1939

• The New York-based National Lutheran Council (NLC), begun in 1918 to respond to such post-World War I needs as immigration and refugee resettlement, sets up a Welfare Department with an office for "the rehabilitation and placement of Lutheran refugees." The department's head, Lutheran pastor Clarence E. Krumbholz, oversees the office. It helps 522 refugees in the first year.

1941

• The U.S. entry into World War II virtually shuts down refugee resettlement.

• With the end of the war refugee camps spring up in Germany, Austria and Italy for displaced persons (DPs) from Eastern Europe, one-third of whom are Lutherans.


• To participate in a nascent voluntary movement for the relief of widespread misery in Europe, NLC leaders incorporate a separate agency, Lutheran World Relief (LWR). Krumbholz also oversees it.

• The trickle of refugees who get into the United States under unused regular immigration quotas includes a group of 21 teenage boys, most of whom are Estonian Lutherans.

• The U.S. Congress passes an act authorizing the admission of 205,000 eligible DPs.
• The constituting convention of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Lund, Sweden, makes helping refugees a priority.

• Cordelia Cox, a social work educator, joins the NLC staff. She becomes the first full-time director of what is now the Lutheran Resettlement Service (LRS). She serves to 1958.

• Amendments passed by Congress increase the admissions number for DPs to 341,000 and add 54,733 ethnic Germans expelled from various countries.

• The newly formed U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) assumes responsibility for the protection of refugees worldwide.
• The admission of DPs ends December 31, 1951, with LRS's having resettled 30,263.

• Congress passes the Refugee Relief Act admitting 209,000 refugees, primarily more expelled ethnic Germans and "escapees" from East Germany.

• The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which is not a NLC member, joins LRS for the resettlement of the latest refugee groups.

• Through numbers taken from the Refugee Relief Act and a "parole" provision in the regular immigration law, the United States admits 21,500 refugees fleeing a tightened Soviet hold on Hungary. LRS eventually resettles 1,593.

• Admissions end under the '53 act with LRS's resettling 16,006 of the total.

• In a shift of emphasis to serving immigrants and referring them to local Lutheran congregations, the NLC establishes an office for this purpose headed by an attorney, Vernon Bergstrom. Soon he is also put in charge of the refugee service.

• The U.N.-initiated observance of a World Refugee Year includes advocacy by LRS for the admission of more refugees to the United States and a more inclusive vision of whom LRS should serve.
• Cuban rebel Fidel Castro overthrows his country's dictatorship and imposes a communist government, triggering directly to the United States a flow of refugees seeking asylum. The flow has continued to this day.

• Donald E. Anderson, formerly a resettlement officer with the World Council of Churches and LWF in Europe, succeeds Bergstrom as head of what is now the Lutheran Immigration Service (LIS).
• The United States admits as "parolees" up to 7,000 Chinese refugees flooding into Hong Kong, LIS's resettling 300.
• Congress passes the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act authorizing a resettlement program for Cuban refugees.

• With support from LIS, the Miami Lutheran Refugee Service begins three years of assistance to some 12,000 Cuban refugees.

• Passage of an immigration reform act modifies many of the discriminatory provisions of the previous national origins quota system. The act also makes available 390,000 visas for immigrants each year, with a preference for reunification of families.

• The NLC is succeeded by the Lutheran Council in the USA of which the LCMS is a full member. LIS becomes LCUSA's Department of Immigration and Refugee Services, which for its public face uses the name Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

• Undocumented Mexicans working in the United States are the focus of an LIRS study.

• Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin expels some 75,000 Ugandans of Indian origin, 2,000 of whom are admitted to the United States as "parolees" and resettled with direct federal funding to the voluntary agencies. LIRS places 600 of the total.

• The defeat of South Vietnam by North Vietnam triggers a flood of refugees from Vietnam and neighboring countries. Within weeks LIRS goes from a four-staffer operation to one with more than 100 staff members. They see the resettlement of 15,900 refugees by the end of the year -- an all-time annual high.
• Passage and subsequent extensions of the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act authorize a large federal role in funding resettlement.
• Anderson leaves the directorship and is succeeded by Ingrid Walter, a former Estonian refugee who had joined the LRS staff in 1950 and serves to her retirement in 1985.

• Under a long-delayed parole program for refugees resulting from a 1973 coup in Chile that brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power, LIRS resettles nearly 400 Chileans.
• Under another admissions program extending into the next year, 145 Kurdish refugees from Iraq are resettled.

