Refugees In The United States Research Articles

"I Need to Keep Me and My Mother Safe": The Asylum Crisis at the US-Mexico Border.

In Tijuana, Mexico, 16-year-old Joaquin, a refugee from El Salvador where LGBTQ people are persecuted, was hoping for asylum in the United States based on sexual orientation. But as a volunteer physician in Tijuana, I had learned hard lessons about the asylum process-or lack thereof-at the US-Mexico border. In 2020, there was a list of over 15,000 asylum seekers at the border in Tijuana seeking a chance at a new life in the United States, but few requests were granted. The lack of transparency about the realities of this system left thousands of families stranded in Mexico without basic rights such as health care. Health care professionals should be aware of the ongoing asylum crisis and be an active faction in the fight for its reform.

The Labour Market Effects of Venezuelan Refugee Crisis in the United States*

AbstractThis article examines the characteristics, location choice and labour market impacts of the recent inflow of Venezuelan refugees in the United States. A few interesting findings emerge from analysing the data. Unlike previous US immigration experience in the 1980s, the flow of recent Venezuelan refugees into the United States is characterized by an inflow of highly educated individuals with a college education. The finding of the analysis also suggests that the location choice of these refugees within the United States is not mainly driven by labour market conditions in the destination cities. Rather, distance to home country and climatic difference with Venezuela are the main factors in determining the flow of Venezuelan refugees into a particular US city. Consistent with this finding, most Venezuelan refugees choose to settle only in two cities in Florida: Miami and Orlando. Examining the labour market conditions in Miami and Orlando following the flow of Venezuelan refugees, the results of the analysis show a lack of evidence that the labour force participation, unemployment rate and weekly wages of US natives are adversely affected by the inflow.

Misrepresented Insecurities: An Annotated Interview about Displacement and Resistance of Central America’s “Eternos Indocumentados”

Central Americans are widely misrepresented in United States mainstream media as one-dimensional peoples always associated with insecurities. In a powerful counter-representation, Director Jennifer A. Cárcamo released her documentary, Eternos Indocumentados: Central American Refugees in the United States in 2018.1 The film lays bare the root causes of forced migration, criminalization, displacement, and multiple insecurities while highlighting stories of resistance in the isthmus and the United States. This article uses an annotated interview format based on an iterative process to analyze the film’s key themes as they inform and are informed by the growing scholarly field of Central American Studies. We call for critical analysis of Central America and its people within broader processes of neoliberalism and global capitalism to better contextualize insecurities and allow for more complex and accurate representations of Central American realities.

The Role of Stable Security in Resettled Refugees’ Sense of Wellbeing

We examine resettled refugees’ construction of wellbeing using semi-structured interviews of Somali, Hmong, and Middle Eastern refugees in the United States and Canada. Resettled refugees’ descriptions of wellbeing center ‘stable security,’ an enduring sense of being secure in the world and in oneself. Stable security encompasses physical, psychological, and social experiences that, together, contribute to a sustained sense of being secure. The participants also described a set of strategies to enhance stable security. We contribute to current theoretical wellbeing conceptions, provide important insights into the dynamic nature of wellbeing and elucidate the pathways identified by refugees to achieve stable security.

Managing the Humanitarian Workplace: Capitalist Social Time and Iraqi Refugees in the United States

AbstractThis paper offers an ethnographic account of tensions around time that arose at a small nonprofit offering employment‐assistance programs for newly arrived Iraqi refugees in a large American city. Iraqi refugees have been subjected to multiple interventions, each of which put them on a strict timeline for results. Their experience gives rise to critical insights into the abstract, managerial representations of time that coordinate each of these successive programs. Staff responded to these concerns by attempting to correct clients’ expectations about the future, but this effort remained bound to the same temporal standard and therefore produced further frustrations on the part of clients. Meanwhile, the one employee who attempted to implement an alternative project ended up being disciplined by her employer for misusing time on the job. Tracing this dynamic of tension, conflict, and reconfiguration across multiple standpoints, the paper demonstrates how humanitarian work unfolds through the same contradictions between abstract and concrete forms of time that characterizes commodity‐directed labor under the capitalist mode of production as a whole. This finding complicates theoretical models of political subjectivity that have hitherto informed anthropological critiques of humanitarianism and points to abstract social time as a specifically capitalist mechanism of power at work.

Resettlement Experiences of Syrian Refugees in the United States: Policy Challenges and Directions

Resettlement Experiences of Syrian Refugees in the United States: Policy Challenges and Directions

Consistency in Healthcare Services and Outcomes for Refugees in the United States: Barriers and Potential Solutions

Consistency in Healthcare Services and Outcomes for Refugees in the United States: Barriers and Potential Solutions

Health of Asylees Compared to Refugees in the United States Using Domestic Medical Examination Data, 2014-2016: A Cross-Sectional Analysis.

