Higher Refugee Admissions in FY 2024 under the Biden-Harris Administration

Beyond numbers, this administration has managed to change the purpose of the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program

By Nayla Rush on October 10, 2024

FY 2024 has ended, and the Biden-Harris expansion of the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program resulted, as expected, in the admission of more than 100,000 refugees, the highest number in three decades.

As important, the administration has changed the way the program works, turning it into something more like an ordinary immigration program, rather than a life-saving humanitarian vehicle for a handful of the world’s most persecuted people.

In FY 2024 (October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024), a total of 100,034 refugees were resettled in the United States. This represents 80 percent of President Biden’s announced target of 125,000. Of those 100,034 refugees admitted, a record 25,358 (25 percent) came from Latin America and the Caribbean.

The top five countries of origin of resettled refugees in FY 2024 were: Democratic Republic of the Congo (19.9 percent of the total); Afghanistan (14.7 percent); Venezuela (12.9 percent); Syria (11.3 percent); Burma (7.3 percent); and Guatemala (5.0 percent).

The top five placement states in FY 2024 were: Texas (9.8 percent); California (7.6 percent); New York (6.2 percent); Florida (4.6 percent); and Pennsylvania (4.4 percent).

Transforming the Program. But beyond admitting increasing numbers of refugees at a faster pace, the Biden-Harris administration has changed the refugee program significantly.

It has extended the benefits and beneficiaries of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to include non-refugees on U.S. soil; Afghan and Ukrainian parolees were recently added to ORR’s list of beneficiaries that already included Cuban and Haitian entrants among other eligible populations.

What’s more, the Biden-Harris administration has changed the essence of resettlement itself, which has always been presented as a “life-saving” endeavor. By designing the “Welcome Corps” private sponsorship program within the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), this administration is not resettling the most vulnerable, but rather privileging those who happen to have friends or family who made it here before them.

(For a fuller discussion of the Welcome Corps, see here.)

The Welcome Corps opens the door to non-refugees to be picked for resettlement by private sponsors, though U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) does eventually decide whether they warrant refugee status. In other words, people can be sponsored for refugee resettlement under the Welcome Corps even if they do not already have refugee status (from, for instance, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or the government of the country where they are located), including applicants for asylum, “parole”, or Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) status. USCIS is left to determine eligibility for refugee status after review of the cases and a one-time interview with the applicant. In short: You do not need to be a refugee to be sponsored into the United States under the Welcome Corps program, but you can claim persecution and become one to be admitted.

For a full account of the Biden-Harris administration’s remaking of the U.S. Refugee Resettlement program, see here. For a detailed count of FY 2024 refugee admissions, see below.

A Refugee Who Needs Saving, or Just Someone You Know? Traditionally, the United States relied on UNHCR for the selection of refugees to be referred for resettlement here. UNHCR has the international mandate to determine who is (and who is not) attributed refugee status, to provide refugee assistance, and to decide who is eligible for resettlement in third countries.

The Welcome Corps was designed two years into the Biden presidency to allow certain private individuals in the United States (American citizens or permanent residents) to select their own refugees and future American citizens, a first in the history of USRAP. By September 2024, more than 100,000 sponsors in all 50 states plus D.C. had signed up to welcome as refugees people they know or are related to.

With the Welcome Corps, any individual of any nationality who falls within the program’s eligibility criteria can be referred for resettlement. To actually be admitted, they need to meet the definition of a refugee under U.S. law — USCIS determines eligibility for refugee status after review of their cases during a scheduled interview by a USCIS refugee officer.

To be able to be sponsored under the Welcome Corps, individuals must have one of the following registration documents:

  • A refugee or asylum seeker registration confirmation with UNHCR or the government where they currently live;
  • A Movilidad Segura (Safe Mobility Initiative) Registration for individuals in Latin America; or
  • A pending Form I-134 or I-134A (Online Request to be a Supporter and Declaration of Financial Report) for individuals of Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, or Venezuelan nationality already filed on their behalf under the “Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV)”.

This last one is notable. Under the CHNV program, U.S.-based persons can sponsor otherwise inadmissible aliens of those four nationalities to come here on parole. But those sponsors do not need to be U.S. citizens or green card holders or have any formal legal immigration status. Even inadmissible aliens here under parole, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) can act as private CHNV sponsors and select who gets to follow.