• A specialized resettlement program for unaccompanied refugee minors is put in place, again with federal funding.

• At an international conference on Indochinese refugees the 65 countries in attendance pledge to cooperate in sea rescues of fleeing "boat people" and to resettle 260,000 of them.
• A Joint Voluntary Agency for processing boat people in Hong Kong and nearby Macau opens under LIRS's administration, handling 75,065 refugees over 15 years.

• The Refugee Act of 1980 becomes law with its definition of "refugees" as persons unable or unwilling to return to their home countries "because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion." The act replaces the parole system for the admission of refugees with an annual quota determined by the president "after consultation with Congress." It sets the initial quota at 50,000.
• An orderly admission of refugees is almost immediately upset when President Castro of Cuba opens the port of Mariel. The thousands who cross to Florida are processed not as refugees but "entrants" and Haitian boat people are added to the group. LIRS sets up a program under which 8,298 Cubans and 2,257 Haitians are resettled.
• The 100,000th refugee resettled by LIRS since World War II is Kao Lor, a farmer from Laos who begins a new life in Sioux Falls, S.D., with his wife and daughter.
• Passage of the American Homecoming grants U.S. admission to 10,000 children.

• A Central American concerns program is begun to respond to the needs of refugees from El Salvador seeking asylum in the United States. It soon expands to cover asylum seekers of any nationality.

• The Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America becomes a partner in LCUSA with a direct interest in LIRS.

• The work of covering immigration and refugee issues in Washington, D.C., is taken up by LIRS's first full-time representative there.

• Donald H. Larsen, an NLC and LCUSA executive, takes the helm of LIRS. His service continues to his sudden death in 1990.

• Passage of the Amerasian Homecoming Act grants U.S. admission to up to 10,000 children fathered by American GIs and the children's accompanying family members.
• At 42 "qualified designated entry" sites, some 5,000 eligible undocumented aliens are processed for amnesty under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

• With a three-way merger forming the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, LCUSA ends. LIRS continues as a freestanding agency supported by the ELCA, LCMS and LELCA.
• The newly constituted board of directors includes one seat for a refugee representative.

• An immigration attorney joins the staff to expand legal services to immigrants.

• The landmark Immigration Act of 1990 sets up a Temporary Protected Status for persons fleeing "generalized violence, civil war and natural disasters," strengthens "family unity" provisions in immigration, and for the first time sets an annual immigration ceiling.


• The U.S. State Department recognizes LIRS as having the best national refugee resettlement program, a ranking it holds for the next four years.

• Ralston H. Deffenbaugh Jr., an attorney, becomes the agency's seventh head.
• A military coup ousting the democratically elected government of Haiti generates thousands of refugees, many of whom are picked up at sea and returned to Haiti in violation of international law.

• A trip by members of the board of directors to Liberia, Malawi, Ethiopia and Kenya increases attention on the continent with the largest number of refugees and displaced persons.

• The first victims of "ethnic cleansing" in ex-Yugoslavia, refugees from Bosnia, arrive for resettlement.

• In the face of declining refugee admissions, the concept of joint affiliates serving on behalf of two or more national agencies is expanded.
• Management of a separately incorporated, nonsectarian, 70-year-old agency, International Social Service—USA Branch, is transferred to LIRS from Immigration and Refugee Services of America.

• Immigration reform, welfare reform and anti-terrorism acts signed into law greatly restrict the rights and benefits of immigrants and refugees seeking asylum.
• A national group of trained volunteers commences as the Ambassadors Circle.

• An escalating increase in detention of immigrants and asylum seekers leads to formation of the Detention Watch Network in partnership with the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc. and the Florence (Ariz.) Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.
• A center called RefugeeWorks is opened to give technical assistance to anyone involved in providing employment services to refugees.

• First grants intended as seed money for church-based projects serving refugees and immigrants are given to 12 Lutheran congregations in the name of a veteran LIRS board member, August "Gus" Bernthal.

• Approximately 1,700 ethnic Albanians forced out of Kosovo into Macedonia are resettled by LIRS under a U.S. humanitarian evacuation program.
• Headquarters is relocated from New York to a newly built Lutheran Center in Baltimore with LWR as a co-owner/occupant.
• The six-decade total of refugees resettled reaches 280,000 individuals from all parts of the world and of various faiths.

• International Social Service—USA Branch becomes independent of LIRS.

• LIRS passes the 342,000 mark of refugees resettled since the agency's inception.