MANY blame it for the ongoing war in Syria and now it seems the US may only take 10,000 extra refugees, so why isn’t America doing more to help the migrant crisis?
Attention has turned to America’s contribution, as the rest of the world announces commitments to take Syrian refugees who have been caught up in the Europe migrant crisis.
In the four years since the Syrian conflict erupted, the US has only resettled about 1800 Syrians. It’s a paltry amount when you consider that more than 500,000 refugees will need to be resettled due to the Syrian conflict, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates.
Amid criticism his government has done too little to help, it was revealed on Thursday that President Barack Obama had asked for at least 10,000 Syrian refugees to be admitted to the United States next year. It doesn’t contrast well with the 12,000 extra Syrian refugees Australia will resettle.
What’s interesting though, is that the US resettles a total of about 70,000 refugees every year, which represents about 70 to 80 per cent of all those resettled around the world. Surprised? It’s something that the country has been doing for years.
“The US really has been carrying the major global burden for well over 30 years,” Amnesty International Australia refugee co-ordinator Dr Graham Thom toldnews.com.au. “Without the US there really wouldn’t be a resettlement program.”
Even more impressive is that the 70,000 refugees the US takes for resettlement, is on top of any asylum seekers that enter the country, which Dr Thom said had totalled about 120,000 last year.
Dr Thom said the debate around asylum seekers in Australia had bunched the two figures together, while in other countries they were treated separately.
This includes Germany, which has agreed to accept 800,000 asylum seekers entering its country this year, but which only has a yearly resettlement quota of 300 refugees.
Those who are put forward for the resettlement program are refugees who have been successfully assessed by the UNHCR or another organisation as not being able to go home or not being able to stay in the country where they have sought protection.
It’s different to how Australia approaches its own refugees, with those arriving as asylum seekers on boats or planes (and assessed by Australian officials onshore) added together with those entering through the resettlement program, for a maximum total quota of 13,750 arrivals a year. This is what gives rise to accusations that asylum seekers are “jumping the queue”.
Another difference is the US does not discriminate based on factors such as whether the person already has family living in the country, something which New Zealand and Australia give priority to.
The US does not have “integration criteria” like Denmark does, and it’s also one of the few countries that will resettle unaccompanied minors, those in need of medical treatment and members of the persecuted Muslim ethnic minority, the Rohingya, Dr Thom said.
America was even kind enough to take registered refugees stranded in Indonesia after Australia announced last year it would no longer accept those who arrived in the country after July 1, 2014.
“This was a really big problem for the UNHCR so it was great the US has been able to step up,” Dr Thom said. “The US will take about 1000 people from Indonesia in the next 12 months, this is obviously very important if we don’t want people to get on boats in Indonesia, they need a safe alternative.”
This all makes the US an attractive place for refugees, even though they may only get basic assistance with language classes, food and shelter that may only last for a few weeks.
“They want you to get out there and work,” Dr Thom said, adding refugees in Australia were provided with more support and things like trauma counselling to help them get on their feet.
“We want people to integrate successfully and we take pride in that. The US wants that too but their philosophy is different, it’s about working hard.”
SO WHAT’S THE CATCH?
When it comes to helping Syrian refugees, there is one thing that makes it difficult for refugees to resettle in the US — it has very strict security screening requirements.
Refugees from the country must undergo strict security checks designed to weed out extremists, even after being registered by the United Nations.
“The process to bring refugees here is careful and deliberate,” a senior US State Department official said Wednesday.
“It takes between 18 to 24 months between when a refugee is referred to us and when they — if approved, when they end up arriving in the United States.”
Each refugee and their family is interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security and names are checked against government databases.
“What we’re trying to do is weed out people who are liars, who are criminals, or would-be terrorists.”
Dr Thom said the long processing time meant that refugees who were in immediate danger or need urgent help often were not resettled in the US.
“This is very frustrating for the UNHCR and if it is an emergency case and they need to get the people out very quickly, they can’t really refer them to the US.”
In the four years since the Syrian conflict erupted, the US has received 15,000 referrals for Syrian refugees from the UNHCR but has only resettled about 1500 people.
“So the number of Syrians going to US, is really pathetic,” Dr Thom said.
Dr Thom said while the US had a good track record on resettling refugees generally, it could do more for Syrians.
“I think Australia has made a significant contribution and while it should have happened two or three years ago, it does send a signal to other countries,” Dr Thom said.
“We do need the US to be doing more and Canada as well when it comes to Syria. The US is one of those countries that has that capacity.”
While security issues may have stopped the US from responding generously to the call for urgent settlement places, Dr Thom said if America continued to take a generous amount of refugees from other countries, this freed up places like Canada and Australia.