What that means is that, while their final sponsor would still have to be a citizen or permanent resident, refugees resettled in the United States under the Welcome Corps could have initially been selected (and thus have a Form I-134 or I-134A) by inadmissible aliens who are in the United States under some protection from deportation.

Increased Resettlement Efforts from Latin America. FY 2024’s other big refugee change is that the Biden-Harris administration has significantly increased resettlement from Latin America, ostensibly to discourage illegal border crossings from that region; in other words, offering refugee resettlement as an alternative to coming here illegally.

The FY 2024 regional allocation from Latin America and the Caribbean (within the total ceiling of 125,000) was increased to 35,000-50,000, up from 15,000 spots in FY 2023.

The actual number admitted from Latin America in FY 2024 was 25,358, quadruple the FY 2023 number of 6,312.

The administration also created the Safe Mobility (SMO) initiative in partnership with UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to expand “lawful pathways” to the United States for refugees and other “vulnerable” migrants in South and Central America. Safe Mobility Offices (SMOs) in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala were opened to facilitate refugees’ and migrants’ access to the United States through refugee resettlement and other means, such as parole.

Since its launch in June 2023, 17,600 refugees have arrived in the United States via the Safe Mobility Initiative. By September 12, 2024, “over 245,000 individuals have applied for lawful pathways through the SMOs. Over 40,400 have been approved for refugee status”.

Since January 2021, UNHCR has referred for resettlement more than twice as many refugees from that region to USRAP as in the previous three decades.

FY 24 Numbers. As provided for in the Refugee Act of 1980, President Biden has set the FY 2025 refugee admissions ceiling at 125,000, the same as FY 2024 and FY 2023.

That is the ceiling; below are the numbers of actual admissions, specifically, monthly admissions, the top nationalities and resettlement states, and admissions from the Latin America/Caribbean region. The data is from the Refugee Processing Center portal:

Resettled Refugee Monthly Admissions

  • October 2023: 7,361
  • November 2023: 7,468
  • December 2023: 6,968
  • January 2024: 9,198
  • February 2024: 10,251
  • March 2024: 7,439
  • April 2024: 6,388
  • May 2024: 7,477
  • June 2024: 5,761
  • July 2024: 6,458
  • August 2024: 9,522
  • September 2024: 15,743
  • Total: 100,034

 :

Resettled Refugees Top Nationalities

  • Dem. Rep. Congo: 19,923
  • Afghanistan: 14,708
  • Venezuela: 12,878
  • Syria: 11,274
  • Burma: 7,347
  • Guatemala: 5,017
  • Somalia: 4,801
  • Nicaragua: 3,299
  • Eritrea: 2,411
  • Iraq: 2,282
  • Sudan: 2,184
  • Ukraine: 1,448
  • Colombia: 1,382
  • El Salvador: 1,332
  • Republic of South Sudan: 1,322

 

Resettled Refugees from the Latin America/Caribbean Region

  • Canada: 1
  • Guyana: 4
  • Peru: 4
  • Venezuela: 12,878
  • Cuba: 258
  • Brazil: 3
  • Nicaragua: 3,299
  • Jamaica: 17
  • Honduras: 905
  • El Salvador: 1,332
  • Guatemala: 5,017
  • Colombia: 1,382
  • Costa Rica: 1
  • Haiti: 260
  • Total: 25,358

 

Top Resettlement States with more than 1,000 Resettled Refugees

  • Texas: 9,764
  • California: 7,597
  • New York: 6,234
  • Florida: 4,578
  • Pennsylvania: 4,445
  • Washington: 3,994
  • Illinois: 3,808
  • Arizona: 3,776
  • Ohio: 3,654
  • Michigan: 3,649
  • North Carolina: 3,462
  • Georgia: 3,227
  • Minnesota: 2,990
  • Kentucky: 2,905
  • Iowa: 2,794
  • Missouri: 2,702
  • Virginia: 2,494
  • Massachusetts: 2,365
  • Maryland: 2,060
  • Colorado: 1,992
  • Tennessee: 1,856
  • Nebraska: 1,845
  • Indiana: 1,819
  • South Carolina: 1,333
  • Oregon: 1,331
  • Utah: 1,203
  • New Jersey: 1,127
  • Kansas: 1,121
  • Connecticut: 1,032