NORTH PRARIE, Wis. — The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees calls this a “time of rising anti-refugee” sentiment. In industrialized nations, many feel that refugees are ‘cheating the system.’ While others patiently wait for their immigration papers, refugees, they reason, skip ahead and receive the right to live, work and even assimilate into their host country.
In Australia, these feeling are exacerbated by the media. Another boat, another raft carrying five, 10 or 100 hundred people seems to arrive everyday. Some Australians are overwhelmed by what looks like a flood of new arrivals from Asia.
So what are the numbers really like?
In 2010-2011, refugees to Australia were largely Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi, Sri Lankan or stateless peoples. Those who were so heavily featured in the news were often from Malaysia and Indonesia. In 2012, Australia was hosting some 30,000. Over 29,000 of those people applied for asylum; 20,010 of those applications were pending and about 8,300 of the applications had been approved at the time of the report.
Australia ranks third overall in the resettlement of refugees among industrialized nations. Between 1993 and 2012, it resettled more than 210,000. It was just below Canada, with about 220,000 resettlements. The United States took the lead with over 1 million. It may be fairer to compare the ratio of accepted refugees to the nation’s population, though. Australia resettles one refugee for every 2,400 of its citizens. Canada settles one refugee for every 3,000. The U.S. comes just behind Norway and New Zealand, who accept and resettlement one refugee for every 5,300 and 5,100 of their citizens respectively.
Many industrialized nations operate within a quota. In the U.S., the President and Congress determine the number of refugees that can be admitted to the country each year. The total number is divided further by priority regions. For 2014, the U.S. will accept about 14,000 refugees from Africa and 14,000 from East Asia. The proposed total of admitted refugees is 34,000, and the proposed ceiling is 70,000, so the number of refugees resettled in industrialized nations is by no means insignificant. But industrialized nations do not bear the brunt of international refugee crises.
For many refugees, fleeing persecution and conflict across borders is best done over a single border; they get to the closest safety that they can. Consequently, four-fifths of the world’s refugee population — now over 15 million — are hosted by developing nations.
In 2012, Pakistan and Iran hosted the greatest refugee populations. There were almost 2 million refugees total, many of them Afghan, living in Pakistan. Another million people are staying in Iran. Germany, Kenya, Syria and Ethiopia are the next largest host nations.
The economic and logistical burden of accommodating so many people is difficult for a single government to bear. Foreign aid is undoubtedly helpful, but never enough. As industrialized nations debate on the right number of thousands to admit, developing nations like Pakistan hope for a cooperative and more equitable solution.
– Olivia Kostreva
Sources: UNHCR, CNN, World Bank, US Dept of State, Immigration Policy Center
Photo: The Global Panorama