From the Refugee Council USA, a partner with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops:

There currently are an estimated 14 million refugees throughout the world, most of whom are women and children. Since the formalization of the United States refugee admissions program in 1980, the number of refugees whom the United States has admitted each year has ranged from a low of 27,000 to a high of 207,000. In order to be admitted, refugees must be of special humanitarian concern to the U.S. and demonstrate that they have either been persecuted or that they have a well founded fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. President George W. Bush set the United States refugee admissions goal for fiscal year 2009 at 80,000. At the time of this writing, President Barack Obama had not yet set the fiscal year 2010 goal for the number of U.S. refugee admissions.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) was established in 1980 with the mission of assisting refugees whom the United States admits in obtaining economic self-sufficiency. ORR’s mission has grown in the ensuing 30 years to include assisting numerous other vulnerable populations in the U.S., including trafficking victims, torture victims, Cuban/Haitian Entrants, Indochinese Parolees, Iraqi and Afghan Special Immigrants, and unaccompanied alien children (UACs). Unfortunately, ORR’s budget has not kept up with its growing mission, the changing characteristics of the populations it now serves, and the costs and needs of resettling today’s refugees. Coupled with chronic underfunding, the challenges connected to the current economic crisis have placed the resettlement program in peril.

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