divide “good” from “bad” renders the civil, social and environmental insecurities that drive migrants and refugees to move moot. </p>
<h2>Beyond the numbers</h2>
<p>Victoria Armour-Hileman <a href="http://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/singing_to_dead">writes</a>, “if the world measures a refugee according to the worst story, we will always excuse human suffering, saying it is not yet as bad as someone else’s.” </p>
<p>Knowing the numbers of displaced people globally captures the size of the crises driving people from their homes. However, it is more important to focus on the conflicts and insecurities that define specific crises. By identifying the causes of forced relocation, we can better address the outcomes and build toward solutions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61952/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey H. Cohen received funding for migration research from the National Science Foundation and TUBITAK. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ibrahim Sirkeci does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Can you visualize any number greater than 100? Migration experts explain why thinking about migrants en masse makes it difficult to address the nuances of each group’s unique challenges.Jeffrey H. Cohen, Professor of Anthropology, The Ohio State UniversityIbrahim Sirkeci, Professor of Transnational Studies and Marketing & Director of Regent's Centre for Transnational Studies, Regent's University LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/474522015-10-14T02:51:30Z2015-10-14T02:51:30ZIs it time America finally took a chance on Syria’s refugees?<p>Afghan, Syrian and Eritrean refugees <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34483681">keep arriving</a> on Europe’s shores, reputedly at an increasing rate. </p>
<p>They attempt to traverse the Mediterranean by land and sea, presumably <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/07/middleeast/russia-syria-isis/">hastened</a> by Putin’s bombing campaign. Now some even arrive by traveling <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/world/europe/bypassing-the-risky-sea-refugees-reach-europe-through-the-arctic.html">across the Arctic</a>.</p>
<p>So how does the proposed American response to this crisis compare to that of European countries? And how surprised should we be by the US’ relatively paltry effort?</p>
<h2>Two remarkable responses</h2>
<p>Sweden’s response has been remarkable. </p>
<p>The Swedes’ longstanding “open door” policy means that they have now accepted <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/09/world/welcome-syrian-refugees-countries/">the largest number of refugees per capita</a> of any <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/09/daily-chart">European</a> country. One hundred and fifty thousand asylum seekers <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/latest-boat-runs-aground-baby-dies-greek-incidents-063446312.html">are expected</a> to arrive there this year. Not surprisingly, it has been the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24635791">preferred destination</a> of many seeking asylum for quite some time. </p>
<p>Germany, of course, has accepted the largest total number of refugees. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/16/markets-germany-migrants-idUSL5N11M21Q20150916">The estimated numbers</a> could reach two million over the next two years at a cost of 25 billion Euros. </p>
<p>Yet Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, has remained resolute. She has ruled out imposing a freeze on the numbers, even as the refugees keep arriving every day by the thousands. And despite growing right-wing domestic criticism, “We will manage,” <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/merkel-rules-out-freeze-on-refugee-intake/a-18767224">declared Merkel</a>. “I am quite strongly convinced of that.” </p>
<p>Members of other European countries, of course, like the Hungarians and Czechs, remain stubbornly opposed. </p>
<p>Even those generally in favor of accepting refugees, like the French, have become noticeably nervous as the estimated numbers grow, seeking “European-wide” solutions instead of just taking unilateral action. The UK’s nominal acceptance of 20,000 refugees over five years <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34502419">has drawn derision</a> from 300 of its own former judges and lawyers. </p>
<h2>How’s America doing?</h2>
<p>By comparison, however, the American response can generously be described as anemic.</p>
<p>The US has taken in about <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/us-will-accept-more-syrians-but-not-many.html">1,600 Syrians</a> since 2011. Last month, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/john-kerry-says-u-s-to-admit-30-000-more-refugees-in-next-2-years-1442768498">John Kerry announced </a>that the US would raise its annual ceiling of refugees and asylum seekers to include 10,000 more Syrians next year. </p>
<p><a href="http://iprnewswire.com/u-s-to-boost-refugee-intake-by-30000-over-two-years-update-2/">Kerry claimed</a> the move would be “in keeping with America’s best tradition as a land of second chances and a beacon of hope.” But nowadays 10,000 refugees is just a busy day in Bavaria. If it took in the same proportion as the Germans or Swedes over the next two years, America would now be accepting nearer 10 million refugees, not 10,000.</p>
<p>It is important to put Kerry’s proposed paltry figure in some perspective. </p>
