The large-scale international migrations of the past decade are of increasing relevance to the formulation of foreign policy. The nature of such migrations has undergone dramatic transformations from those of the quite recent past, and the last five years have seen a series of migration “crises” with powerful foreign-policy implications. Foreign policies have had dramatic effects upon international migration trends. Usually these effects have been unintended and unanticipated, though mass migration has sometimes been employed as a tool of foreign policy. At the same time, international migration has had significant impact upon the formulation and content of foreign policy, especially in the United States. These relationships now present complex policy choices, involving deeply entwined concerns of foreign, domestic, and humanitarian complexion. There are important lessons to be learned from recent experiences, lessons that challenge longstanding perspectives. Indeed, real peril now .
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Journal of Migration History
After the Second World War, liberal reformers in the US Congress pushed refugee legislation and included refugee provisions in their immigration reform bills. Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower were among those who urged Congress to enact refugee legislation. Without a statutory pathway for persons entering as refugees or asylees to become lawful permanent residents (lprs), refugee admissions were reactive. Some presidents would draw on other executive authorities to bring refugees into the United States, relying on Congress to subsequently enact laws providing lpr status. In other instances, Congress would enact refugee legislation aimed at specific populations and limited numbers. As a result, refugee policy was handled in a piecemeal and incremental fashion during this period. It is within this context that this article explores the nexus of refugee and labour migration policies and the role the nativist right-wing political leaders played in shaping US policy in this period.
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Refugee Survey Quarterly
Refugee policy is traditionally understood through the lenses of humanitarianism, international law, national security, and – less often – foreign policy. These first three lenses are insufficient to explain recent US refugee resettlement policy, particularly Iraqi and Afghan refugees. Between 2001 and 2016, the US resettled 143,650 Iraqis but only resettled 29,688 Afghans. Considering that the US military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan had similar goals of statebuilding and stabilisation – why did the US resettle so many Iraqis and relatively few Afghans? This article finds that US refugee policy is often used as a foreign policy tool to pursue strategic interests within the politics of neighbours. I develop the politics of neighbours as a framework for analysing refugee policy using three factors: 1) the origin of displacement, 2) intra-regional dynamics, and 3) US strategic interests in neighbours. The US chose to resettle four times more Iraqi refugees than Afghans after American presidents and Congress expressed responsibility for the Iraqi refugee crisis, the region’s historical experience with Palestinian refugees, and US interests in isolating Iran. Fundamentally, it is not American relationships with refugee-producing countries, but rather their neighbours – the refugee-receiving countries – that determines how the US prioritizes refugee resettlement.
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