To paint it this way is to oversimplify, of course. No one wants refugee resources to go only to assistance in first-asylum countries or only to resettlement. No one in the second camp wants to eliminate the capacity to use the program to rescue people who would be gravely threatened, harmed, or killed without swift resettlement initiatives. Indeed, under any system, the first claim on admission spaces should always be for such rescue, and further, we should try to prioritize the use of admissions, wherever a resettlement initiative is otherwise feasible, based on the degree of risk or suffering that the particular population faces. Moreover, good and respectable arguments support both approaches, so that the choice between them (or among various shadings) is not any easy one. Nonetheless, considering the different views in this simplified fashion can help illuminate some fundamental choices that those guiding the program need to make.

1. Rescue vs. a wider range of dangers

a. The contending positions
One view sees U.S. resettlement spaces as a scarce resource to be used only when needed in order to rescue persons whose lives would otherwise be in grave danger. The beginnings of the Indochina resettlement program in the late 1970s have been seen as an example of this approach. As the numbers exiting Vietnam surged in 1978, some first-asylum countries in the region pushed refugees back across their borders, or repelled vessels overcrowded with desperate families, sending them back out to likely death at sea. Only when the world community in 1979 pledged essentially to resettle elsewhere all who were permitted first asylum did those countries relent. They agreed to permit landings and ongoing care and maintenance in camps on their territories, where the processing for resettlement then geared up in earnest. Macedonia’s treatment of those fleeing Kosovo in early 1999, holding them in deeply hazardous conditions in fields near the border, also prompted a similar rescue initiative. When many other countries offered to take at least some of the population sheltered there, for either permanent or temporary haven, Macedonia changed its approach and began to allow the care and maintenance of new arrivals in more secure facilities.

This rescue-based view also countenances launching resettlement when persons who had found a tolerable welcome across the border suddenly become highly vulnerable in the first asylum country. The current resettlement program for selected Liberians from Cote d’Ivoire provides an example. Until recently, the Ivorian government and populace had generally accepted Liberians displaced by Liberia’s long-running and brutal civil war. A great many were able to find a fairly stable existence in the western part of the host nation or in the capital, Abidjan. But when civil war erupted in Cote d’Ivoire itself in September 2002, the populace blamed much of the problem on foreigners. Tolerance changed to vituperation. Liberians sometimes became the targets for community violence, and many were forced to relocate to a handful of camps where their protection and subsistence remained tenuous. Based on a group referral of “vulnerable Liberians” by UNHCR in early 2003, the United States speedily initiated a resettlement program focused on approximately 8,000 Liberians from specific camps.

A resettlement program built on the rescue principle is inherently volatile. Acute vulnerability waxes and wanes, and resettlement volume could be expected to rise and fall in response. Small populations chosen under this approach can perhaps be wholly rescued with a few months of processing and transportation, and new resettlement initiatives will not necessarily fill the gap, unless of course a new life-threatening crisis materializes elsewhere. Larger populations raise other issues. If the launching of a resettlement program succeeds in securing acceptance of first asylum in countries close to the source country, or in diminishing popular backlash among the host population, then the immediate vulnerability is reduced. Over time, the interim arrangements, including international aid for the care and maintenance of refugees in the first asylum country, may ease the host country’s resistance to longer-term stays in camps or even to local integration for a portion of the refugee population. If so, vulnerability has diminished and resettlement may be curtailed or stopped, or at least arguments for reducing or ending the resettlement program will be pressed with greater vigor. That is, it is always open to argument just how serious the current vulnerability may be. On the other hand, the first asylum countries may believe that they have an ongoing deal, and may object to even modest efforts to trim resettlement flows -- perhaps to the point of threatening to renew rejections at the frontier. Something of that latter dynamic persisted through the 1980s with the Indochinese program, wherein resettlement did not significantly diminish even after pushbacks had been curtailed.

The Indochinese program demonstrates that rescue-based premises can result in a steady stream of resettlement, extending over many years. But such circumstances are likely to be rare, and for such a program to continue taking in large numbers for a lengthy period will probably require support that derives from other sources. The Indochinese program of course had such wellsprings of support -- based on this country’s lengthy involvement in Vietnam and links to many of the people who were potential victims, as well as the program’s congruence with Cold-War objectives. But even so, a current of resistance to Indochinese resettlement was evident in the later years of that program, arguing that the program had outlived its original rationale and perhaps had transmuted into a tacit immigration program.

The primary alternative approach is to see resettlement, in addition, as a durable solution that should be used to respond to a wider range of dangers. This approach does not deny that resettlement is a scarce resource, but it sees a broader spectrum of circumstances as justifying concerted action to resettle, even if the persons involved are not in immediate life-threatening danger. Proponents of this view argue that the United States should actively consider resettlement, for example, for populations that have spent many years of stay in a refugee camp, if the conditions are severe and feature little productive activity for the refugees, limited educational opportunities for their children, or other features that betoken a lingering and profound waste of human potential. Not all such circumstances will necessarily be good candidates for US resettlement, of course. Such initiatives should not thwart voluntary repatriation, if it is reasonably imminent. They should be designed to augment, not to overcome, the possibilities for improved camp life and even local integration. And they should generally be launched only where other circumstances, such as a good camp registration system, can help minimize any magnet effect and provide safeguards against fraud.

This view shares with the rescue outlook an understanding that the US refugee program must be reserved for use to alleviate serious human suffering, but it finds that criterion satisfied even if conditions are not immediately life-threatening. In particular, when camp life is little better than human warehousing, and where it has persisted in this mode for several years, resettlement must enter the picture as a potential durable solution. In interviews for this project, proponents of this view often recalled their own experiences visiting bleak refugee camps years after the initial flight and coming face-to-face with the profound wastage of human lives represented by such an enforced existence, particularly for the children forced to grow up under such conditions. They argued that this approach is simply a different species of rescue -- saving people from a prolonged strangling of their life chances and not just from fast-working dangers. Bill Frelick describes the need in these terms:

Millions of refugees worldwide have been relegated to a limbo existence, warehoused in camps or settlements with no prospects for voluntary repatriation or local integration. Children born and raised within the confines of camps often never see normal life outside the fences. These populations often become dependent and despondent, with predictably negative social consequences.³

A program founded on the second outlook can more readily be designed for stability of flow and predictability over time. Although this approach would by no means preclude the use of resettlement spaces for the situations targeted by the first view -- indeed, they should claim first priority -- it permits greater balance and advance planning for that (normally) substantial part of the program that would not be based on the narrowest version of rescue. Moreover, this wider perspective better allows for an approach that is coming to be known as the strategic use of resettlement. That is, the United States can use resettlement offers to help encourage receiving states to maintain first asylum, to break up negotiation stalemates that keep refugees stuck in human warehousing, and especially to use resettlement as one component in a comprehensive solution. Such solutions work to end refugee exile through a combination of voluntary repatriation with resettlement for those sub-populations (such as ethnically mixed-marriage families) for whom repatriation remains too dangerous despite a general settlement.

No official, to my knowledge, has definitively declared that resettlement should be limited to immediate rescue and acute vulnerability. But my interviews for this project did produce accounts of times when key decisions, for example to turn down or at least postpone the designation of additional groups for priority access to the USRP, were ultimately swayed by arguments seemingly based on the narrower rescue principle. Quietly, at crunch time, the fact that the potential beneficiaries are not in life-threatening situations can prove decisive in rejecting the initiative. At the least, opposition to a new initiative put forward by other bureaus or agencies involved in refugee resettlement may gain force from the claim that resettlement is not needed for the immediate saving of lives.

b. The narrow rescue perspective offered as an antidote to interest-group politics
Several interviews for this project produced this observation: The narrower rescue-focused perspective has been embraced (and some said should be embraced) as a reaction against distortion of the admission program’s true goals. Unless the program is limited to life-saving initiatives, it will be diverted too easily into serving other foreign policy goals, or it will be captured by interest group politics and will devote too many spaces to groups whose main claim to priority is simply a strong constituency in the United States -- thereby straying from the program’s true humanitarian purposes.

