Strategic Humanitarianism and US Refugee Admissions after the Cold War

The United States has historically been the world's leader in refugee resettlement. Yet, there has been little scholarship on the determinants of US refugee admissions policies. This paper asks, why does the United States resettle refugees from certain countries over others? How have these priorities changed over time? This paper argues that refugee admissions should be understood as more than a humanitarian initiative, but also reflects foreign policy priorities. This interplay between humanitarian factors and geopolitics is a key component of strategic humanitarianism. After the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act, the United States used refugee policy to resettle refugees from areas where it has been militarily involved and as a strategy to discredit foreign policy rivals. Yet, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks dramatically altered the foreign policy priorities of the United States. In the post-9/11 period, the United States is expected to have resettled far fewer refugees from military conflicts and Muslim-majority nations. A statistical analysis of refugee resettlement from 1990–2019 reveals that the United States prioritized refugees from its conflicts abroad in the 1990s, but that this preference declined considerably with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.