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Washington Update Restoring the U.S. Refugee Program As regular readers of this space will be aware, the U.S. Refugee Program has taken a body blow in the aftermath of September 11. The fiscal year is now half over and barely 8,000 of 70,000 refugees authorized for admission have arrived. By next month, any refugee not yet in the pipeline will not likely be admitted at all this year. Those allocations will simply be lost forever. We have fought a valiant fight to turn things around this year and have made a significant impact. We are still following up on our highly successful February 26 advocacy day when LIRS affiliates descended on Capitol Hill and visited more than 70 congressional offices. A delegation even accompanied LIRS President Ralston Deffenbaugh to the White House where they met with Senior National Security Council Director Elliot Abrams and Special Assistant to President Bush for Domestic Policy Diana Schacht. Everywhere we drove home the message: "Show us the plan!" It seems the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service have woken up and smelled the coffee and seem at last to be taking seriously the recommendations of the private sector resettlement agencies. But much damage has already been done. We will still press for accountability this year, but it is time to start thinking about next year. We have a long way to go to restore the program to its strength of only a decade ago, but an admissions target of 90,000 next year would be a strong positive step in the right direction. We must also restore vital overseas protection assistance to the millions of refugees who will never win the new hope and new life of resettlement in the United States. This will require an appropriation of at least $841 million to the Migration and Refugee Assistance account for fiscal year 2003. The administration's request is only $705 million, so we have a lot of work ahead of us! Who can do this? There is a special subcommittee on foreign operations appropriations in the House and the Senate. Click here for a list of the members in each subcommittee and how to find your representative's contact information. Then use our sample letters to compose your own. Fax them directly if you can, but mail the original to the LIRS Washington Office—122 C Street NW, Suite 125, Washington DC 20001—so we can deliver them by hand!
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