Some who voiced this complaint pointed to the Indochina resettlement program, which in their view continued far longer than it should have -- moving from a legitimate rescue effort in the late 1970s to a de facto immigration program. Many UNHCR officers apparently share this outlook; the Indochina experience has contributed to a negative attitude within UNHCR toward giving prominence to resettlement as a durable solution -- an attitude the organization is now working to reverse. ⁴

The example most frequently mentioned in connection with this type of complaint was the Lautenberg Amendment.⁵  Originally passed in 1989, the amendment responded to a sudden change of policy by the executive branch in 1988 that imposed highly rigorous application of the refugee definition on all overseas refugee processing. As a result, many applicants in the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, in Indochina found their cases unexpectedly rejected. After debating several possible legislative remedies, Congress enacted this provision, which authorized the approval of refugee applications from specific categories of applicants in the Soviet Union and Indochina based on a markedly less demanding showing of risk. The Lautenberg Amendment was adopted as a temporary measure, destined to sunset after one year, but it was then extended for an additional two years, and has been routinely extended ever since -- even though the Soviet Union has since disappeared from the map. Some of the current critics accept that respectable arguments supported the original enactment and perhaps even the continuation of some of the special categories (most of which focus on Jews and other religious minorities) during the uncertain period that immediately followed the breakup of the U.S.S.R. But they question the continuing need for such a special provision under current conditions, believing that normal refugee standards allow ample scope for resettlement of those truly endangered. Many people interviewed for the project voiced skepticism about these differential standards under current conditions, yet none expected Congress to allow the Amendment to expire.

Others have expanded on the critique of interest-group actions. In their view, the voluntary agencies that have long participated in US refugee initiatives, both overseas and domestically, have to a significant degree captured the process and turned it to serve their own narrower interests. Sometimes these critics mean simply that the USRP often favors admission of groups that are tied by ethnicity, religion, or other features to a particular US volag. But a stronger version of this critique alleges that a different type of self-interest governs -- the desire to maintain the flow of federal funds to the volags themselves and their top officers. Even the campaign to return resettlement numbers to their historic levels is sometimes seen as a mere self-interested effort to hold on to volag contracts with the government and to keep volag offices fully staffed. ⁶

NGO representatives reject the charge of narrow financial self-interest as the basis for their actions or for their recommendations on groups that should have priority access to the USRP. But some interviewed for this project defended placing at least some priority on choosing groups that have a support base already present in this country. In selecting among millions of genuinely good candidates for resettlement, they maintain, taking those with a support community already in place maximizes successful resettlement outcomes as well as long-term support for the US Refugee Program. They emphasized, however, that such a rationale should not be the sole criterion for setting resettlement priorities, and they pointed to many counterexamples, like the Somali Bantu, to show that the NGOs do not limit their support solely to persons or groups closely identified with a volag’s prior missions.

The stronger version of the interest-group capture claim is unfair. Although there have been isolated instances of financial or management abuses, the NGOs active in this field have historically been energized not by federal contracts but by their officers’ and volunteers’ real-world experiences with refugees -- both in camps abroad and in the process of resettlement in this country. Today, these organizations generally bring to bear their own resources -- usually in significant proportions -- and most got into the refugee assistance and resettlement business decades before the current structure of contracts and grants was in place. Many draw upon a faith-based tradition of assistance to the needy, and the secular organizations as well can generally point to a long history of humanitarian action wholly divorced from federal largesse. There is some variation in the picture, however. For some volags the tradition of greatly augmenting the public resources (especially the reception and placement grants provided by the Department of State) with independently raised funding has unfortunately withered -- to the point that successful domestic resettlement may suffer. All volags should strive to live up to the historic public-private sharing, in the interest of more successful resettlement experiences.

As to the gentler version of the interest-group claim, one cannot expect that persons deeply involved with refugee assistance and resettlement will be agnostic on resettlement priorities or that they would shy away from supporting refugee groups to which they have ties. Our democratic system makes such advocacy legitimate, even on the part of those who have certain contractual ties with a government program. Those with decision-making responsibility may properly consider such background factors in assessing particular proposals for resettlement initiatives, but they should not be surprised or offended at the very fact that NGOs will press their proposals doggedly and criticize government decisions with which they disagree.

Of wider effect may be a related feature which requires attention. Interviews for this project turned up a surprisingly widespread feeling, including among congressional circles, that the refugee program has gotten away from resettling “real refugees” -- a development many attribute to exaggerated interest-group influence. Although this theme has been submerged in public statements in recent years,⁷ it almost certainly will find more prominence as the program regains its momentum and reaches higher admission levels. Given that the new era will probably require dozens of decisions a year on new resettlement initiatives, there will be more occasions for critics to charge improper influence. Some recent legislative proposals, meant to give NGOs wider authority to help set admissions priorities through “refugee response teams” perhaps composed exclusively of NGO personnel, are freighted with long-term peril of this sort.⁸ They might succeed in getting numbers up, but at the likely cost of expanding a backlash against what critics will see as interest-group distortion. This is a subtle point, and the devil is in the legislative details. It is of course appropriate and desirable for the government to use the expertise of NGOs more systematically in casting a wide informational net and developing the best possible data for identifying manageable and appropriate resettlement initiatives. (This approach has been taken in PRM’s recent initiatives to include NGO representatives in “targeted response teams.”) But such legislation should make it clear that the ultimate decisions, both to initiate a detailed look at a population and of course ultimately to decide to target it for resettlement, remain in the hands of government officials. ⁹

The concern about possible distortions of refugee policy is legitimate. But we do not require a tightly narrow rescue principle to avoid them. A better designed decisional structure -- one that proves it really can produce regular decisions on resettlement initiatives after a rigorous examination of need, broadly understood, as well as of constraining factors -- can accomplish this objective. Chapter II recommends such a structure.

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³ Bill Frelick, Rethinking U.S. Refugee Admissions: Quantity and Quality, 2002 World Refugee Survey 28, 35.
⁴ Cite van Selm report; Frederiksson report?
⁵ Pub.L. 101-167, Title V, § 599D (1989). It has been frequently amended since enactment, primarily to extend the expiration date.
⁶ See, e.g,, Don Barnett, Out of Africa: Somali Bantu and the Paradigm Shift in Refugee Resettlement (Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder, Oct. 2003), at 1, 6-8 (charging that resettlement is dominated by “a constellation of hundreds of interrelated government funded non governmental organizations (NGOs) pursuing their own institutional interests,” including narrow or personal financial considerations).
⁷ But see the House Judiciary Committee letter on the FY 2004 consultations, Oct. 15, 2003.
⁸ See, e.g., the initial versions of Congressman Christopher Smith’s proposed amendment to the Foreign Relations Authorization bill.
⁹ The final provision to this effect included in the FY 2004 foreign operations appropriations bill has been scaled back to a more modest mandate for NGO involvement, which would be consistent with the approach recommended here.

