“Refugees are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children with the same hopes and ambitions as us – except that a twist of fate has bound their lives to a global refugee crisis on an unprecedented scale.”
Khaled Hosseini
The refugee crisis:
A refugee is a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster. The International Rescue Committee (IRC.org) estimates that, as of 2023, 110 million people (up from 80 million in 2020) have been displaced from their home. Many are internally displaced (still in their country), but over 37 million (up from 26 million) are refugees. This is the greatest number of refugees since World War II.
The large increase in refugees has been driven by succeeding crises: the Syrian war, the Afghan war and subsequent evacuation (of 100,00 to the U.S. alone) and the Ukrainian crisis (which added 5 million refugees). Meanwhile, refugees have fled from several conflict areas in Africa; millions have been waiting years while the world focuses on the headline-grabbing conflicts.
Each year, only a small fraction, around one percent of refugees, are resettled in welcoming countries.
Refugees coming to the U.S.:
Welcoming persecuted people from other countries is America’s most noble tradition, and the U.S. has traditionally been a leader.
To welcome refugees while also protecting homeland security, the U.S. Government has an extensive vetting process of multiple security checks and interviews, which can take a year or, more often, two years. (The U.S. departments of State and Homeland Security manage this vetting process. It’s a different department, Health and Human Services, which processes asylum seekers, who are people who enter the U.S. first and then ask permission to stay.)
The U.S. typically welcomes around 85,000 – 100,000 refugees a year. However, in the last Administration, the ceiling of maximum refugees was significantly lowered, and there were also deep cuts in the staff needed to process the requests, so few were settled. In early 2021 the U.S. reiterated America’s support for refugees and Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders. (SIVs are people who have assisted the US as translators or interpreters or in other roles in, for example, Iraq or Afghanistan, and have as a result been put in harm’s way. They remain in their country until they received their SIV approval to come to the U.S.)
The current U.S. refugee admissions ceiling is 125,000 persons during each fiscal year, which starts October 1st of each year. To help reach those goals, Executive Orders rebuilt the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and looked to expand co-sponsorship and private sponsorship in the U.S. The SIV process was also reviewed to remove roadblocks from resettling SIV holders.
However U.S. acceptance of refugees slowed below targets recently because of the U.S. admittance of Afghan and Ukraine “humanitarian parolees,” people who couldn’t wait for the refugee vetting process, so are “paroled” into the U.S., on a case-by-case basis, for a period of two years. The U.S. resettled over 76,000 Afghans and looked to accept up to 100,000 Ukrainians under these programs. Both the Afghan Placement and Assistance (APA) and Uniting for Ukraine (U4U) programs provided work authorization for these parolees and allowed them to apply for the same financial support given to refugees (temporary cash, food benefits, and Medicaid).
Many parolees were welcomed under a new U.S. program for local private sponsorship, Sponsor Circles. Sponsor Circles were built on the co-sponsorship model that IRIS (irisct.org) champions in the U.S. and uses with SIRS and other Connecticut community co-sponsors.
The State Department also announced an additional local private sponsorship model, Welcome Corps, which, in its “Welcoming Strangers” phase, will focus on refugees from sub-Saharan Africa and some Latin American countries. (Later, an “Identification phase” will be added so that sponsor groups can identify specific at-risk individuals they want put in the refugee process, which can take 2-4 years, so they can eventually resettle then.)
Refugees, SIVs and Humanitarian Parolees in Connecticut:
Recently IRIS–Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services offered to resettle 400 refugees and SIVs in Connecticut and then also placed 400 Afghan and 500 Ukrainian humanitarian parolees in Connecticut. IRIS used its own employees to resettle many of these, but also placed many families with Community Co-sponsors or Sponsor Circles, which they trained, coached and supervised.
Attention is now turning back to refugees, many of whom have been waiting for years to come to the U.S. IRIS has placed some in Connecticut over the last few months and has pledged to settle in Connecticut an additional 650 individual refugees from Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria and other countries during the fiscal year starting October 1, 2023.
To raise money to support refugee resettlement in Connecticut, IRIS holds an annual Run for Refugees in New Haven. To support IRIS, SIRS also holds a local Run/Walk for Refugees. These photos show SIRS volunteers and friends, along with two SIRS-assisted families, in our February 2023 Walk/Run in Stamford.
For updates on the refugee situation – worldwide, in the U.S. and in Connecticut – revisit this web page and plan to attend SIRS’s next event.
