War, famine and political turmoil force millions of people to flee their homelands each year. The United States is among the nations worldwide that offer these people -- officially called refugees -- the chance to settle in a new land.
There are about 11.5 million refugees across the globe, according to this year's World Refugee Survey, published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a Washington-based advocacy group.
America's Refugee Act of 1980 created the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program to aid such people. According to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, the U.S. has resettled 2.4 million refugees since 1975, with nearly 77% of them from Indochina or the former Soviet Union.
These refugees represent two groups in which the U.S. has had particularly strong humanitarian and foreign policy interests during the last three decades, government officials said.
Since the enactment of the Refugee Act, annual admissions figures have ranged from 61,000 in 1983 to a high of 207,000 in 1980, according to resettlement office statistics.
The average number admitted annually since 1980 is 98,000, making America the most generous recipient of refugees among industrialized countries.
Question: What is the definition of a refugee?
Answer: Generally, refugees are displaced people who have been admitted to the United States because they are unable or unwilling to return to their home country owing to a well-founded fear of persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political views or membership in a particular social group.
In 1999, for example, the U.S. designated members of Somalia's Bantu ethnic group a persecuted group and granted about 12,000 of them the opportunity to move to America.
These onetime slaves were ostracized and marginalized by indigenous Somalis. Somalia's political instability, social upheaval and clan warfare made it impossible for the Bantus to return home.
Q: What is the difference between a refugee and an asylum-seeker?
A: Refugees apply for entry into the United States from another country outside of their own; asylum-seekers apply for refugee status upon arrival on U.S. soil.
Q: Which countries do refugees come from?
A: Refugees hail from all parts of the world, though sometimes events prompt a surge of applications from a particular country.
