Refugee Resettlement In The United States

This edited volume brings together scholars from various disciplines to discuss how language is used by, for, and about refugees in the United States in order to deepen our understanding of what ‘refugee’ and ‘resettlement’ mean. The main themes of the chapters highlight: the intersections of language education and refugee resettlement from community-based adult programs to elementary school classrooms; the language (of) resettlement policies and politics in the United States at both the national level and at the local level focusing on the agencies and organizations that support refugees; the discursive constructions of refugee-hood that are promulgated through the media, resettlement agencies, and even the refugees themselves. This volume is highly relevant to current political debates of immigration, human rights, and education, and will be of interest to researchers of applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, anthropology, and cultural studies.

Examining resettlement practices worldwide and drawing on contributions from anthropology, law, international relations, social work, political science, and numerous other disciplines, this ground-breaking volume highlights the conflicts between refugees’ needs and state practices, and assesses international, regional and national perspectives on resettlement, as well as the bureaucracies and ideologies involved. It offers a detailed understanding of resettlement, from the selection of refugees to their long-term integration in resettling states, and highlights the relevance of a lifespan approach to resettlement analysis.

Few issues on the American political agenda are more complex or divisive than immigration. There is no shortage of problems with current policies and practices, from the difficulties and delays that confront many legal immigrants to the large number of illegal immigrants living in the country. Moreover, few issues touch as many areas of U.S. domestic life and foreign policy. Immigration is a matter of homeland security and international competitiveness, as well as a deeply human issue central to the lives of millions of individuals and families. It cuts to the heart of questions of citizenship and American identity and plays a large role in shaping both America's reality and its image in the world. Immigration's emergence as a foreign policy issue coincides with the increasing reach of globalization. Not only must countries today compete to attract and retain talented people from around the world, but the view of the United States as a place of unparalleled openness and opportunity is also crucial to the maintenance of American leadership. There is a consensus that current policy is not serving the United States well on any of these fronts. Yet agreement on reform has proved elusive. The goal of the Independent Task Force on U.S. Immigration Policy was to examine this complex issue and craft a nuanced strategy for reforming immigration policies and practices.

The notion of America as land of refuge is vital to American civic consciousness yet over the past seventy years the country has had a complicated and sometimes erratic relationship with its refugee populations. Attitudes and actions toward refugees from the government, voluntary organizations, and the general public have ranged from acceptance to rejection; from well-wrought program efforts to botched policy decisions. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary and historical material, and based on the author s three-decade experience in refugee research and policy, "Safe Haven?" provides an integrated portrait of this crucial component of American immigration and of American engagement with the world. Covering seven decades of immigration history, Haines shows how refugees and their American hosts continue to struggle with national and ethnic identities and the effect this struggle has had on American institutions and attitudes.

This book provides an overview on the admission of refugees to the United States and their resettlement here which is authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended by the Refugee Act of 1980. The 1980 Act had two basic purposes: (1)to provide a uniform procedure for refugee admissions; and (2)to authorize federal assistance to resettle refugees and promote their self-sufficiency. The intent of the legislation was to end an ad-hoc approach to refugee admissions and resettlement that had characterized U.S. refugee policy since World War II. Under the INA, a refugee is a person who is outside his or her country and who is unable or unwilling to return because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

This book focuses on refugee resettlement in the post-9/11 environment of the United States with theoretical work and ethnographic case studies that portray loss, transition, and resilience. Each chapter unpacks resettlement at the macro or micro scale, underscoring the multiple, and mostly unsupported, negotiations refugees must undertake in their familial, social, educational, and work spheres to painstakingly reconstruct and reintegrate their lives. The contributors show how civil society groups and individuals push back against xenophobic policies and strive to support refugee communities, and how agentive efforts result in refugees establishing stable lives, despite punishing odds. This volume will be of interest to anthropologists and other scholars with a focus on refugee and migration studies.

Understanding the Multifaced Management Problems of Refugee Resettlement in the United States of America By: Prof. Justin B. Mudekereza Centering on a social justice theme, this book explains the realities of the life that refugees live upon their resettlement in the United States. There are many problems in the sector of refugee resettlement in the country. Readers of this book should hope to understand the multifaceted management problems of resettlement in the United States. This is the only social war that the United States is unlikely to win.