Canada Leads World in Refugee Resettlement

By Wilson Chapman, Contributor

The U.N. figures mark the first time since 1980 that the U.S. was not the leading country in welcoming refugees.

Syrian Ibrahim Darwish, facing the camera, is shown reuniting with members of his family after arriving in Toronto, Canada, on Aug. 29, 2018

Canada resettled more refugees than any other country in 2018, marking the first time in nearly 40 years that the United States has not been at the forefront of resettlement, an analysis of U.N. data shows. The analysis by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, produced from a new report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, shows that Canada resettled 28,000 refugees in 2018, compared to the U.S. resettling 23,000. The two North American countries were followed by Australia, which resettled 13,000 refugees, and the United Kingdom, which resettled 6,000.

The analysis comes at a time when the U.N.'s refugee agency says a record number of people around the world are displaced by violence and persecution, the highest figure since the end of World War II. In recent years public opinion in many wealthy host countries has shifted toward more restrictive immigration policies. Developing countries are now bearing the brunt of the world's refugee crisis, the U.N. says.

Canada's place at the top is largely attributable to the dramatic decrease of the number of refugees being accepted by the U.S, said Pew Center senior researcher Phillip Connor, who co-authored the study. Since 2016, when the U.S. resettled 97,000 refugees, the country has drastically reduced the number of refugees it annually accepts. In 2017, the country accepted 33,000 refugees, and reduced that number further by 10,000 this year.

Canada, by contrast, has remained relatively consistent with the number of refugees it has resettled, aside from an effort that started in 2015 to aid Syrian refugees that pushed up the number of refugees it accepted. From 2017 to 2018, Canada saw a marginal increase in the number of refugees it welcomed.

Historically, the U.S. has resettled more refugees than the rest of the world combined. After the passage of the Refugee Act in 1980, which established modern procedures for accepting refugees, the country led the world in refugee resettlement for almost four decades. Since the act's passage, the U.S resettled about 3 million refugees in total. Canada, which ranks second, took in about 658,000 refugees in the same time period.

2017 was the first year the U.S. accepted fewer refugees than all other countries combined, when the country took in 33,000 and the rest of the world took in 69,000. Connor said the decline in U.S. refugee resettlement coincides with President Trump's election, and his administration's decision to set a lower cap on the number of refugees taken into the country. In the United States, the president decides the number of refugees allowed into the country, and caps are set on the amount of refugees from each region.

In 2018, the United States cap on refugees taken in worldwide was 45,000, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service. Globally, refugee resettlement worldwide has declined since a peak of 189,000 in 2016. In 2017, 103,000 refugees were resettled, and in 2018, this number further decreased to 92,000. In spite of this, the world's total refugee population has continued to increase, and reached a record 24 million in 2018.

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