2. The resource competition between assistance and resettlement

The pull of the narrow rescue outlook draws additional force from another element sketched in the introduction to this Section. To a certain real extent, resources for resettlement are in competition with resources for assistance, and it is a fact that funds spent on assistance will go further and immediately aid many more people. Resettling a single refugee costs many thousands of dollars. That same sum of money, applied in the first asylum country, could perhaps feed and shelter many dozens of persons in a refugee camp for a year. Many persons in the refugee field, both government officials and NGO workers, are drawn to this “more bang for the buck” argument in giving a strong priority to assistance over resettlement. Of course resettlement must be preferred, they would acknowledge, if the alternative is refoulement or death, or if conditions in the camp are excessively dangerous for a vulnerable individual or group. But short of such a threat, protracted refugee situations should evoke an assistance response, not resettlement. (Another way to describe this view, using UNHCR terminology, is that it emphasizes resettlement as a tool of protection, rather than as a durable solution in its own right.)

If the competition for resources is viewed as a zero-sum game, where money given to one function inevitably diminishes the resources available for the other, the assistance side has a strong case. But that is probably an inaccurate way to view the issue. In the long run, resettlement almost surely enhances the support and resources available for all parts of US refugee activity. The US Refugee Program has brought over two million refugees to a new life in the United States over the past 25 years. They have settled in all 50 states, and a great many communities have developed vibrant support networks to welcome the new arrivals. The participants in those networks often find themselves drawn increasingly into wider efforts to support refugees, including many participants who previously had no real acquaintance with or interest in international human rights or refugee issues. In interviews for this project, some recounted what a profound impact their first experiences in private resettlement work had had on them and their fellow volunteers. Even US citizens not directly involved in such networks wind up gaining personal acquaintance with fellow community members who -- they eventually learn -- came to the United States as refugees. This personal contact, this immediate sharing of the stories of flight and survival and gratitude at the opportunities that US resettlement provided, has created warm local support for refugees in a wide range of communities. Such support readily translates into personal donations and political initiatives for refugee-assistance activities of all kinds, both in the United States and abroad. Of more focused significance, members of Congress often invoke their own personal experiences with refugees in their home-state communities as a way of explaining or justifying or trumpeting their own support for refugee funding and refugee initiatives -- funding that includes ample support for assistance to refugees and displaced persons outside the United States.

A study of resettlement in Europe and the United States, undertaken jointly by the European Council on Refugees and Exiles and the US Committee for Refugees, commented on these spin-off benefits:

Finally, there are political and educational benefits to resettling refugees, as shown by the outpouring of public generosity in Europe and the United States toward Kosovar refugees evacuated from Kosovo and Macedonia during the Kosovo crisis in the spring of 1999. The resettlement of these refugees . . . helped to educate the public about the plight of refugees and generated considerable public support, not just for refugee resettlement but for other humanitarian programmes as well.¹⁰

Nonetheless, in the short run the competition for resources can remain quite real and immediate -- and proposals for specific resettlement initiatives have usually come up for consideration individually, demanding short-run decisions. The annual budgeting arrangements for the refugee function compound the pressures. They leave it to the State Department, in the main, to divide up refugee funding annually (the Migration and Refugee Assistance (MRA) account) between resettlement and assistance, and to adjust the totals during the year through the standard reprogramming procedures. If a group access proposal comes up at a time when assistance budgets are stretched, or where new flows have prompted UNCHR appeals for additional assistance funding, incentives will obviously exist to preserve the resources for assistance, in order to benefit the greater number of people. This tension is likely to grow more acute if budget pressures over coming years reduce the MRA account. In any event, the dilemmas are real and must not be underestimated.

Recommendation: The US Refugee Program should be explicitly based on a broad perspective about the use of resettlement. The President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Assistant Secretary for PRM, and the Director of USCIS should make it abundantly clear that the USRP is not limited to rescue from life-threatening situations, but will work actively to include displaced individuals and groups who face a wider range of dangers, including the wastage of human potential that can result from protracted stay in a refugee camp. These needs are real and compelling, and there are large populations meeting these wider criteria. Therefore the program can still be prudent and selective in choosing among them, with full attention to countervailing factors such as possible magnet effects, other political impacts, and near-term prospects for voluntary repatriation. This approach should be accompanied by a determination to sustain fully viable budgets for refugee assistance, minimizing as much as possible any direct financial competition between assistance and resettlement.

On the other hand, if the Administration and the Department are unprepared to make a firm declaration of this sort, they should then be candid about the likely outcomes in the current era, which lacks large-scale programs like those formerly in place for Indochina and the Soviet Union. That is, without new initiatives premised on this broader perspective, admission totals will almost surely remain low and admissions will fluctuate widely, whatever other operational improvements are introduced for processing those given access to the program. Without candor on these points, officials responsible for the system are placed in an extremely difficult position. They will be judged by most outside observers against a high admissions total placed in the annual Presidential Determination, but not given the more specific policy directives indispensable to meet that benchmark.

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¹⁰ ECRE & USCR, Responding to the Asylum and Access Challenge: An Agenda for Constructive Engagement in Protracted Refugee Situations (April 2003) at TAN 75. Other comparative studies, after attending closely to the US experience (as the country with the most extensive resettlement program) have noted the ways in which positive resettlement experiences help shape public attitudes toward all parts of refugee assistance and protection. Joanne van Selm, et al., Feasibility of Resettlement in the European Union 118-19 (Migration Policy Institute 2003).

3. The Presidential Determination: a ceiling or a target?

a. The contending perspectives
The rescue-oriented approach coexists comfortably with the view that the number of refugee admissions set annually by the President is simply a ceiling and not a policy goal. That number is established following the submission of a report to Congress that sets forth a range of information required by statute (INA § 207(e)) and a proposed level and allocation of admissions. Following Cabinet-level consultation with the Judiciary Committees, usually carried out by the Secretary of State, the President issues a final Presidential Determination (PD) that sets admission levels and broad regional allocations of the numbers that will govern for the coming fiscal year. The law includes an additional provision for increasing the numbers mid-year through a new PD based on “an unforeseen emergency refugee situation,” but such an increase has occurred only three times since the adoption of the Refugee Act in 1980.

Over the years PRM officers have often repeated, in response to criticism of admissions totals that fall below PD levels, that those numbers are ceilings, not policy goals. In this conception, if conditions unfold such that we do not need to use the full PD number -- or even a significant fraction of it -- this outcome does not contravene the President’s decision; perhaps it should even be seen as a triumph for overall refugee policy. Critics counter that millions of refugees remain in conditions of stifled development and more subtle dangers, even if not in immediate life-threatening jeopardy, and that it is a shame to let the precious resource of presidentially determined admission slots simply lapse. This debate is simply one version of the controversy between viewing resettlement as rescue or resettlement as a durable solution for a wider array of circumstances.

b. Why the Refugee Act does not settle this issue
It is probably correct that the “ceiling not a goal” view predominated at the time of the adoption of the Refugee Act of 1980 and also provided an appropriate way to understand the PD number in the early years of operation under the Act. NGO critiques should perhaps be more understanding of this pedigree of the outlook they disfavor, and be more willing to acknowledge that the burden of proof may well fall on those who would take a different tack. But it is a burden of proof that can be carried. The early predominance of the “ceiling not a goal” view was largely a product of the particular times and of carryover attitudes deriving from the statutory structure that immediately preceded the Refugee Act. Moreover, the legislation by no means mandates that the President’s determination serve only as a ceiling. In deciding how to treat the PD number today, we should take into account the significant evolution of our refugee admissions system since 1980, as well as the functional implications of each of the competing visions of its role.

