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Faculty Mentor

Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth

Abstract

From the Refugee Act of 1980 to the present, the President has had the power to create a refugee ceiling, capping the admittance of refugees into the United States. The differential impact that Republican control of the legislative and/or the executive branches has on the admission of refugees into the United States is explored in this paper. Focusing on the refugee system, I examine Presidential political parties along with those of the House of Representatives over the course of 1986 to 2019 to determine if there is a correlation between party ideologies and refugee admission caps. Analyzing data from the United States House of Representatives, the Department of Homeland Security Immigration reports, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, and the Migration Policy Institute from the years 1986 to 2019, allows multivariate regression analysis of sex, region of origin, and political party of political elites to be examined to see if these factors play a significant role in the refugee admission process. My research shows that individualized factors play a role, along with political party and the region of origin play significant roles in determining refugee admittance. Most of the literature regarding refugees is embedded in immigration research. Refugee literature suffers from the challenges of disaggregating the data from standard immigration statistics and is limited in scope due to the nature of the topic. Data is pulled from immigration research in addition to what data does exist for refugee admission in the United States. Miller, Holmes, and Keith (2020) argue that presidential preferences affect refugee admissions and contribute to their findings by examining individual factors of those admitted, rather than the more politicized factors.

Publication Date

4-2023

Document Type

Book

Keywords

Refugees, Republicans, party ideology, President of the United States, United States House of Representatives, Department of Homeland Security Immigration reports, Office of Refugee Resettlement, Migration Policy Institute, Transformations

Disciplines

Economics

Treated like Aliens: An analysis of Refugee Admissions into the United States by Preferences

Included in

Economics Commons

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