According to the organization, the growing refugee population is facing closed doors by advanced nations, which are clamping down on asylum seekers in the wake of terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The United States in 2001 admitted fewer refugees than any year since 1987. Ironically, much of the worldwide increase was due to roughly 1.5 million refugees displaced internally and internationally from Afghanistan.

“Failure of the rich countries of the north to bear their fair share of the human and financial cost in assisting and protecting refugees is shortsighted and likely to multiply future costs,” said Bill Frelick, editor of the World Refugee Survey 2002, in a prepared statement.

In the United States, refugees are handled by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). A limited number of refugees are resettled each year under a 1980 law that defines refugees as people who are unable to return to their homelands because of fear of persecution. A yearly ceiling on the number of refugees allowed into the country is set by the president and revised every October. 

The program was temporarily suspended after terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The Bush administration is committed to allowing in 70,000 refugees this year, but has so far admitted refugees at about half that rate on a monthly basis since the start of 2002.

"People have to keep in mind that we are more security conscious. We're not going to let just anybody in," INS spokesperson Bill Strassberg told the Washington Post on August 21. "That's not to say we think that refugees are coming here to cause harm, but it's incumbent upon us to do the necessary background checks."

Links

• INS Statistical Yearbook
• U.S. Committee for Refugees

-- Updated 8/21/02