Between 2008 and 2018, persons granted asylum (asylees) increased by 168% in the United States. Asylees are eligible for many of the same domestic benefits as refugees under the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), including health-related benefits such as the domestic medical examination. However, little is known about the health of asylees to guide clinical practice. We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional analysis of domestic medical examination data from 9 US sites from 2014 to 2016. We describe and compare demographics and prevalence of several infectious diseases such as latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI), hepatitis B and C virus (HBV, HCV), and select sexually transmitted infections and parasites by refugee or asylee visa status. The leading nationalities for all asylees were China (24%) and Iraq (10%), while the leading nationalities for refugees were Burma (24%) and Iraq (19 %). Approximately 15% of asylees were diagnosed with LTBI, and 52% of asylee adults were susceptible to HBV infection. Prevalence of LTBI (prevalence ratio [PR] = 0.8), hepatitis B (0.7), hepatitis C (0.5), and Strongyloides (0.5) infections were significantly lower among asylees than refugees. Prevalence of other reported conditions did not differ by visa status. Compared to refugees, asylees included in our dataset were less likely to be infected with some infectious diseases but had similar prevalence of other reported conditions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Guidance for the US Domestic Medical Examination for Newly Arrived Refugees can also assist clinicians in the care of asylees during the routine domestic medical examination.

Intersectional Invisibility: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the Erasure of Sexual Minority Women in US Asylum Law

Advocates have long observed that sexual minority women are treated less favorably than sexual minority men under US asylum law. However, there has been little empirical examination of these claims in a US context. We offer the first systematic comparative empirical analysis of 199 asylum decisions for cisgender sexual minorities. Using quantitative metrics to contextualize in-depth qualitative analysis, we show that even when cisgender sexual minority men and women face very similar types of violence, women’s claims are adjudicated differently. This is particularly stark in courts’ treatment of sexual violence but is also evident in determinations of generalized persecution and individuals’ sexualities. When women attempt to use laws that are structured around straight, white, Western male perspectives and experiences, their pathways are limited and sometimes nonexistent. Although the flexibility in this area of asylum law has allowed many types of new claims, these changes have mostly benefited those assigned male at birth, and this surface malleability has ultimately worked to maintain law as a regulatory structure. Even with seemingly progressive changes in asylum law, the law itself continues to uphold race, gender, and sexuality as durable social structures and does little to ameliorate inequalities along these axes of social difference.

Patterns of torture among forcibly displaced Eritrean men in California: A cross-sectional study.

This study was conducted to address a lack of information in the literature regarding the frequency and consequences of specific types of torture and abuse among Eritreans seeking asylum in the United States. Cross-sectional study of Eritreans seeking asylum in the United States presenting to a human rights clinic for forensic medical and psychological evaluations based on Istanbul Protocol. Reports were eligible for inclusion if subjects: 1) immigrated from Eritrea 2) reported torture and abuse in Eritrea, 3) were 18 or older. 59 reports met inclusion criteria. Demographic features of individuals, reported history and specific types of torture, and physical and psychological sequelae were analyzed. Over 300 instances of torture were reported, an average of about 6 per person. The primary forms of torture reported were beating (87.7%) and forced positioning (57.9%). 90% of asylum seekers examined had physical findings which were consistent with the torture they reported, some of which had clinical as well as forensic significance. 86% of asylum seekers met diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder. Eritreans seeking asylum in the United States bear a high burden of post-traumatic physical and psychological morbidity.

Severe post-traumatic disorder leading to failure of passing asylum interview\u2014a case report

BackgroundAsylum applicants can benefit from psychiatric evaluation which can explain how culture and mental health symptoms relate to perceived deficits in credibility.Case presentationMs. B presented for psychiatric evaluation, seeking asylum in the USA after multiple threats on her life in Honduras. At initial evaluation, she was diagnosed with depression. On reevaluation, she was found to have panic attacks and post-traumatic stress disorder. Recommendations included an anxiolytic medication and the use of pre-written statements upon interview. However, Ms. B was sent back to her country of origin despite her severe mental symptoms.ConclusionPost-traumatic disorder scales should be used by mental health professionals especially with patients who are not forthcoming about past trauma history to avoid missing this diagnosis. There is a need to inform immigration officials and lawyers about the necessity of accommodating clients’ needs to appropriately present themselves in asylum interviews.

Rent seeking for madness: the political economy of mental asylums in the United States, 1870 to 1910

From the end of the Civil War to the onset of the Great War, the United States experienced an unprecedented increase in commitment rates for mental asylums. Historians and sociologists often explain this increase by noting that public sentiment called for widespread involuntary institutionalization to avoid the supposed threat of insanity to social well-being. However, that explanation neglects expanding rent seeking within psychiatry and the broader medical field over the same period. In this paper, we argue that stronger political influence from mental healthcare providers contributed significantly to the rise in institutionalization. We test our claim empirically with reference to the catalog of medical regulations from 1870 to 1910, as well as primary sources documenting rates of insanity at the state level. Our findings provide an alternative explanation for the historical rise in US institutionalizations.

Intercultural Communication, the Influence of Trauma, and the Pursuit of Asylum in the United States

This project analyzes the roles of communication and culture in credible fear interviews and asylum hearings in the United States to elucidate how autobiographical testimonies enable and restrain asylum seekers in their efforts to establish themselves as deserving of protection. This work shows how trauma influences one’s ability to narrate their past and argues that culturally-bound storytelling norms negatively and unevenly threaten the outcomes of some asylum cases. I support this claim with evidence from oral history interviews with asylum seekers, immigration officers, judges, and attorneys.

