the ship left Havana and sailed toward Miami as passengers cabled President Franklin Roosevelt asking to be allowed to come ashore. The U.S. State Department answered that they had to “await their turns on the waiting list and then qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States.”
Unable to land anywhere in the region, the St. Louis turned back toward Europe on June 6, 1939. Because of the high profile of the voyage, Jewish organizations were able to negotiate entry visas to Britain for nearly a third of the passengers, and to the Netherlands, Belgium, or France for the rest. Of those who went to the European continent, more than 40 percent—254 people—died in the Holocaust.15
The St. Louis was one of many ships carrying desperate refugees from Europe, seeking to enter the United States. At the end of May 1939, 104 German, Austrian, and Czech Jewish refugees aboard the French ship Flandre were turned away from Havana and forced to return to France. Another two hundred refugees from Germany aboard the Orinoco were denied entry to the United States and were returned to Germany in June 1939. The fate of these rejected refugees remains unknown.16
At least half a million European Jews managed to flee to safer countries, and many later found their way to the United States to join friends and relatives already living here. Others were trapped by the war and unable to escape. Once the war started, the United States closed its doors to the refugees, seeing them as potential spies.17
When the war ended in 1945, an estimated six million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust.18 Could more have been done to save those fleeing genocide? Some people broke laws and took personal risks to help the refugees, including individual diplomats from a number of nations who issued unauthorized travel documents and visas. But the United States played a minimal role in such rescue efforts.19
Most of the activity that helped European refugees to escape was illegal, violating not only the unjust laws of the Nazi regime but often the restrictive immigration laws of allied and neutral nations. In an April 1997 speech at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, then-UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata noted that those who managed to escape Nazi-occupied Europe “often did so by using fraudulent documents,” an action for which asylum seekers are now criticized.
“In looking back, the refugee issues of the 1930s and 1940s seem simple,” observed Ogata. “Yet at the time, the issues seemed to be as complex as similar issues appear today.”20
Does the United States accept too many refugees?
The number of people who arrived in the United States as refugees averaged just over 80,000 a year between 1980 and 2013, ranging from a high of 207,000 in 1980 (a year that saw nearly 130,000 migrants arriving from Cuba) to a low of 26,800 in 2002, after the September 2001 terrorist attacks prompted a review of the refugee program, dramatically slowing admissions. In fiscal year 2013, just under 70,000 people entered the United States as refugees.21
Each year the U.S. president sets a cap on refugee admissions after consulting with Congress. Since 1980 the number of refugees admitted has reached this limit only once—in 1992. Actual admissions plummeted after 2001, even as the cap stayed at 70,000 to 80,000 a year. Between 2002 and 2012, actual admissions averaged less than 70 percent of the allotted number. Since 2013, each year’s 70,000 limit has essentially been reached.22
The U.S. government granted asylum status in an additional 23,000 cases each year on average between 2000 and 2013.23
Can’t refugees go somewhere else?
Most refugees do go somewhere else. The vast majority of the world’s refugees—86 percent in 2015—are living in “developing” countries, generally near the country they fled, often in temporary shelter under precarious conditions.24
Many refugees spend years or even decades awaiting a resolution to their situation; by the end of 2013, the average time spent in a situation of displacement was seventeen years.25 The UNHCR lays out three “durable solutions” for refugees: voluntary repatriation to their country of origin when it is safe to return there; integration in the country where they have sought refuge; and resettlement to a third country when voluntary repatriation is unsafe and integration in the country hosting them is not possible.26
Refugees may prefer a particular “durable solution,” but they don’t generally have much power to choose. The political situation that led them to flee their country often stretches on, while the country where they sought refuge denies them any permanent status or rights. Many hope for resettlement, but only a tiny fraction will be lucky enough to get it. Sometimes refugees return to their homeland even though it remains unsafe, because conditions end up being worse in the country where they sought asylum. While this may count as “voluntary” repatriation, it is hardly a free choice.27
A country that is temporarily hosting refugees and doesn’t want to grant them any permanent status is likely to see their repatriation as a preferred solution. When arranging for repatriation, the UNHCR tries to ensure that conditions are adequate in the home country and that returnees won’t face persecution.28 Some refugees have been so traumatized that they don’t want to return to their native country under any circumstances; in some cases, they have nothing left to return to. The 1951 Refugee Convention recognized that some refugees with “compelling reasons arising out of previous persecution” may never go back to their countries of origin.29 (The Convention was drafted after the Second World War, when most Holocaust survivors had no homes or communities to return to, and could not imagine living among neighbors who had participated in their persecution.)
As migration scholar Katy Long notes, a real integration of returned refugees requires “a meaningful citizenship and full political membership of the community from which they were previously excluded.” It’s not enough for the returnees to be simply tolerated by society, and safe from persecution, in their home country. They must also be able to play an active role in influencing the political environment there, so that they and future generations can enjoy full rights and opportunities.30
For these reasons, resettlement—a permanent move to a diaspora community, generally in a more developed country—can seem preferable to returning to a devastated homeland.31 But fewer than 1 percent of refugees are ever accepted for permanent resettlement. Refugees get priority for resettlement when they are living in especially perilous situations, or have specific needs that cannot be addressed in their country of first refuge.32
Most of the people who enter the United States as refugees come through the resettlement program. As a large and diverse country with many resources and extensive diaspora communities, the United States is a logical option for resettlement. Refugees can move to locations where they will receive support from extended family and community networks and can integrate quickly and become self-sufficient. Refugees and asylum seekers who are able to select a destination will often base their choice on similar criteria.
In 2015, at least twenty-three countries, mostly in the “developed” world, provided permanent status to 107,100 refugees through resettlement. The United States consistently resettles more refugees than all other countries combined—66,500 in 2015. The total U.S. population is also much larger than that of other countries offering resettlement. Canada, Norway, and Australia all resettled more refugees per capita than the United States did in 2015.33
How do refugees get here?
People whose refugee status is granted outside the United States, including refugees selected for resettlement,
