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RefugeesBreakdownofUSPoliticsof.PDF

Refugees

At a Glance

U.S. policy toward refugees, including refugee resettlement, is an issue that contains both domestic and primarily foreign elements. On the domestic side, issues related to the provision of social services and employment policy are often dealt with at the local level, with some federal assistance. Within the realm of U.S. foreign policy are issues related to refugee referral, international coordination of the response to refugee crises, and U.S. obligations under international law. Historically, refugee policy has been an area of U.S. foreign policy with a significant amount of partisan consensus. More recently, espe- cially in the wake of the refugee crisis stemming from conflict in the Middle East, differences both between and within parties have emerged.

According to many Republicans, acceptance of refugees in America . . .

• Is unwise because on inadequate screening processes for applicants from war-torn areas;

• Should not be expanded—and should perhaps be reduced; • Should be paused or abandoned with respect to Syrian refugees; and • Provides for too much influence from the United Nations.

According to many Democrats, acceptance of refugees in America . . .

• Is both a moral and legal obligation; • Should include refugees from all areas, including the Middle East; • Is based on a rigorous screening process that protects U.S. security inter-

ests; and • Should generally be expanded to accommodate more refugee resettlement.

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Overview

The history of refugees in the United States is in some ways older than the republic itself. Millions of individuals have fled various sorts of social and political persecu- tion around the world for the promise of a better life in the “new world”—first the colonies, and then the United States. However, the modern history of U.S. refugee policy began with the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. This post–World War II leg- islation established the U.S. practice of granting refugees asylum in America if they faced political persecution or had a well-founded fear of persecution. (As is the case with international law, U.S. domestic laws have never allowed for the grant- ing of refugee status for those fleeing dire economic conditions.) Over 400,000 displaced Europeans fled and resettled in the United States under the terms of the 1948 act. At the time, Republicans were more likely to support the legislation than were Democrats in part because Democrats wanted to broaden the legislation to admit more refugees and in part because of disputes between Democrats about the quota system in general (Schain 2012, 172). It is also the case that early refugee law in the United States was a discriminatory extension of the National Origins Act of 1924, which placed quotas on immigration based on national origin and race.

The United States became a party to the 1967 Protocol of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1968. The 1967 Protocol removed the tempo- ral restriction of the original convention, making it applicable to refugees outside of Europe (UNHCR 2010). As a party to the 1967 Protocol, the United States is required to assist in refugee repatriation or, when that is not possible, temporary or permanent resettlement. The United States is not a party to the original 1951 Con- vention in part because of a desire to maintain the immigration quota system that has existed at various times in U.S. history. In effect, however, ratification of the 1967 Protocol binds the United States to the provisions of the original treaty, since the treaty was expanded by the protocol to include refugees from all countries.

In 1965, general immigration policy changed with the abolition of the national origins quota system. Although immigrants, who at least hypothetically enter the country voluntarily, and refugees, who enter the country as a result of political per- secution, have different legal statuses, refugee quota policy often follows broader immigration quota policy. The fall of the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon to North Vietnamese troops in 1975, which finally brought the Vietnam War to an end, marked a significant change in U.S. refugee policy. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from Vietnam, as well as other areas of war-torn Southeast Asia, including Laos and Cambodia, gained permanent residence in the United States.

In 1980, Congress passed, and Democratic president Jimmy Carter signed, the Refugee Act of 1980. The act codified the 1951 Convention definition of a refu- gee as “a person who is unable or unwilling to return to his or her home coun- try because of a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ due to race, membership in a particular social group, political opinion, religion, or national origin” (Meissner 2010). The act passed easily with bipartisan support.

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The 1980 Refugee Act created the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program within the Department of Health and Human Services, marking the beginning of the modern refugee resettlement era. The act authorized Congress to set an annual quota on the admission of refugees. The quota was originally set at 50,000 (though that number can be, and often has been, exceeded). It is worth noting that the process for admitting refugees under the direction of the State Department was left separate from the process for providing assistance for refugees. Thus, it is hypo- thetically possible for refugees to be admitted to the United States without the accompanying resettlement funds. The United States has admitted over three mil- lion refugees for resettlement since 1975 (Department of State 2015).