Anne C. Schenderlein. Germany on Their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988. New York: Berghahn, 2020. 254 pp.

Anne C. Schenderlein. Germany on Their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988. New York: Berghahn, 2020. 254 pp.

Germany on Their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988 by Anne C. Schenderlein

Germany on Their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988 by Anne C. Schenderlein

From towers to walls: Trump’s border wall as entrepreneurial performance

The pledge to build a “great”, “beautiful” southern border wall was a cornerstone of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign. This paper analyzes Trump’s border wall project as an example of performative statecraft, suggesting that the wall works better rhetorically, than as a barrier against unauthorized cross-border movement. Identifying Trump’s performative statecraft as “entrepreneurial”, we argue that his border wall discourse differs from that of earlier presidents in the way Trump meshes the performance of the border wall as a protective device with his own performance as an entrepreneur and developer. Trump’s border wall discourse accentuates his personal skills as an entrepreneur, and makes these skills relevant to his key campaign promises: to “Make America Great Again”, and defend the nation against transnational crime. Despite Trump’s radical reformulation of US asylum policy, enhanced pursuit of unauthorized immigrants, termination of Obama-era programs like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and disturbing but short-lived family separation and ‘Zero-Tolerance’ detention scheme, the border security policies of President Trump are not as novel as his promotional campaigns would have us believe. In fact, Trump’s border control strategies have continued many of the measures introduced by earlier presidents. The novelty of the Trump presidency lies in the strong focus on the new US–Mexico border wall, and fervent attention to the physical attributes and instrumental functions of the wall. Much more than a fence, Trump’s proposed border wall is a grand, awe-inspiring monument to national security, and to Trump’s entrepreneurial statecraft. It also works as a visual aide for Trump’s plan to “Make America Great Again”. Border walls stand as testimony to the power of the state, and the determination of those who defend it. Trump’s border wall would be no exception.

Associations between memory loss and trauma in US asylum seekers: A retrospective review of medico-legal affidavits.

BackgroundThe U.S. immigration system mandates that persons seeking asylum prove their persecution claim is credible and their fear of returning home is well-founded. However, this population represents a highly trauma-exposed group, with neuropsychiatric symptoms consequent to prior torture or maltreatment that may interfere with cognitive function and their ability to recall their trauma. These memory lapses may be incorrectly perceived by asylum adjudicators as indicators of dishonesty and jeopardize the person’s credibility and asylum claim. Our retrospective mixed methods study seeks to present associations between trauma and memory loss in a sample of persons seeking asylum to the U.S. and describe how memory impairments manifest in this trauma-exposed population.MethodsWe randomly selected 200 medico-legal affidavits from 1346 affidavits collected in the past 30 years, as part of the Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Network connecting clinicians with legal providers for medical and/or psychiatric affidavits of U.S. asylum seekers and persons seeking other forms of humanitarian relief (hereafter, “asylum seekers”). Data was extracted from these affidavits using a coding manual informed by the Istanbul Protocol, the global standard for torture documentation. Seven affidavits were excluded due to missing age. We used multiple logistic regression to assess the association of memory loss with neuropsychiatric diagnoses: head trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and depression. We supplemented these findings with a qualitative content analysis of the affidavits documenting memory loss. Memory loss presented among the asylum seekers’ affidavits in several ways: memory gaps of the traumatic event; challenges with presenting a clear chronology of the trauma, avoidance of traumatic memories, and persistent short-term memory loss interfering with daily activity.ResultsA majority of the sample received a neuropsychiatric diagnosis: 69% (n = 132) of asylum-seekers received a diagnosis of PTSD and 55% (n = 106) of depression. Head trauma was reported among 30% (n = 58) of affidavits. Further, 68% (n = 131) reported being subject to physical violence and 20% (n = 39) were documented as being at risk of suicide. Memory loss was documented among 21% (n = 40) asylum-seekers. In adjusted models, both PTSD and depression, but not head trauma, were associated with memory loss (p<0.05).ConclusionStakeholders in the asylum process, spanning the medical, legal and immigration enforcement sectors, must be aware of the interplay of trauma and memory loss and how they might impact immigration proceedings for this vulnerable population.

About the Contributors

About the Contributors

Ask a Feminist: Deborah Anker Discusses Gender and Asylum Law

AbstractHow has feminism shaped US asylum law? Why and how is the Trump administration trying to undo feminist gains? In this episode of Ask a Feminist, asylum- and refugee-law expert Deborah Anker...

“What does a torture survivor look like?” Nonverbal communication in US asylum interviews and hearings

ABSTRACT This paper draws on asylum court hearing observations and oral history interviews with asylum seekers and governmental personnel to examine the impact of nonverbal communication and displays of emotion in asylum interviews and hearings in the United States. The narrators describe why nonverbal communication plays such a central role in the asylum process and, building on theoretical foundations from communication studies, the paper offers an in-depth illustration of the ways eye contact and movement in particular influence the interpretations of asylum seekers’ claims for protection.