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From Immigration to Refugee Redefinition: A History of Refugee and Asylum Policy in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Norman L. Zucker  and
Naomi Flink Zucker
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Extract

Refugee policy in the United States is a recent offspring of American immigration policy. Like its parent, refugee admissions are firmly entangled in the thicket of national politics and are Janus-faced. One face presses for admission, the other urges restriction. While the gates of admission are always guarded, time and circumstance determine which face prevails.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 4 , Special Issue 1: Refugees and the Asylum Dilemma in the West , January 1992 , pp. 54 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1992

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References

Notes

1. For a fuller discussion of the historical periods, see Zucker, Norman L. and Zucker, Naomi Flink, The Guarded Gate: The Reality of American Refugee Policy (New York, 1987), passim.Google Scholar

2. Wyman, David S., Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938–1941 (Amherst, Mass., 1968)Google Scholar. See also Wyman, David S., The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945 (New York, 1984).Google Scholar

3. Feingold, Henry L.. The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938–1945 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1970), 149.Google Scholar

4. For a definitive study of the DP legislation, see Dinnerstein, Leonard, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York, 1982).Google Scholar

5. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and International Law, Admission of Refugees into the United States, 95th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C., 1977), 22.Google Scholar

6. The Refugee Act dealt with four broad areas: (1) the refugee definition and admissions, (2) bureaucratic structure, (3) domestic resettlement, and (4) asylum. The importance of the refugee problem was now bureaucratically recognized in that the Office of the U.S. Coordinator for Refugee Affairs, originally created by executive order, now was statutorily established and the Coordinator was given broad responsibilities for refugee admission and resettlement policy. The act also established an Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Department of Health and Human Services and mandated mechanisms for the states to participate in resettlement. The ORR was given a wide range of powers and a variety of federal benefits were given to eligible refugees.

7. U. S. Congress, House of Representatives, The Refugee Act of 1979, Report No. 96–608, 96th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1979), 13.Google Scholar

8. U.S. Department of State, Coordinator for Refugee Affairs, Proposed Refugee Admissions for FY 1990 (Washington, D.C., 1989), 13–14.Google Scholar

9. Zucker and Zucker, The Guarded Gate, 81–82.

10. For a fuller discussion of the Reagan administration's treatment of Soviet émigrés, see Zucker, Norman L. and Zucker, Naomi Flink, “The Uneasy Troika in U.S. Refugee Policy: Foreign Policy, Pressure Groups, and Resettlement Costs,” Journal of Refugee Studies 2:3 (1989): 359–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Source of statistics: Immigration and Naturalization Service, U.S. Department of Justice, in Refugee Reports 11:12 (21 December 1990): 12.Google Scholar

12. Arthur C. Helton, “The Detention of Asylum Seekers in the United States and Canada,” paper presented at York University's Centre for Refugee Studies Conference on Refugee Policy: A Comparison of Canada and the U.S.A. (29 May 1990), 15.

13. Zucker and Zucker, The Guarded Gate, 198.

14. Refugee Reports 11:12 (21 December 1990): 1.Google Scholar

15. Refugee Reports 12:1 (29 January 1991): 3.Google Scholar

16. Friedman, Thomas L., “Bush Clears Soviet Trade Benefits and Weighs Role in London Talks,” New York Times, 4 June 1991.Google Scholar

17. “NGOs Support Progress for the Comprehensive Plan of Action Following UNHCRSponsored Visit to Viet Nam,” Monday 10:12 (10 June 1991): 1–2.Google Scholar