Resettlement Programs and Border Policy

Resettlement is the process by which a recognized refugee, already having fled to a first country of asylum, is permanently relocated to a third country that has agreed to grant them residence and, eventually, a path to citizenship; UNHCR identifies and refers the most vulnerable cases, but resettlement remains available to only a small fraction of the world's refugees, historically well under one percent of the global refugee population in any given year, making it what UNHCR itself describes as a "durable solution" of last resort compared with local integration or voluntary return. The United States has traditionally been the largest resettlement country in absolute numbers, operating the US Refugee Admissions Program established by the Refugee Act of 1980, under which the President sets an annual admissions ceiling; that ceiling fell sharply from 110,000 in fiscal year 2017 to a historic low of 15,000 in fiscal year 2021 amid restrictive policy changes during the first Trump administration, before the Biden administration raised the ceiling back to 125,000 starting in fiscal year 2022, even though actual admissions lagged well behind the ceiling for several years because of pandemic disruption and vetting backlogs.