IT’S STILL A DROP IN THE OCEAN
The US, Canada and Australia can rightly be proud of being among the small number of countries which have agreed to resettle refugees. Between them they provide about 90 per cent of all resettlement places in the world. But even this contribution seems tiny when considering the number of people who need new homes.
The UNHCR has estimated there are 1.1 million refugees in the world who need to be resettled, about 500,000 are Syrian refugees.
Only about 100,000 were resettled in these three countries last year. The US resettled the largest number (73,000), followed by Canada (12,300), and Australia (11,600).
Even more concerning is that the one million refugees needing resettlement only make up 8 per cent of the estimated total refugee population of 14 million in 2014.
Of the one million who need to be resettled, just 10 per cent — 103,890 refugees — had their applications submitted to countries for consideration by the UNHCR in 2014.
Part of the problem is the long UNHCR processing time, which is not helped by the fact that the humanitarian organisation has been crying out for extra funding for years.
Last year it warned it had only received about 40 per cent of the money it needed to provide basic care for refugees fleeing Syria. “The decisions they have to make every day are horrendous,” Dr Thom said.
If officials are scraping around to provide food, shelter and register hundreds of thousands of refugees, this can take priority over processing resettlement applications.
“If you are sitting in one of those camps, in Amman (Jordan), Beirut (Lebanon) or Turkey ... and have seen virtually no one resettled in the last three years, what is your incentive to stay? When you can’t work and your kids can’t go to school?” Dr Thom said.
“What’s happening in Europe now is something we have been saying would happen for years. If UNHCR was not funded appropriately, these people are going to move. Now we’ve got tens of thousands of people moving into Europe.”
The number of people leaving their homes in wartorn countries such as Syria marks the largest migration of people since World War II. Source: Getty Images
BUT OTHERS DO A LOT LESS
Regardless of the unmet need, the commitments of countries like the US, Australia and Germany contrast starkly with the position of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, which have all offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.
Australia’s neighbour, New Zealand, is not much better. It has offered a total of 750 resettlement places a year.
Historically, Dr Thom said the US, Australia and Canada provided about 90 per cent of resettlement places for refugees, while Europe’s contribution was around 10 per cent. However, it does take more asylum seekers.
“Historically, Europe is bad at resettlement but they are very good at granting asylum,” Dr Thom said.
This is perhaps reflected in Sweden’s refugee intake. Dr Thom said about 32,000 asylum seekers entered the Scandinavian country last year but it also continued to take about 1800 refugees through the resettlement program.
Germany is another example, it had an annual resettlement quota of 300 refugees, but in 2014 it hosted more than 200,000 asylum seekers. It has committed to take 800,000 by the end of this year.
British Prime Minister David Cameron also unveiled plans on Monday to take in 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years. While this will only equal about 4,000 a year, it has defended the number saying it was the second biggest donor after the US to the Syria crisis.
IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT RESETTLEMENT
CARE Australia emergency response worker Stefan Knollmayer told news.com.aunot all of the four million Syrians who fled wanted to leave the area.
“A large number of people displaced in places like Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan are not living in refugee camps, they are living in towns and cities and renting accommodation and looking for jobs,” Mr Knollmayer said.
“They are trying to stay relatively close to Syria, certainly the majority want to return home if they can and would like to stay in countries where their families are and where they speak the language.”
Turkey currently hosts 1.9 million refugees from Syria — more than any other country worldwide.
Mr Knollmayer said it was essential countries like Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, where Syrian refugees now made up a quarter of the population, were supported.
“The refugees need cash assistance, the opportunity to learn skills to get them jobs and as winter approaches, they need blankets, heating supplies and clothing. Those are the types of things that we as an international community need to be continuing.”
WHAT’S NEXT?
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has been in Europe to work out what Australia’s continuing contribution should be. The federal government has flagged it may need to take more refugees than the one-off intake of 12,000 it’s planning.
“We’ll have to assess in due course what the next wave of support might be,” Mr Dutton said,
ahead of a meeting with migrant resettlement groups and ethnic community leaders in Canberra on Friday.
“We want to provide support to people to start a new life but to try and predict what is going to happen in even two or three years time, given the volatility, it’s just very hard to predict.”
Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Wednesday announced Australia would make a one-off boost to its current 13,750 refugee and humanitarian intake by 12,000 permanent places over the rest of this financial year.
It will also provide $44 million for food, blankets and other support for about 240,000 people in UN and other camps.
Refugee advocate Paris Aristotle told the meeting the government’s decision was “an incredibly powerful humanitarian gesture”.
“It’s an extraordinary thing to think that there will be 12,000 people whose lives will be literally saved from a miserable set of circumstances that are not of their making,” he said.
But with the need so great, the UNHCR continues to call for public donations to fill the gap in funding, and charities such as CARE Australia also have appeals to help the Syrian refugees.
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