Before adoption of the Refugee Act, US law had provided for a statutorily fixed ceiling of 17,800 “conditional entrants” annually. Until 1975, when Saigon fell, most of these numbers had been used for a modest and steady stream of East Bloc refugees who made it to western Europe and were processed by voluntary agencies that had been in that business for decades. On those occasions when greater needs arose, including 1975, they had been accommodated through use of the Attorney General’s parole power, but there was widespread dissatisfaction with that mechanism. The effort to pass a new Refugee Act was meant to provide an alternative to parole for larger numbers of refugees by raising the numerical ceiling, to expand the definition of eligible refugees (previously only those from Communist countries and the Middle East could qualify), and to make sure that those brought as refugees could eventually secure full permanent residence status without the need for discrete special legislation.

It is essential to keep in mind, however, that the Refugee Act was considered and adopted in the midst of a rapidly changing resettlement program, and the views of many legislators and executive branch officials evolved considerably during that time, as events forced rethinking of the types of refugee needs that were likely to be encountered. (This evolution also sheds light on isolated statements in the legislative history seemingly favoring an annual admissions total of only 50,000. (See Sidebar on a level of 50,000 admissions.)) Early versions of the legislation were drafted in 1977 and early 1978, well after the sudden Vietnamese exodus of 1975 (spurred by the collapse of the South Vietnamese government) had ended but before people foresaw any major new wave of boat departures. Resettlement totals in 1977 were low, and the major impetus for new legislation at that moment was lingering dissatisfaction with the limited arrangements that had been available to deal with the 1975 crisis. Early versions proposed to increase the annual ceilings to 40,000 or 50,000 -- a number thought sufficient for foreseeable flows short of desperate emergencies like that of 1975, which was deemed unlikely of repetition. By the time serious consideration of the bills began in the new Congress that convened in 1979, however, an enormous new wave of “boat people” had commenced, with departure levels from Vietnam (both land and sea) reaching as high as 60,000 per month. Major outflows seemed likely to persist for years. By the time of enactment, President Carter had already pledged up to 14,000 U.S. refugee admissions per month, as a response to the severe crisis in Southeast Asia. The US government, along with its NGO partners, was busily deploying resources and developing innovative processing techniques (considerably different from the traditional machinery used in Europe) to deal with this vastly changed refugee scene. [recheck statistics]

As American pledges expanded, they clearly outran the 50,000 ceiling that had been confidently placed in the administration’s draft bills in late 1978 and early 1979. Not only was that particular ceiling inadequate, but those involved in the legislative effort for the executive branch came to realize that any fixed ceiling was always vulnerable to being overtaken by events. Eventually, in the later stages of the consideration of the Refugee Act, [check timing] a new and flexible procedure was introduced -- the provision ultimately enacted as INA § 207(a), which gives the President broad power to set the admissions level at the beginning of each fiscal year. Discussion of this new mechanism generally used the terminology of ceilings, but not out of any deeply considered rejection of the idea that the numbers might also serve as goals or operational targets. That question never came up, as such. Instead, the terminology persisted because administrative practice under the earlier fixed-level laws had always spoken in those terms. Moreover, the participants realized that the extraordinarily high admissions levels of 1980 (which eventually brought over 207,000 refugees to the United States that fiscal year) were not sustainable. Major diplomatic efforts were under way to reduce the emergency pressures and find ways to bring the Indochinese flow within a more manageable framework. In that climate, it was quite appropriate to speak of the new levels as ceilings and to make it clear that the managers of the system were expected to bring admissions numbers below the high maximums the President was setting, whenever conditions enabled such a result. At that specific time, the PD number truly was a ceiling, not a goal.

Over the succeeding decades, the nature of the refugee admissions program has evolved considerably. The new processing techniques hastily cobbled together in the late 1970s, involving heavy reliance on NGOs to handle much of the paperwork and prepare cases for INS review (the joint voluntary agency or JVA system), became more routine and sophisticated, and they were extended to other refugee situations as well. Additional refugee populations were resettled, in greater proportion, from Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. Refugee resettlement became more institutionalized. Planning mechanisms developed, officers began to speak of a resettlement pipeline, and NGOs added staff and developed an enduring network of field offices throughout the United States to help manage the reception and integration of arriving refugees. This evolution represents a major triumph of the US Refugee Program -- creating and sustaining such a system at reasonable cost levels, importantly involving a major public-private partnership. But with machinery on this scale, it is difficult to make sudden changes, of level or location. Solid planning and clear benchmarks of performance can be of considerable use.

Perhaps most importantly, even after the Indochinese and former Soviet Union streams declined, succeeding Presidents and Congresses kept the admissions numbers (and accompanying budgetary support) at levels that could not have been envisioned in 1980 for non-crisis periods. Refugee admissions have drawn strong support from a coalition that cuts completely across party lines and across the divisions that mark out competing camps on other issues. The annual numbers gradually turned into an increasingly well-established humanitarian resource to be employed to in service of the nation’s historic humanitarian objectives. This shift has come about in significant part because of what this nation has learned about the human value of refugee admissions. There are countervailing currents, to be sure, and remaining skepticism about some elements of the refugee program that deserve to be taken seriously. But the reality of this highly successful program suggests the value of a steady and reasonably high-capacity resettlement program, even after the decline of what had been its major resettlement components.

c. Evaluation
If the admissions program becomes based on the broader perspective on refugee resettlement needs, as is strongly recommended here, then the U.S. Refugee Program should treat the PD number as a goal and not an optional ceiling. Once the focus is expanded beyond immediate rescue, a great many refugee situations come into view as candidates for possible resettlement, with real humanitarian gains to be realized by offering thousands of men, women and children the chance to escape from human warehousing. Refugees should not be left either in immediately dangerous situations or in multi-year misery in a refugee camp when such a valuable humanitarian resource, set by the President and supported by the Congress, is available. Seen as a goal or target (with appropriate tolerances given the volatility of refugee situations), the PD number then provides a useful baseline for accountability -- for both pipeline development and operational management. This outlook would help all relevant players gauge their own performance and plan proactive efforts accordingly.

Such an approach would carry an additional structural advantage. As noted, it is often easy to marshal arguments against new resettlement initiatives. There truly are risks and imponderables with virtually any such effort, which are quite properly factored in before making an access decision -- chances of triggering a new pull factor or of upsetting other political developments, or logistical and security challenges involved in processing the particular group. But it has often proven difficult in governmental deliberations to assure systematic consideration of steps that can minimize those risks or of the reasons why it may be time to nudge the political calculations in a different direction. At a time when many new group-access decisions will be required each year to achieve a reasonable number of admissions, the system sorely needs ongoing incentives that can counter the momentum toward letting the negative case win the day. Treating the PD number as a target provides exactly such a counterbalance. The central question in the current era of refugee resettlement must be which resettlement initiatives present the fewest drawbacks or disadvantages -- not which have none, for that will almost never be the case.

One further caveat is in order. For the PD number to serve this accountability role effectively, it must be set at a realistic -- even if designedly challenging -- level. Large programs like this cannot easily make sudden changes. The refugee program has had to cope with difficult operational alterations in the wake of September 11, and it has taken a couple of years for the systems to adjust to the new requirements. Many of these pieces are just now beginning to settle into ordinary and predictable operation, which holds real promise for FY 2004. But the system has not yet been sufficiently retooled to deal with the second challenge, that of having to identify a host of new group resettlement initiatives each year. Resources are only now beginning to be dedicated to that function on the scale needed -- partly because until recently so much time and energy had to be devoted to the more pressing operational tangles. Throughout this time, the annual PD number has been set at 70,000 -- with the best of goodwill, but perhaps without sufficient realism about the system’s limitations and the timeframe needed to overcome them. It will be a notable (although reachable) achievement if the system can exceed 50,000 admissions for FY 2004, and such an outcome would provide welcome momentum for continuing the upward trend for succeeding years. But this means that a full transition to a workable goal-not-a-ceiling approach may not come until FY 2005.