The refugee admission and resettlement process in the United States follows what can be a complex process. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refu- gees (UNHCR) refers potential applicants to a Refugee Support Center (RSC). Close relatives of refugees in the United States may skip the UNHCR referral process. The RSCs collect biographical information and coordinate a security and medical screening process with agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security. The total screening process may last from several months to several years. In the event that a refugee obtains security and medical clearance, the person or family is paired with of nine nonprofit agencies that work with the Bureau of Refugees,

Jimmy Carter Praises the United States Refugee Act of 1980

Public Law 96-212 officially became part of the U.S. legal code on March 17, 1980, when it was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter during his last year of office. At the signing ceremony, Carter stated that “the Refugee Act reflects our long tradi- tion as a haven for people uprooted by persecution and political turmoil. In recent years, the number of refugees has increased greatly. Their suffering touches all and challenges us to help them, often under difficult circumstances” (Carter 1980). Among the law’s key provisions were measures to:

• Create a Coordinator for Refugee Affairs and Assistance; • Establish an Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and

Human Services; • Harmonize the U.S. definition of the term refugee with the definition used in inter-

national law; • Exclude from the definition of refugee anyone who had engaged in political persecu-

tion in their home country; and • Create English-language instruction and employment training programs for refugees.

Source: Carter, Jimmy. “Jimmy Carter: Refugee Act of 1980 Statement on Signing S. 643 into Law.”

The American Presidency Project. Last modified March 18, 1980. http://www.presidency .ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=33154.

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Population and Migration and the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The nonprofits assist refugees with finding housing, education, and/or employment, and becom- ing acclimated to the United States. The average time from referral until a refugee arrives in the United States is 18–24 months (U.S. Department of State 2013).

Overall then, refugee policy before the onset of the crisis in Syria enjoyed sig- nificant areas of bipartisan agreement. The main difference between the parties was a preference among Democrats for the admission of higher numbers of refugees. Even that difference, given the willingness of both Republican and Democrats to admit high numbers of Cuban refugees in the 1980s, was not significant enough to prevent political compromise.

In 2011, however, partisan divisions over accepting political refugees became more evident. At that time, the Arab Spring began to sweep through parts of the Middle East. The Arab Spring was a period of nonviolent and violent populist uprisings in the Middle East that began in Tunisia in December 2010. In March 2011, mass uprisings began in Syria. Under pressure from secular as well as Islamist opposition, including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group, Syria entered a state of brutal civil war. Over the next three years, the crisis led over four million Syrians to flee the country. The vast majority of these refugees are currently in Turkey, Lebanon, or Jordan (Martinez 2015). Under the direction of the Obama administration, the United States has committed to taking in 10,000 Syrian refugees in the period from September 2015 to September 2016 (Harris, Sanger, and Herszenhorn 2015). As of August 2016, approximately 10,000 Syrian refugees have resettled in the United States.

The prospect of increased Syrian refugee resettlement in the United States has opened a partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats, not only on Syrian refugee resettlement but on the resettlement of refugees from the Muslim world in general. These differences were further exposed in November 2015, when ISIS claimed responsibility for a series of attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and injured hundreds more. One of the attackers had entered Europe through Greece (a common point of entry into the EU for Syrians fleeing the conflict) as a refugee. These terrorist attacks raised fears about the prospect of similar attacks being car- ried out in the United States by terrorists posing as refugees. The impact of the Paris terrorist attacks has added to existing concerns about cultural differences and assimilation that have surfaced in recent years concerning broader Muslim immi- gration and refugee policy.

Republicans on Refugee Policy

Before the onset of the Syrian refugee crisis, it would have been difficult, at least recently, to find strong partisan divisions between Republicans and Democrats on the issue of refugee policy. In many ways, refugee policy has simply not been a high-profile issue to either political party, allowing for a certain amount of foreign policy consensus on this issue. As a result, refugees, including Muslim refugees

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from the Middle East and peoples fleeing war and persecution from other parts of the world, have been settling in the United States for decades, with relatively little controversy. In 2012—the year before the refugee crisis escalated in the Middle East—the Republican Party platform only mentioned the issue of refugees once, referring to the U.S. tradition of resettling refugees from “troubled lands” (Repub- lican National Committee 2012, 46).

Public opinion on issues related to refugees has recently taken on a similar partisan dimension. Generally speaking, U.S. public opinion on issues related to refugee resettlement has, with limited exceptions, been negative (Jones 2015). In fact, with the exception of Kosovar Albanians in the 1990s, there has never been a survey finding net positive support for refugee resettlement (DeSilver 2015). It could reasonably be argued that, before the onset of the Syrian refugee crisis, the public, regardless of partisan affiliation, opposed refugee resettlement even as the United States continued to resettle millions of refugees within national borders. Generally speaking, Republican voters were even less likely to support refugee resettlement than were Democrats.

