Meanwhile, some mayors want more refugees, seeing them as crucial to their growth and prosperity. Research confirms that refugees contribute significantly to the communities where they settle. So should refugees be a higher priority?
Refugees are not a southern border problem
Many Americans conflate refugees with asylum seekers. Refugees are people who belong to a group that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or a national government recognizes as fleeing war and persecution as established by the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention. While the United States has a long history accepting refugees, the formal federal program, the U.S. Refugee Admission Program (USRAP) was established as part of the Refugee Act of 1980. Refugees go through an initial screening process by the UNHCR and are then referred to the U.S. State Department. The selected individuals go through several security screenings by agencies that are part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). They come from all over the world, including Africa, Asia and Europe.
Asylum seekers are different. They show up at the border, claiming that they, too, are entitled to protection from violence and persecution in their home country. Their claims, however, must be reviewed by a court to determine whether they meet the government’s standards. Furthermore, asylum seekers may be detained while awaiting trial.
Why do U.S. mayors want more refugees?
The answer: Refugees’ economic contributions far outweigh the initial costs of resettlement, as numerous studies have found. One such study, commissioned by the city of Cleveland, found that while in 2012, the city spent about $4.8 million on support for refugee resettlement, the refugees who’d settled there in the previous 12 years had contributed $48 million to the city’s economy. A similar study in Detroit found that refugees who had settled there between 2007 and 2016 contributed from $229.6 million to $295.3 million to the local economy, creating between 1,798 and 2,311 new jobs in 2016. In 2004, economist Kalena E. Cortes found that refugees “work four percent more hours, earn 20 percent more in income, and develop their English language skills 11 percent faster than economic immigrants.”
Reviving the heartland
Because refugees also bring the promise of population growth, cities compete to attract them. For example, Buffalo boasts four refugee resettlement agencies and has been actively working with refugees since 1918. Two of these agencies began offering services in the 1980s as a response to the official U.S. refugee program. Buffalo’s city officials hoped to see a population increase from the 2020 census — which would be the first in decades — because 12,196 people from other countries moved to Erie County, N.Y., between 2010 and 2014, more than half of them refugees. The Trump administration’s near-freeze on refugee resettlement may have undermined this goal.
More jobs and a better economy
Even at the U.S. peak of taking in 100,000 refugees, they made up a small proportion of the 1 million immigrants that the United States admits each year. But this small group can transform and revitalize cities drained by decades of declining populations. No wonder mayors want more of them.
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