Recommendation: The number of admissions set in the annual Presidential Determination should be treated as a goal, not a ceiling. It should therefore provide a firm benchmark for accountability of the offices that have a role in access decisions and management of the system, including not only PRM and USCIS but also the regional bureaus of the Department of State and the enforcement bureaus of the Department of Homeland Security. Because of the potential volatility of refugee flows, and the program’s vulnerability to unforeseen problems, the benchmark should apply with reasonable tolerances, which can probably diminish once a system built on this new approach has matured.

Access decisions should still pay attention to countervailing factors, both logistical and political, that might appropriately weigh against a resettlement initiative. Such decisions must still be done case-by-case, with full attention to the context. But treating the PD as a firm goal by which performance will be measured will help counter a long-standing tendency to overvalue the disadvantages of a proposed initiative.

Chapter II
Reforming the System for Deciding on Resettlement Initiatives

As Chapter I recounted, the United States finds itself in a new era of refugee resettlement. Not only must we deal with new operational challenges triggered in part by the dangers of terrorism, but we must sustain the admissions program largely out of a host of smaller, short- to medium-term resettlement initiatives. Improvements for operations will be addressed in later chapters. This chapter focuses on the system that provides the precursor to field operations -- the system that decides which groups and individuals will receive access to the US Refugee Program. The Program is only beginning to come to grips with the dimensions of the new challenges.

This Chapter is premised on the underlying stances recommended in Chapter I: that the Program be expressly mandated to go beyond the narrow rescue principle in identifying possible candidates for admission, that it affirmatively seek to resettle persons whose lives are subject to serious long-term impairment and not just immediate hazards, and that it treat the PD number as a goal, not an optional ceiling. The PD number thus becomes a benchmark for holding the various offices and players in the system accountable and for measuring their performance. Reforming this access system is primarily a job for the Department of State, but it must be done in a way that appropriately draws on the expertise and cooperation of the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the other key partners, particularly the voluntary agencies and the Office of the UNHCR.

A. The scale of the challenge

It is essential, first of all, to be clear on the scale of the challenge now faced.

Refugee admissions have historically derived from three distinct processes. Even if the current admissions priority system is revised, these basic functional categories are unlikely to change significantly:

• Individual case referrals. Individual referrals largely come from UNHCR, usually based on its assessment that compelling protection needs require moving the individual from his or her current location (typically along with immediate family). These referrals have provided the overwhelming majority of the admissions in the P-1 processing category, which is open to any nationality, since PRM revised the priority system in 1994. P-1 also allows for individual referrals from U.S. embassies, and certain initiatives are under way to enhance the ability of NGOs in the field to generate individual referrals as well.

• Family-based access. The current priority system provides access to refugee admission interviews for spouses, parents, and minor children of refugees and asylees (and formerly of other aliens in the United States as well), as part of the P-3 processing priority. P-3 is currently applicable to nationals of nine countries, up from four in FY 2003, but down from as many as 18 in earlier years. The US priority system, in the abstract, also contemplates admission of more distant relatives as P-4s or P-5s, but those priorities have not been used since the end of the Bosnia program. In each of these instances, access to a DHS interview is triggered by the filing of an Affidavit of Relationship (AOR) by the anchor relative already in the United States. Beyond this, the spouse and minor children of a refugee may also “follow to join” the principal alien without independently qualifying under the refugee definition. This process, not limited to specific countries or nationalities, is also triggered by a filing from the anchor relative -- in this instance an I-730 form -- but review and approval of the person’s qualifications typically is done by a consular officer in the country where the family member is located.

• Group-based access. The most visible part of refugee admissions is probably that which focuses on particular groups that are given access to the program under the P-2 processing priority, based on a judgment that the group is of special humanitarian concern to the United States. Group-based access for Vietnamese and for large categories from the former Soviet Union provided a mainstay of the US refugee program for many years, and broad eligibility categories remain in place for the three nations where in-country processing has regularly been authorized: Vietnam, Cuba, and the former Soviet Union. Additional, more focused P-2 groups have in the past included the so-called Lost Boys of Sudan, certain Burmese ethnic leaders and political activists, and mixed-marriage families from Bosnia (along with a wider list of victimized groups from Bosnia). For FY 2004, P-2 groups include: Somali Bantu from Kakuma camp in Kenya, Baku Armenians in Russia, and Iranian religious minorities. FY 2003 also witnessed a relatively new development in group access, which has come to be known as “P-1 groups.” The pioneering example was the initiative to resettle vulnerable Liberians from specific locations in Cote d’Ivoire, referred by UNHCR based on its own verified registration list. The P-1 group approach can be expected to expand, because UNHCR is now working to develop a systematic capacity to go beyond its labor-intensive individual referral process and refer for resettlement selected groups in need of a durable solution outside the country of current asylum.

All three of these broad categories hold potential for expansion in order to restore historical levels of US admissions, but the third will be the key. Despite initiatives to increase individual referrals from UNHCR, US embassies, and NGOs, such referrals will likely increase only gradually and in modest increments. Adding more countries to the P-3 family list would generate more admissions, as would needed improvements in the I-730 process. But the P-3 program has encountered a high level of fraudulent submissions. Although program changes in the last two years have gotten a good handle on the problem, none are foolproof, and P-3 expansion is likely to take place slowly. This means that improving the pace of admissions will have to focus in major part on group designations.

What follows is a very rough illustration of the group designation challenges to be faced, using as an example a PD number of 70,000. For the next couple of years, it is a reasonable (though quite rough) assumption that individual referrals and family-based access will generate roughly 12-15,000 admissions. This leaves over 55,000 to be generated in other ways. The long-established Moscow and Havana programs can perhaps produce another 8-10,000. It is not a stretch to conclude, then, that other group-based initiatives will have to produce another 45-50,000 admissions, in order to reach the 70,000 figure -- roughly 4,000 admissions per month through this mechanism. Work should begin now, and urgently, in order to develop additional candidate groups, do the detailed further inquiry needed before final designations can occur, select among those so developed, and initiate the pre-interview machinery. Six to twelve months might be thought a good allowance of the time needed for this process, from early consideration until DHS circuit ride. The time frame can be compressed if conditions are favorable (the Liberian P-1 group process got off the ground in about three months), and it can also take far longer if conditions prove unfavorable (nearly three years before the first admissions of Somali Bantu, and closer to four years before sustained processing).

Moreover, it is not enough simply to designate groups consisting of 4,000 members each month, because clearly not all refugee applicants granted access to the interviewing process will be approved. If we assume a modestly optimistic DHS approval rate of 80 percent, group designations will have to embrace over 5,000 per month in order to produce an annual total of all admissions at the 70,000 level. And the pre-designation exploratory work will of course have to include groups totaling a still larger figure, perhaps 7,000-8,000 per month, because not all initially promising groups will prove to merit access, and others may be placed on hold while the full range of other durable solutions is explored. With limited exceptions, most candidate groups on the current horizon fall at or below 8,000. We can therefore expect to have to designate one or two new groups each month, on average, using either the P-1 group referral process or the P-2 category.

B. PRM’s role

1. Findings

PRM has introduced improvements over the past few years that further this pipeline development process, such as a reporting matrix that pulls together the key information on potential target groups in a standard format to facilitate comparisons. But the group identification and designation process is not currently oriented toward the necessary volume. Some persons interviewed for this report worried that there is little sense of urgency in PRM -- little sign of the energy level that will certainly be needed under today’s conditions. Others complained that the actual selection criteria and the precise decision mechanism for getting a group on the approved P-2 list are obscure. As a result, some of the groups under discussion have been kicking around for years, without discernible progress toward a clear go or no-go decision.