This gap between self-identified Republicans and Democrats became more pronounced once the Syrian refugee issue emerged. A 2015 Gallup poll found that 84 percent of self-identified Republicans opposed President Obama’s plan to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States while 57 percent of Demo- crats approved of the plan. A similar gap emerged on the issue of whether survey respondents believe that Syrian refugees will be welcome in the local communities in which they resettle (Jones 2015). It is worth noting that the Gallup survey was conducted just after the ISIS attacks in Paris. In this light, it is unclear if public opinion, or the partisan divide, will remain as stark. However, given previous neg- ative reactions to refugee resettlement within public opinion, it would not be sur- prising to see public opinion remain negative toward Syrian refugee resettlement, nor would it be surprising to see members of the public identifying as Republicans opposing resettlement somewhat more than self-identified Democrats.

The position of most Republican political elites on refugee resettlement, espe- cially Syrian refugee resettlement, seems to mirror public opinion. In November 2015, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would require increased vetting of Syrian refugees by a veto-proof majority of 289–137. Although Demo- crats were divided on the measure, as outlined below, only two Republicans voted against the bill. In the Senate, Democrats were able to maintain sufficient party unity to filibuster the bill, which has killed it for the time being (Barrett 2016). Republicans were unified in support of the bill. Proponents of the legislation argued that additional vetting would be necessary to ensure that terrorists from Syria are unable to use refugee status as a means to enter the United States to carry out attacks. Opponents argued that the existing vetting process is sufficient, and the new process would, in effect bar entry to almost every eligible refugee.

The Syrian refugee issue also became prominent in the 2016 Republican presi- dential primary. All of the Republicans in the 2016 field expressed opposition to

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the idea of resettling 10,000 or more Syrian refugees in the United States. More- over, the winner of the GOP primary, Donald Trump, argued not only in favor of banning Syrian refugees but of temporarily banning travel by all Muslims into the United States. Other Republican lawmakers criticized Trump’s proposed ban, but it appeared to be a popular position with the Republican base. Other candidates along the continuum of Syrian refugee policy argued in favor of allowing Christian refugees from Syria to enter the United States. Both former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Texas senator Ted Cruz espoused this viewpoint. In a radio interview with talk show host Michael Medved, for example, Bush called Trump’s comments “appalling. If we’ve screened refugees, if you’re a Christian Syrian who but for the good fortune of escaping and crossing through ISIS territory, and crossing the Turkish border, stuck in a refugee camp, and go through the process to prove you’re not an Islamic terrorist, you come to the United States, this noble country, to send them back to their slaughter? I find it appalling” (Kaplan and Andrews 2015). The central argument of these candidates is that Christians, as a minority community in Syria and other countries in the Middle East, are poor candidates for resettlement in the region. Muslims, by contrast, could be resettled in other Middle Eastern countries.

Syrian refugee resettlement has also created a partisan divide between Repub- lican and Democratic governors on resettlement policy. Historically, many states and local communities have expressed opposition to refugee resettlement. These concerns generally existed across party lines. Support, especially in cases where the refugees were part of a diaspora that had already been resettling in the United

A Conservative Republican Governor Opposes Syrian Refugees in His State

On December 9, 2015, Texas governor Greg Abbott issued a brief statement con- cerning his decision to halt the resettlement of refugees in Texas. Abbott had previ- ously argued that gaps in the existing vetting process acknowledged by the federal government demonstrated the need to take action. His statement reads:

In light of alarming comments made by the House Homeland Security Committee Chairman and testimony by the Deputy Director of Homeland Security at the Texas Department of Public Safety, it is essential that a judge consider halting the Syrian refu- gee process—at least on a temporary basis—to ensure refugees coming to the United States will be vetted in a way that does not compromise the safety of Americans and Texans.

Source: Abbott, Greg. “Governor Abbott Issues Statement Supporting Attorney General’s Request to

Halt Syrian Refugee Resettlement in Texas.” Office of the Governor—Greg Abbott. Last modified December 9, 2015. http://gov.texas.gov/news/press-release/21757.

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States, was also largely a nonpartisan affair. The case of Syrian refugees is divergent. Of the 30 governors who have either requested or demanded to be excluded from the resettlement of Syrian refugees as of late 2015, all but one is a Republican. Most of these governors have expressed concerns related to security in the wake of the Paris attacks. The Obama administration has argued that adequate safeguards are in place and that no Syrian refugee has ever conducted a terrorist attack in the United States. Based on the constitutional supremacy of the federal government in areas related to foreign policy, most legal experts have argued that the governors can do little to block refugees from resettling in a given state.