<p>Since the early days of the Cold War, the United States characteristically has had one of the more generous asylum policies in the world. It routinely accepts approximately <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/43442030/ns/us_news-life/t/us-system-refugee-asylum-seekers-explained/">70,000 refugees a year</a> from around the world – until very recently far more than any other country. And Kerry did note that the total figure would be increased to 85,000 in 2016 and 100,000 in 2017. But even this plan obscures a series of issues.</p>
<p>First of all, the total numbers of refugees the US intends to accept – assuming that the next president even abides by this plan – obviously makes no serious contribution to the overall problem at all.</p>
<p>Second, as columnist Josh Rogin <a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-16/white-house-refugee-plan-overwhelmed-by-syrian-exodus">wrote</a> in a recent piece in Bloomberg,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The problem with the plan, no matter how quickly adopted, is how long it will take to have any effect. Migrants applying for refugee asylum in the United States now will not have their applications considered until at least 2017 because of a long backlog. And once an application begins to be considered, the asylum seekers can face a further 18 to 24 months before they are granted or denied asylum. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So next year’s proposed 10,000-person increase would come almost exclusively from the backlog of Syrians who have <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/world/middleeast/refugees-stuck-in-grinding-us-process-wait-and-hope.html?ribbon-ad-idx=5&rref=world/middleeast&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20East&pgtype=article">already applied</a>. It would not help the people who are fleeing now. </p>
<p>Arguably, exceptional times call for exceptional measures. </p>
<p>Americans like to pride themselves on their humanity and generosity. And there are groups in the US calling for a more generous response. Notably <a href="http://www.hias.org/">HIAS</a> – the prominent American Jewish organization focused on Jewish refugee resettlement since 1881 – has been outspoken in supporting the mass resettlement of Syrians in the US in far greater numbers.</p>
<p>Furthermore, there is the issue of responsibility: after all, a good argument can be made that America’s two wars in Iraq over the last decade have significantly contributed to the regional instability that bought about this crisis. The US owes the Syrian refugees far more than the Germans or Swedes.</p>
<p>So why, faced with such a humanitarian crisis, the refusal to drastically increase these numbers and act more quickly to process applications?</p>
<h2>It’s national security, stupid</h2>
<p>The answer, of course, is political – and tied to perennial American concerns about national security. </p>
<p>Republicans have been particularly vocal <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/world/middleeast/obama-directs-administration-to-accept-10000-syrian-refugees.html">in arguing</a> that accepting refugees poses a potentially serious security threat, as Jihadists could embed themselves in the refugee population arriving in the US. Both America’s <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/RichLowry/Emerging-Threats-Homeland-Security-Immigration-Syria/2015/09/22/id/692676/">right-wing press</a> and the <a href="http://www.debbieschlussel.com/68629/outrage-obama-seeks-to-bring-30000-syrian-muslim-refugees-to-us-waive-counterterrorism-laws/">conservative blogosphere </a>have exploded with anger at the prospect of what they regard as President Obama’s disregard for the counterterrorism legislation.</p>
<p>It’s easy to conclude that these are exceptional times and they require exceptional diligence. But this national security syndrome when it comes to refugees and migrants is nothing new. </p>
<p>America has an unenviable historical record when it comes to barring immigrants or refugees from entry to the US, or denying them of their rights once they have settled, in the name of national security.</p>
<p>The list of nationalities, ethnic groups and religions that have been barred or denied their constitutional rights is long and shameful. Some advocates of exclusion are also quite surprising.</p>
<h2>The historical record</h2>
<p>National security and nationality? Benjamin Franklin <a href="http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-peter-collinson/">once suggested</a> that German immigrants were unable to subscribe to American values and republican political principles. Franklin worried that German immigrants would overwhelm America and change its most basic virtues, possibly bringing an end to the fledgling republic. “Not being used to Liberty,” Franklin wrote, “they know not how to make a modest use of it.” </p>