Several persons interviewed, including many in government positions and in PRM itself, lamented the current state of relations between the admissions office and the resettlement NGOs, believing that much could be done from both sides to overcome this divide. NGOs, some suggested, need to nurture a more complete understanding of the obstacles and complications that have affected the program over the past two years, and curb the tendency to read bad faith into outcomes that prove disappointing. But PRM could also do much to help revive the traditional spirit of public-private partnership that was a traditional hallmark of the program, treating the volags as allies and fostering ways to improve transparency and communication. A healthy partnership includes candid and ongoing two-way critique. Such give-and-take -- frank, robust, even harsh -- is a legitimate part of the democratic decision-making process, and PRM should not take offense when criticism is voiced.

A few examples of communication difficulties are worth describing. Cooperative working groups were initiated a few years ago. The one that dealt with fraud issues worked well and produced a useful report, whose recommendations are now largely being implemented. Its operations were widely commended. But other working groups did not go well, and most fell into disuse. I heard from many people about one particular meeting of the “Rest of the World” working group (so labeled to distinguish it from the group focused on Africa). The meeting was attended by PRM staff, regional bureau officers, and NGOs. The NGOs came to the meeting intending to present ideas for eligible group initiatives and to work through the advantages and disadvantages of each. The meeting was apparently conducted in such a way, however, that an initial NGO recommendation was immediately met by a strong State Department statement of the reasons why such an initiative would not work -- in a fashion that was perceived by the NGOs as an intended conversation-stopper instead of a mutual effort to examine pros and cons. Some participants felt that the regional bureau officers had been brought to the meeting precisely in order to knock down the ideas the NGOs were going to offer. Accounts from the State Department side, while agreeing that the meeting went badly, attributed the problems more to clumsiness in meeting design and maybe a misunderstanding of the best ways to foster effective communication.

Involving NGOs more completely in the design and field implementation of certain initiatives would also be beneficial. For example, I heard from stateside NGO representatives who had offered support when they were initially told of a planned training session in Nairobi for NGO personnel (mostly from assistance-focused NGOs), to enable them to make NGO referrals of highly jeopardized individuals for processing as P-1 refugees. The persons making the comments were then disappointed that the later parts of the training initiative were developed without the input they had offered to provide. The ultimate results of this NGO referral initiative have been disappointing; perhaps it could been more successful with greater input from NGOs more closely familiar with resettlement. Of course, the unfortunate ongoing tensions between resettlement-focused NGOs and assistance-focused NGOs, for which PRM is not responsible, may also have contributed to these difficulties.

Joint PRM-NGO working groups are now being revived -- a welcome and useful step. PRM should be sure that meeting agendas and operating rules truly do provide for a productive give-and-take. The exact methods of course will depend on the subject matter and the state of development of the initiative or operation being discussed. But more use of meetings designed largely to have State Department personnel listen actively to NGO ideas without a need for immediate and definitive response might be useful. Even if a proposal presents apparent difficulties, it will be much more productive to react with questions meant to probe the challenges. Asking “how then would you deal with the magnet effect risk, given that there are X thousand still in the country of origin from the same group?” is more effective than simply declaring that the initiative cannot work because of a pull factor. The response and resulting dialogue may produce unexpected ideas for how to diminish the problem. There will be adequate time away from the meeting for government players to hash out their fully considered positions. After such government deliberations, it will often be useful to provide one more round of interaction and comment on a position that is well-formed and fairly far along in the decision process, but before it goes final. This will improve the sense of full partnership and involvement, even if the position remains unchanged in the final outcome.

This is a key attitudinal point. The Admissions office often gives the impression that it views the acceptance of input on a wider scale as tantamount to surrendering control over the program’s decisions or implementation to the NGOs. There need be no such equivalence. PRM properly asserts authority to decide in the end how the program should run. But input can produce ideas that deserve acceptance on the merits. And even if the agency largely sticks with its original approach, the dialogue can produce useful refinements and tweakings -- and a better sense of why the original approach is judged best. Moreover, NGOs would be much happier with a framework that invites their suggestions in a candid and ongoing way, even if their advice on a particular matter is not followed. A respectful disagreement is better than a feeling that one’s views were not even invited or considered. It must be acknowledged, however, that fostering effective communication requires considerable staff time and energy, a commodity that has been in short supply. Augmenting the limited staffing of the PRM Admissions office, discussed below, would open up better possibilities.

Resolving differences among the various bureaus and agencies involved in refugee processing away from public meetings is also quite important. I heard several accounts of finger-pointing toward other government agencies or offices in public meetings, or open displays of sharp intragovernmental differences. These not only hampered relations with NGOs, but they also sometimes made it difficult to reach constructive resolution among government players. The last two years have been times of great difficulty for the resettlement program, producing unusual strains for all involved. Even in such times, however, the program will work best if such differences, when they exist, are fought out and resolved in internal forums.

2. For the future

A clear sense that the PD number is a firm target rather than a ceiling, as recommended in Chapter I, should both energize PRM’s scouting for eligible resettlement initiatives and fortify the Bureau during the interagency discussions that have to take place before new resettlement initiatives are approved. This does not require that PRM become an indiscriminate cheerleader for any resettlement proposal that may be advanced by the NGO community -- a concern some expressed in interviews for this project. It is admirable and indispensable that the Bureau maintains its own critical perspective in evaluating such suggestions. Nonetheless, PRM’s admissions office has to be the component in the decision-making system that gives the benefit of the doubt to resettlement, as a counterweight to the negative arguments that will readily appear from other governmental or international quarters. PRM also has to be the part of the system that maintains a global perspective on resettlement, to help assure that particular initiatives are not simply picked off and squelched one-by-one.

The group designation process requires obtaining preliminary information on candidate populations; identifying their needs and the conditions of life in the current first-asylum or in-country situation; assessing the political landscape and the impact that a new resettlement initiative would have on the target population, host and neighboring governments, and on others who might migrate in response; identifying other features or steps (such as registration practices) that might minimize adverse impacts; estimating the likely interview success rate if resettlement is offered; and eventually clarifying logistical needs and ways to meet them (such as safe interview sites). NGOs can be of real assistance with many of these stages. The annual admission recommendations in the RCUSA volume already provide a useful starting point. Specific NGO missions, without direct government involvement, have also produced detailed reports that triggered real PRM interest and additional steps to investigate resettlement possibilities in detail. Such NGO reports or suggestions are likely to be most effective along these lines if they attempt to deal in detail with the hard questions about obstacles and limitations that are outlined in Chapter I, Section A. Moreover, UNHCR’s nascent group referral process holds real promise in assisting along these lines, although it will probably require a few years (and successful pilot implementation) before that mechanism will produce significant volumes of referrals.

But even with such assistance, managing all these access-development tasks sets a highly ambitious agenda for an office of the size of PRM’s admissions office. Through much of 2003, it functioned with approximately 12 permanent officer positions, plus five Refugee Coordinators posted to field offices globally whose primary duties focus primarily on admissions (one each in Accra, Nairobi, Cairo, Havana, and Ho Chi Minh City). The overseas program unit in headquarters has had only four officers, although its work has been augmented in various ways by the three officers on the Domestic Programs side of the house (whose primary tasks involve monitoring the resettlement agencies operating under reception and placement grants from the State Department), and by certain other arrangements. Nonetheless, the tasks assigned to these officers cover a huge range, leaving relatively little time for the crucial group-development work. For example, they must help deal with logistical difficulties that arise during a DHS circuit ride, with congressional inquiries, and with individual problem cases, including inquiries from family members whose relative in a camp is stuck somewhere in the process. And many of them have come in on nights or weekends over the past year to help do vital, but largely clerical, tasks entailed in the new security screening process. Some temporary staff has now been added, primarily to handle these security-related functions, and three new officer positions are in the works.

