Washington
Update
April 2004
New Law Will Strengthen
U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program
By Lynette Engelhardt Stott, LIRS
Director for Government Relations
Legislation signed into law earlier this year
will strengthen refugee resettlement in the United States. President
Bush signed the omnibus appropriations bill for 2003 on January
23. LIRS and several other refugee advocates worked closely
with sympathetic members of Congress to include in the bill
an amendment bolstering the refugee resettlement program.
The new legislation provides the Department
of State tools to more efficiently carry out its responsibilities
of identifying and processing refugee applicants. The law states
that the Secretary of State “shall utilize private voluntary
organizations with expertise in the protection needs of refugees
in the processing of refugees overseas for admission and resettlement
to the United States, and shall utilize such agencies in addition
to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the
identification and referral of refugees.” While the Department
of State will continue to work closely with UNHCR, this new
directive will help ease the overwhelming workload of UNHCR
resettlement officers.
The new law also directs the Secretary of
State to give particular focus to four especially vulnerable
refugee categories by working to “ensure that particularly
vulnerable refugee groups receive special consideration for
admission into the United States, including long-stayers in
countries of first asylum; unaccompanied refugee minors; refugees
outside traditional camp settings; and refugees in woman-headed
households.”
LIRS also fought to expand the family reunification
category that the Department of State uses. Currently family
reunification is limited to referrals from nine countries. The
new law requires the Secretary of States to give special consideration
to “refugees of all nationalities that have close family
ties to citizens and residents of the United States.”
A final victory in the new law taps the resources
of knowledgeable nongovernmental organizations by directing
the Department of State to establish “a system for accepting
referrals of appropriate candidates for resettlement from local
private, voluntary organizations.”
Other positive news for the U.S. refugee
resettlement program came recently when Eduardo Aguirre, director
of the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services (USCIS), affirmed his department’s
commitment to the creation of a Refugee Corps, modeled on the
successful Asylum Corps. The Refugee Corps will consist of full-time,
professional staff dedicated to refugee processing, and should
be in operation later this year.
LIRS is working closely with members of Congress
to monitor the implementation of this new legislation and to
seek additional legislative fixes to ensure the United States’
historic commitment to refugee protection and resettlement is
restored.
In addition to our work on the U.S. refugee
resettlement program, LIRS’s 2004 legislative issues agenda
includes…
- the Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act, also known
as the children’s bill (S.1129/H.R.3361);
- the elimination of the caps on the number of asylees allowed
to adjust their status;
- alternatives to detention and other asylum reforms;
- restoration of SSI benefits for refugees and asylees;
- legalization for undocumented workers;
- immigration backlog adjustments;
- the CLEAR Act;
- the Widows and Orphans Act of 2003;
- temporary protective status;
- the DREAM Act; and
- the US-VISIT System.
Read
past Washington Updates.
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