Major Events in U.S. Refugee Policy:
A Timeline
1923
A report from the senate first defined a refugee thus: “when used in this act the term ‘refugee’ shall mean any homeless person of the Armenian race who...had fled from his home in reasonable apprehension of death or bodily injury at the hand of [the] Turkish.”
1924
Immigration Act of 1924 instituted the first immigration quota in the U.S. It allotted 165,000 visas annually and completely excluded immigrants from Asia.
1933
Holocaust: Hitler took power causing German Jews and political opponents of Nazism to flee. Just over 5% of the U.S. German quota was used.
1940
The FDR administration launched a program that temporarily admitted “political and intellectual” refugees from Germany who had fled to France but had to leave because of the Nazi takeover. The program admitted 2,000 people
1940
The Alien Registration Act provided for government registration and fingerprinting of “aliens” and allowed the deportation of those who “advocate, abet, advise, or teach” the overthrow or destruction of the U.S. government.
1945
The United Nations Relief Rehabilitation Agency returned 6 million WW2 refugees (often unwillingly) to their countries of origin, a decision supported by the U.S. government.
1948
The Truman administration passed the Displaced Persons Act as a response to the influx of refugees from WW2. It admitted 202,000 people over two years. This act ended in 1952, having brought 400,000 European refugees into the U.S.
1952
Congress passed the McCarran-Walter Act, which slightly increased the total number of visas available to immigrants annually. It ended de jure racial discrimination in the quota system, but in practice, heavily favored Western and Northern European immigrants, and gave Asian nations miniscule amounts of visas. It also favored immigrants who had skills that the Department of Labor deemed necessary.
1953
The Refugee Relief Act passed, allowing 214,000 refugees into the U.S.
1965
The Hart-Cellar Act eliminated the preexisting national quota system, and gave every world nation the same quota of 20,000 regardless of the state of that nation. This system allotted 75% of the visas to immigrants with family in the U.S., 20% to those who were employed, and 5% to refugees.
1975
The Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act was passed, which allowed approximately 130,000 South Vietnamese, Loas, and Cambodians into the U.S. and provided them with financial assistance.
1980
The Carter administration instituted The Refugee Act, which was an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act. The act raised the refugee quota from 17,400 to 50,000 and created the Office of U.S. coordinator for refugee affairs and the Office of Refugee resettlement. It also instituted a process by which to respond to global humanitarian crises by increasing refugee quotas.
1990-2000
The U.S. admitted over 1 million refugees.
1995-2000
The U.S. generally filled the annual refugee quotas, which ranged from 78,000 to 91,000. About 90% of visas were given to refugees from the former Soviet Union, East Asia, and Eastern Europe.
2001
After 9/11, the Bush administration halted all refugee admissions for two months.
2012
President Barack Obama instituted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which gives immigrants who arrived in the country as children a renewable two-year deferral from deportation. There are around 700,000 DACA recipients in the U.S. now. In 2017, Trump attempted to terminate DACA.
2017
President Trump issued an executive order, tilted Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States (the Muslim Ban). This executive order suspended entry into the U.S. from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. It also suspended the United States Refugee Admission Program.
2019
Trump set the refugee quota to an all time low of 18,000.
2020
The Supreme Court decided that Trump’s attempt to terminate DACA was unconstitutional and DACA now remains available.
*The Inspiration of this page came from Carl Bon Tempo’s Americans at the Gate: United States and Refugees During the Cold War