Even with these additions, this staffing level is insufficient for the new era of refugee resettlement. Additional officer time must be freed up to focus on group development, and also for better communication with the office’s public and private partners. An addition of five officer positions to the Admissions Office would not be out of line, in view of the vastly changed landscape of refugee admissions as compared to the previous decade. These additional officers should not come on as specialists doing only group development, however. It is salutary for Admissions staff to share in many parts of the resettlement work, from individual problem-solving to wide-scale group scouting to some familiarity with domestic resettlement, so that they gain a complete picture of the resettlement process. The Department should also find more efficient ways to handle security screening tasks.

Enhanced PRM staffing, with a shift in outlook as outlined above, should help energize the group development process, and it will importantly give PRM the capacity needed in order to sustain the quality of decisions on resettlement initiatives. It will not serve the cause of the refugees, nor provide credit to the program, if sloppy decisions are made in the service of a new drive to increase resettlement numbers. The office needs to have enough potential initiatives under consideration -- to have enough options going at any one time -- so that the refugee program can afford to be selective, including attention to those factors that might counsel against a particular initiative, while sustaining a steady flow at the needed level.

Recommendation: PRM, as the lead office on the process of group designation, must develop a sense of urgency about adding one or two new groups to the pipeline development process each month. PRM must impart energy and vision to this mission, in a way that will promote added efforts on the part of the other players in the process, both governmental and nongovernmental. It must seek innovative ways to accomplish the various functions involved. The Admissions Office staff should also expand in view of the very different requirements in this new era of refugee resettlement. Without abandoning its own critical perspective on admissions proposals, the Admissions Office must come to think of itself as the component in the decision-making system that gives the benefit of the doubt to resettlement, so as to serve as a counterweight to negative arguments that will readily appear from other governmental or international quarters.

C. The involvement of the rest of the Department of State

If the burden of meeting the President’s target in this new resettlement era is seen as falling solely on PRM, the target probably will not be met. Approval of new P-2 groups (and indeed acceptance of a UNHCR group referral) must be cleared more widely within the Department of State. In particular, such approval generally requires the assent or acquiescence of the appropriate regional bureau. It must also have genuine support from DHS. Persons interviewed for this project recounted marathon efforts by some within PRM during FY 2002 to propose and develop new group initiatives, only to meet with resistance of varying degrees from the regional bureaus or DHS, and sometimes from UNHCR. Resistance ranged from security concerns about the refugee populace to skepticism about the logistics of processing (including safe interviewing sites) to warnings about pull factors to dire predictions about the reactions of host governments or their neighbors. The point is not that these concerns were illegitimate or unworthy. Instead, I was told, they were often seized on early in the process as complete trumps of any further consideration -- blocking PRM’s efforts either to probe the concern more thoroughly or to develop additional strategies, in cooperation with the objecting office, that could overcome the problem. The possible disruptions and imponderables deriving from a new resettlement initiative tend to loom large for desk officers or ambassadors, too few of whom have historically felt a real responsibility for bringing admission totals up to the level set in the PD. If the numbers fall short, that outcome has often been seen as essentially PRM’s problem, not the Department’s.

These last comments overgeneralize, of course, and there are important counterexamples. In fact, many successful resettlement initiatives owe a great deal to vigorous support by the ambassador posted to the first-asylum country or to an officer in a regional bureau in Washington.

But the key point is that this outlook, this feeling of shared responsibility for meeting the resettlement targets, must come to be more widely shared within the Department under today’s conditions. A more energized and better staffed PRM can help, as could a clear directive from the Secretary stating that the PD number is a goal, not simply a ceiling, and that all offices are charged with helping to meet that objective. But bureaucratic processes respond only sluggishly, if at all, to exhortation. Short- to medium-term institutional or procedural changes may also be useful in order to make sure that such views become deeply instilled in the actual operations needed to restore the refugee program.

D. Suggested procedure for deciding on group initiatives

1. Refugee Admission Committee

The Department of State was faced with a somewhat comparable need for institutional and attitudinal change in the 1970s, when human rights was introduced as a systematic foreign policy priority. At that time the need for such change derived from a major new policy thrust, whereas here the challenge is essentially to meet a continuing policy objective but in significantly changed world conditions -- marked by both greater operational hazards and the end of predictable large-scale multi-year resettlement flows. Nonetheless there are enough points of similarity between the two challenges to make the earlier experience instructive.

In the 1970s, not only had President Carter directed the Department to give more prominence to human rights, but more concretely, Congress passed several statutes specifically mandating human rights considerations in decisions on foreign aid, including economic and social assistance, military assistance, and U.S. votes in the international financial institutions. In order to be sure that these mandates were followed, and also to develop a consistent set of policies and criteria for implementing them, the Department provided that many of the key decisions, especially on aid, would be made at periodic meetings involving the regional bureaus, the human rights bureau, and other interested units. Because these sessions were chaired by the Deputy Secretary, Warren Christopher, the body came to be known as the Christopher Committee. Representatives of all the regional bureaus were expected to attend each session, in order to help facilitate an accurate comparison with earlier decisions and thereby develop a more consistent set of criteria and standards, and also to help assure that a full understanding of those criteria would be worked back in to each bureau’s internal deliberations in the future. The process also assured that a final decision was reached in a timely fashion, because the meetings concentrated attention and forced action.

An adapted version of this model, a Refugee Admissions Committee to be chaired by the Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration, could bring benefits, at least as a transitional measure to be used for a couple of years while all concerned gain familiarity with the requirements of this new era of admissions. Each regional bureau would be asked to designate a senior officer for regular attendance, as would other appropriate offices, such as the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL). Representatives of DHS and the National Security Council should also be invited to participate. Additional officers would attend specific meetings as needed, based on their own expertise or responsibility regarding a particular nation or situation slated for consideration in detail. Committee meetings should be placed on a firm schedule set well in advance, meeting no less often than bimonthly -- as an action-promoting timetable. If agreement can be worked out in advance among the relevant bureaus, then the meeting could simply hear a report on the plans, including an account of the most difficult issues and how they were resolved. This would be instructive for all involved, providing a growing sense of consistent criteria that are relevant in designating a group, and of the range of creative steps that can be taken to overcome obstacles.

The Committee could also be called into session quickly if needed to consider an urgent group resettlement need. Alternatively, if wide agreement among all relevant bureaus to designate a particular group is achieved between meetings, the Committee may want to have a supplementary procedure for such additions without having to convene a special meeting or waiting until the next regular meeting is scheduled.

2. Refugee Admissions Committee procedures

The Committee will of course need to develop and refine its own procedures in light of experience, but a clearer structuring of the decision process could be quite useful for all involved. I recommend using three categories for group consideration, labeled potential groups, candidate groups, and designated groups.

PRM would prepare a list of potential groups, casting a fairly wide net and working with counterparts in the appropriate regional office. Some judgment and discretion are necessary in compiling even this preliminary list, of course, but extensive investigation would not be expected, and the existence of disadvantages or concerns, even if they initially seem fairly significant, would not necessarily knock a group off the list of potentials. Each Committee meeting could begin by considering this list, in order to identify those that are appropriate to raise to the next level as candidate groups.