Democrats on Refugee Policy

Government policy regarding the acceptance and settlement of political refugees was not a particularly salient issue for Democrats before the onset of the Syrian refugee crisis. The 2012 Democratic Party platform contained one mention of refu- gees, and that mention only occurred in the context of climate change (Demo- cratic National Committee 2012). To be clear, Democratic presidents such a Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton presided over the arrival of significant numbers of refugees in the United States. However, the refugee crisis in Syria has brought us from the point where issues related to refugee policy were prominently featured in President Obama’s 2016 State of the Union Address and were debated on multiple occasions in the 2016 Democratic Party primary.

As described above, there is a partisan gap between Democrats and Republi- cans within the general public relating to Syrian refugees. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to approve of existing plans to settle Syrian refugees in the United States. The vote in the House of Representatives on the American Security against Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act, which would have required increased vetting of Syrian refugees, reveals that there is also a gap within the Democratic Party on this issue. The bill passed by a margin of 289–137, with a majority of Democrats voting against the measure. However, 47 Democrats crossed party lines to vote for the bill, while only two Republicans voted against it. Some Democrats, such as John Garamendi of California, argued that the bill further strengthened what is already a very stringent vetting process (Garamendi 2015). As such, the bill would complement existing procedures. Brad Ashford, representing Nebraska’s second congressional district, argued that the Paris attacks required a reassessment of the refugee vetting process (Lillis 2015). He also voted for the bill. Several of the Dem- ocrats who broke ranks are part of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group best known for being a more conservative wing of the Democratic Party. The Blue Dog Coali- tion argued that the SAFE Act was necessary to ensure American security against terrorists who might pose as refugees in order to gain access to the United States. Ashford argued, “In the wake of the horrific attacks in Paris, we must step back and reassess our existing procedures for admitting and monitoring refugees from Iraq and Syria” (Blue Dog Coalition 2015). House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.)

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made the decision not to suppress opposition to the bill within her caucus, provid- ing Democrats with political cover to oppose the bill. Pelosi, for her part, opposed the bill and expressed support for an alternative that would have required a less stringent certification process.

Democrats who opposed the SAFE Act argued that, in effect, the bill would pre- vent the resettlement of any Syrian refugees in the United States. Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland argued, “The bill rests on a faulty assumption that the European refugee screening process is similar to the United States screening pro- cess. This is entirely inaccurate” (Hoyer 2015). Representative Sam Farr of Cali- fornia asserted that the existing refugee vetting process already takes almost two years. He also argued that acting based on the fear created by the Paris attacks would result in poor policy (Farr 2015). The central argument of most opponents of the bill is that the three sets of certifications that would have been required for each Syrian or Iraqi refugee entering the United States would have created a bureaucratic bottleneck that would have ground the process to a halt. Opponents also assert that the current vetting process, which normally takes nearly two years and involves several government agencies, is sufficient to ensure security.

Both of the major candidates for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2016 broadly supported President Obama’s policy on Syrian refugees. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton argued for the expansion of the existing program to allow for 65,000 Syrian refugees to be resettled in the United States (Kaplan 2015). Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, while not setting a numerical target for Syrian refugee resettlement, argued that those who want to halt the process in the wake of the Paris attacks were taking political advantage of a tragedy. Both candi- dates favor the existing vetting process, which they argue is adequate to ensure the security of Americans in communities where refugees resettle.

The partisan division between Republican governors, who have overwhelm- ingly called for cessation of Syrian refugee settlement, and Democratic governors, who have not, has created a further partisan divide between state and local govern- ment in some areas. Mayors of large cities within otherwise conservative states are often Democrats. Many of these mayors have indicated that their cities are willing to accept Syrian refugees, countering state demands and requests that no Syrian refugees be resettled. Former Houston mayor Annise Parker, for example, argued that Houston should accept more refugees because “not allowing refugees makes America look weak. It is the only humane thing to do” (Rhodes 2015). Andrew Gillum, Democratic mayor of Tallahassee, Florida, has also parted with the Repub- lican governor of Florida on the issue of Syrian refugees.

The partisan division between Republican governors and Democratic mayors on this issue has multiple implications. First, neither state nor local governments can prevent refugees from resettling. Federal law leaves this decision in the hands of the national government. However, state and local governments do provide resettlement assistance, and state governments could block that assistance. At the

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same time, local governments could allocate additional money, including (hypo- thetically) money received from the state toward the resettlement process. Much of the funding for refugee resettlement comes from the national government and the nonprofit sector, so the potential for states to use the power of the purse to prevent refugee resettlement does have significant limits. Second, each state has a refugee coordinator who helps the federal government determine where refugees might be resettled. It is possible, given the current division, that state coordinators in states with Republican governors will say that the state lacks the capacity to resettle addi- tional refugees, while local governments are sending a separate message. Overall, the partisan component of the refugee issue is more complicated than typical for- eign policy issues because it involves many political players are levels other than the national government.