<p>National security and religion? Many thought that Republican candidate <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/09/25/a_muslim_president_was_ben_carson_right_128207.html">Ben Carson’s comments</a> about a Muslim being unsuitable for the position of president because they might follow Sharia law was novel. But the <a href="http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Alien.html">Alien and Sedition Act </a>signed by John Adams in 1798 authorized the president to imprison or deport aliens considered “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.” The legislation did not specifically single out any group. But it did in fact, herald a nativist crusade that focused on Irish immigrants and Catholics more generally. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98284/original/image-20151013-31135-xedlrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98284/original/image-20151013-31135-xedlrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98284/original/image-20151013-31135-xedlrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98284/original/image-20151013-31135-xedlrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98284/original/image-20151013-31135-xedlrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98284/original/image-20151013-31135-xedlrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98284/original/image-20151013-31135-xedlrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Samuel Morse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Samuel_Morse_LIFE_1.jpg">LIFE photo archive</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That crusade was epitomized by Samuel FB Morse, more famous for inventing Morse Code and developing the telegraph. He <a href="http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1798.html">once wrote,</a> “It is a fact that popery is opposed in its very nature to democratic republicanism; and it is, therefore, as a political system, as well as religious, opposed to civil and religious liberty, and consequently to our form of government.” </p>
<p>National security and ethnicity? Under the terms of the Naturalization Act of 1870 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, <a href="http://www.wherevertheresafight.com/excerpts/in_a_strange_land_the_rights_of_immigrants">restrictive measures were introduced</a> that limited naturalization to “white persons and persons of African descent.”</p>
<p>But Solicitor General Holmes Conrad caught the tenor of the times in his plea before the Supreme Court, when he insisted that the US-born Chinese “are just as obnoxious as their forebears.” When asked about the idea of a Chinese eligible for the presidency, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ZcpEYQ-pG2YC&pg=PA192&lpg=PA192&dq=US+born+Chinese+were+%E2%80%9Care+just+as+obnoxious+as+their+forebears%E2%80%9D.&source=bl&ots=nhMPfXXgOz&sig=g0-AhvTfSmj6bUkVBrSYoZwUOrw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAGoVChMIurnEnrG2yAIVgUg-Ch0ohwP0#v=onepage&q=US%20born%20Chinese%20were%20%E2%80%9Care%20just%20as%20obnoxious%20as%20their%20forebears%E2%80%9D.&f=false">he responded</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>if so, then verily there has been a most degenerate departure from the patriotic ideas of our forefathers, and surely in that case America citizenship is not worth saving. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Remarkably, people of Chinese descent were not eligible for naturalization until 1943.</p>
<h2>An endless cycle</h2>
<p>The list of refugees or landed foreigners supposedly threatening American national security is endless – even in the 20th century. </p>
<p>Franklin D Roosevelt is hailed as a great American president. But by the 1930s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-fdrs-moral-failure-on-the-holocaust/2013/03/11/6bb9ef56-8a76-11e2-8d72-dc76641cb8d4_story.html">he purposely limited </a>the entry of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe. Many of those arrived in the UK instead, and were then interned in camps in Australia and Canada on the grounds that they might be spies.</p>
<p>It is commonly known that Americans of Japanese descent were interned in World War II. What is less commonly known is that any foreign-born Japanese remained ineligible for naturalization until the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952.</p>
<p>I could go on at length. But the point is clear: when faced with conflict, America has a history of denial of entry and incarceration – on the grounds someone might remotely be a threat. </p>
<p>The Syrians are no different on that score. Their need is just particularly urgent.</p>
<h2>Breaking the cycle</h2>
<p>I accept that there may be a Jihadist, a criminal, or a terrorist in the bunch if America does show the moral courage to assume responsibility for a greater proportion of Syrian refugees. Every time I travel through Manhattan, I acutely aware of such risks. But one could argue that it is a remote risk. It is one we have to accept when we live in an open society.</p>
<p>Sadly, you can’t live in Arizona, Oregon or <a href="https://theconversation.com/university-of-texas-faculty-are-uneasy-about-campus-carry-48549">Texas</a> and teach on a college campus without accepting <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-guns-on-campus-lead-to-grade-inflation-40748">a risk</a>, because America’s gun laws protect the rights of many despite the evil few. </p>
<p>Likewise, America, we are told, was founded on a legal system that is designed to let guilty people go free for fear that one innocent person might be falsely imprisoned – implying a profound sense of risk in protecting the innocent despite the fact that guilty might go unpunished. </p>
<p>It is a shame that we don’t apply the same principle when it comes to accepting refugees.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47452/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Afghan, Syrian and Eritrean refugees keep arriving on Europe’s shores, reputedly at an increasing rate. They attempt to traverse the Mediterranean by land and sea, presumably hastened by Putin’s bombing…Simon Reich, Professor in The Division of Global Affairs and The Department of Political Science, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.