Candidate groups are those that are seen as reasonably promising for a resettlement initiative, though they need not be problem-free to be moved to this list. Inclusion as a candidate would mean that the group is appropriate for more intensive investigation, usually including field visits. The field inquiry team should include DHS and could also involve NGOs, UNHCR, IOM, and other players as appropriate. This investigation is meant to develop more detailed information about the characteristics of the proposed group, including camp conditions, the level of risk or harm or inactivity its members face, the political impact of a resettlement decision, obstacles to a successful program, and steps that might be taken to overcome the obstacles. For example, the candidate group might be located in an area seen as relatively unsafe for DHS interviewing. The field inquiry would examine, in cooperation with the embassy security officer, whether changes could be made to facilities in the area where the refugees are located, in order to reach a satisfactory level of safety. Alternatively, the team could explore possibilities for moving the population to another site for processing, as occurred with both the Liberians in Cote d’Ivoire and the Somali Bantu in Kenya. Or if the main problem is the risk of a magnet effect, the team could determine whether existing registration records or a new UNHCR verification might provide an adequate basis for limiting the resettlement program to persons who had already been in first asylum for X number of years. Field inquiry may find that only a subset of the candidate group is appropriate for resettlement. In order to avoid generating unrealistic expectations among refugees in the area, decisions to name a candidate group generally should not be publicized, and the inquiry team should strive to work behind the scenes and without advance publicity of the purpose of its visit. This investigative procedure would fit very well with efforts PRM is already launching for “targeted response teams.”

Any group referred by UNHCR for resettlement (so-called P-1 groups) should be immediately included on the candidate list, and enjoy a presumption of support. Further investigation can be more limited for such submissions, but they should still come to the Committee for a final decision before the group is approved for resettlement to the United States.

The results of the field investigations and other inquiries regarding candidate groups would be reported to the next Refugee Admissions Committee meeting, and would provide the basis for choosing which candidate groups would actually be designated for priority resettlement -- the final stage in the group-development process. Once a group is designated, the logistical steps for actual resettlement would be put into motion. PRM would make arrangements for OPE processing and eventual medical screening and transportation. DHS would be asked to prepare a schedule of circuit rides and to work with the embassy to resolve other preliminary issues, such as final approval of interviewing sites. And the resettlement volags would be notified so that they can begin preparing reception and placement plans as necessary.

Obviously some candidate groups will prove, upon investigation, not to be good possibilities for resettlement, and the Committee can then make a firm decision not to proceed. Or the Committee may decide to postpone decision on certain groups, awaiting other political or logistical developments. For these reasons, there will always be attrition as groups move from one level to the next. Therefore it will be essential to assure that there are enough potential groups and candidate groups in the works at any given time to produce designations on the scale needed to meet the target, even allowing for attrition and postponements.

3. Advantages

The Committee provides a structure for considering resettlement options in a comprehensive and consistent fashion. The current diffuse process, wherein proposals circulate separately, sets up a dynamic of discussion and negotiation primarily involving only PRM and the regional office at issue. This setting often undervalues the positive features of the proposed resettlement and gives undue weight to the disadvantages, allowing the initiatives to be more readily disapproved or delayed one-by-one. In contrast, the Refugee Admissions Committee process will facilitate -- even require -- disciplined comparative judgments. It will help assure that all participants remain mindful of the Program’s positive humanitarian mission and of its ultimate target numbers, even while giving close scrutiny to the disadvantages and obstacles affecting any particular group. Participants in the meetings who are skeptical about resettling a certain population may find their doubts diminished when they learn of steps taken to overcome similar disadvantages initially encountered with regard to another group in a different region. Even when doubts cannot be wholly eliminated, this comprehensive approach allows an informed comparative choice of those groups that present the fewest concerns and disadvantages.

Dealing with group initiatives through the Committee also better allows for well-calibrated adjustments throughout the fiscal year, going further down the list of promising candidates if necessary in order to assure a more even flow. The Committee will be a forum, in other words, for keeping track of the pipeline and admissions progress to date, making its new decisions in light of that information. It provides a better framework for building up to and then sustaining a steady pace of admissions throughout the year, minimizing the current year-end rush.

4. Using the Committee process to assure timely completion of the full Presidential Determination process

Finally, other related tasks, especially preparation of the annual admissions consultation document to be transmitted to Congress, might work more smoothly if they are tied in to the regular meeting schedule of the Committee. Final clearance of the consultation document often bogs down in disputes over recommended numbers, groups, or wording, delaying consultation meetings and helping to push the issuance of the Presidential Determination a few days or weeks into the next fiscal year. Delays have serious operational consequences that seem insufficiently appreciated by some players in the process, including congressional offices. If no PD is in place by September 30, all refugee movement must halt and future flight bookings can be made only at risk of having to pay for unused spaces. Several valuable weeks can be lost. A healthy admissions program should not countenance these significant inefficiencies.

The objective should be to prepare a document in time to assure completion of the full consultation process before Congress’s August recess. That timing would allow final deliberations on the congressional feedback, plus the preparation and signing of the PD, by early September, making sure that operations can continue without break. Instead of allowing debates over the document to cause such delays, the document should be scheduled for firm resolution at a stated meeting of the Committee, ideally in late spring (to permit whatever further interagency clearances are needed). A fixed date of this kind should help foster early compromise among competing camps, but if agreement is not reached, the dispute could be crystallized for discussion at the meeting and, if still not resolved, for preparation of the papers needed for resolution at a higher level.

Recommendation: The Department of State should establish a Refugee Admissions Committee, to meet no less often than bimonthly. In a multi-level decision process, the Committee should consider lists of potential groups and select candidate groups for more thorough investigation. After the investigation, which could involve field visits by targeted response teams that include representatives of NGOs, DHS, and perhaps UNHCR and IOM, the Committee will ultimately designate groups for priority resettlement, at a rate needed to meet the PD target and to keep a reasonably steady flow of admissions.

The Committee should also play a central role in the adoption of the annual congressional consultation document. It should schedule its deliberations so as to assure that the document is prepared in a timely and complete fashion that will enable consultation with Congress before its August recess and signing of the Presidential Determination by early September.

Chapter III
The Priority System and Arrangements for Urgent Cases

The priority system structures access to the US Refugee Program. Falling within one of the operative priorities permits a person to apply, be processed for consideration, and usually to be interviewed by a DHS officer, but it does not guarantee approval. The DHS officer still must find that the person meets the refugee definition, is not firmly resettled, and is not excluded by any applicable ground of inadmissibility (many grounds are waivable for refugees). The current priority system was adopted in 1994, partly in order to give UNHCR a larger role in initiating resettlement. This chapter considers proposals to change the overall system or the use of certain categories within it, as well as arrangements for urgent cases.

A. Overview

The five priorities may be briefly summarized. P-1 cases may be of any nationality and are based on referrals from either UNHCR or a U.S. embassy. The focus of P-1 is individually compelling cases, but official descriptions of this priority usually go on to list specific factors that may support a decision to refer. Many of these parallel the factors given prominence in the UNHCR Resettlement Handbook.¹¹ The following is a typical list, although the formulations sometimes vary slightly:

• persons facing compelling security concerns in the country of first asylum
• persons in need of legal protection because of the danger of refoulement
• persons in danger because of threats of armed attack in the area where they are located
• former political prisoners or persons who have experienced persecution because of political, religious, or human rights activities 
• women at risk
• victims of torture or violence
• physically or mentally disabled persons
• persons in urgent need of medical attention not available in the first-asylum country
• persons for whom other durable solutions are not feasible and whose status in the place of asylum does not represent a satisfactory long-term solution

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