The US Refugee Resettlement Program — A Return to First Principles: How Refugees Help to Define, Strengthen, and Revitalize the United States

Kerwin, Donald

doi:10.1177/2331502418787787

Cited by 51 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Prior to the pandemic, the Trump administration set the lowest ceiling for US refugee admissions in the program's 40-year history. Since then, the administration has virtually shut down the program, despite the immense achievements and contributions of refugees to the country (Kerwin 2018). Table 3 shows that 70 percent of persons that entered the United States as refugees 7 are essential workers.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

US Foreign-Born Workers in the Global Pandemic: Essential and Marginalized

Kerwin¹,

Warren

2020

Journal on Migration and Human Security

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Executive Summary This article provides detailed estimates of foreign-born (immigrant) workers in the United States who are employed in “essential critical infrastructure” sectors, as defined by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (DHS 2020). Building on earlier work by the Center for Migration Studies (CMS), the article offers exhaustive estimates on essential workers on a national level, by state, for large metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), and for smaller communities that heavily rely on immigrant labor. It also reports on these workers by job sector; immigration status; eligibility for tax rebates under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act); and other characteristics. It finds that: Sixty-nine percent of all immigrants in the US labor force and 74 percent of undocumented workers are essential workers, compared to 65 percent of the native-born labor force. Seventy percent of refugees and 78 percent of Black refugees are essential workers. In all but eight US states, the foreign-born share of the essential workforce equals or exceeds that of all foreign-born workers, indicating that immigrant essential workers are disproportionately represented in the labor force. The percentage of undocumented essential workers exceeds that of native-born essential workers by nine percentage points in the 15 states with the largest labor force. In the ten largest MSAs, the percentages of undocumented and naturalized essential workers exceed the percentage of native-born essential workers by 12 and 6 percent, respectively. A total of 6.2 million essential workers are not eligible for relief payments under the CARES Act, as well as large numbers of their 3.8 million US citizen children (younger than age 17), including 1.2 million US citizen children living in households below the poverty level. The foreign-born comprise 33 percent of health care workers in New York State, 32 percent in California, 31 percent in New Jersey, 28 percent in Florida, 25 percent in Nevada and Maryland, 24 percent in Hawaii, 23 percent in Massachusetts, and 19 percent in Texas. Section I of the article describes the central policy paradox for foreign-born workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: that they are “essential” at very high rates, but many lack status and they have been marginalized by US immigration and COVID-19-related policies. Section II sets forth the article’s main findings. Section III outlines major policy recommendations.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

US Foreign-Born Workers in the Global Pandemic: Essential and Marginalized

Kerwin¹,

Warren

2020

Journal on Migration and Human Security

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“…Humankind cannot afford to lose the potential of what refugee children have to offer socially and economically, in the future and also in the present. If current economic trends persist, these children are on course to become stable economic as well as social contributors to their new countries (Hugo 2014;Kerwin 2018). Repositioning refugee children away from the margins is vital for the well-being of the world as well as for the well-being of refugee children.…”

Section: Conclusion: Repositioning Refugee Children In the Protectiomentioning

confidence: 99%

The Rights of Refugee Children and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Lawrence

Dodds

Kaplan

et al. 2019

Laws

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Refugee children are identified as rights-bearers by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), but their rights are not uniformly honored in the policies and practices of contemporary states. How the CRC's safeguards for refugee children's rights are honored depends partly on what it means to be 'a refugee child' and partly on how the claims of refugee children's rights are recognized, respected, and implemented in international and national legal and bureaucratic systems. We examine the CRC's affirmation of the rights of the child and analyze the CRC's articles in relation to the rights related to the life circumstances of refugee children and state responsibilities. Following an analysis of resistance to the CRC's mandates by contemporary states, we relate refugee children's rights to their refugee and developmental experiences and argue for repositioning refugee children into the center of protection dialogue and practice, internationally and nationally.interpret as a current refugee crisis and populist politics, contemporary states favor national well-being and border security over the well-being of refugee children. We examine evidence that states have worked to relegate refugee children to the margins of protection discourse and to the margins of society. There are persistent tendencies to either overlook refugee children as invisible or to deny that they are children or refugees. We argue for a radical repositioning of refugee children into the center of the protection dialogue and into the center of state policy and practice. Only such a central position will give refugee children the due respect that is responsive to the intermingling of their refugee and developmental experiences and support their rights to develop fully in the present and future as envisaged in the CRC Preamble. 2 Identifying a Refugee ChildThe concepts of 'child' and 'refugee' are not consistently defined across disciplines, although both concepts are critical structural markers for positioning this doubly vulnerable group as children distinct from adults and refugees distinct from citizens. How refugee children's rights are recognized and enacted in legal and immigration systems is largely dependent on how refugee children are defined as being children and refugees. A ChildThere is no generic or typical child. Children differ from each other in many ways, including the defining characteristic of being a child distinct from an adult. The adult/child distinction may seem simple-children and adults are distinguished by age, where age is a rough marker of different periods of the life cycle. The simplicity of this distinction, however, is deceptive. Age-lines and the boundaries of life periods are moveable and vary within and across individuals in relation to personal experience and the sociocultural context. Each child is bodily embedded in a specific historical and cultural time and place that give her age meaning. Consider, for instance, a girl who is 12 years of age in the early 19th, 20th, or 21st century. Not ...

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“…Yet families are too often overlooked in state immigration laws and policies. Many states, for example, rely heavily on immigrant workers, but do not allow their families to join them: they want workers, but not the people that come with them (Kerwin 2013).…”

Section: Families and The Migration Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In these circumstances, families seek protection wherever they can find it. However, they face many barriersdeterrence strategies, interception programs, detention, the criminal prosecution of asylum seekers, and the deliberate separation of parents from their children Kerwin 2018). These practices violate human rights and constitute a form of responsibility shunning, not sharing.…”

Section: Families and The Migration Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

2018 International Migration Policy Report: Perspectives on the Content and Implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration

2018

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The report also includes shorter essays from special contributors to CMS addressing other important topics addressed by the member states during the negotiations of the Compact. The appendix features a sampling of interventions made by the Scalabrini International Migration Network (SIMN) and CMS during the negotiation process. In his paper, "Return Migration: A Conceptual and Policy Framework," Graziano Battistella, c.s., executive director of SMC in Quezon City, Philippines, tackles the controversial issue of return migration, ranging from voluntary to forced returns. The author proposes a conceptual framework to accommodate four categories of returns: (1) return of achievement; (2) return of completion; (3) return of setback; and (4) return of crisis (forced return). These models could be adopted by UN member states, but each category would require a different policy framework. Sergio Carciotto, executive director of SIMHA in Cape Town, South Africa, addresses the issue of labor migration in his paper, "The Regularization of Zimbabwean Migrants: A Case of Permanent Temporariness." The author, using the example of Zimbabwean laborers in South Africa, makes the case that migrant workers should be eligible for permanent residence after a certain length of time working in a host nation, as they have contributed to the host nation's economy and culture. Permanent residence would also ensure that workers can market their skills and fully contribute to their new country, while also being protected from workplace abuse and exploitation.

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The US Refugee Resettlement Program — A Return to First Principles: How Refugees Help to Define, Strengthen, and Revitalize the United States

Cited by 51 publications

References 18 publications

US Foreign-Born Workers in the Global Pandemic: Essential and Marginalized

US Foreign-Born Workers in the Global Pandemic: Essential and Marginalized

The Rights of Refugee Children and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

2018 International Migration Policy Report: Perspectives on the Content and Implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration

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