Immigration To The United States

"While religion has a unifying role in American public life, it also has had a divisive role. Before the 1960s, denominational affiliation, especially whether one was Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish, played a defining role in American public identities due to the history of American immigration and the relationship between religion and ethnicity (Herberg 1955). Sociologists have long been interested in the “social sources of denominationalism” and divisions in the American religious field, pointing especially to inequality based in race and class (Niebuhr 1929; Herberg 1955; Roof and McKinney 1987; Darnell and Sherkat 1997; Sherkat 2001; Park and Reimer 2002; Smith and Faris 2005). Although these divides of denominationalism in inequality remain today, the salient symbolic boundaries in the religious field are no longer between denominations as they long have been."

"In the United States, minority populations were never an indigestible mass—with the major exceptions of the one ethnic group that did not come here voluntarily (African Americans) and those who were here when Europeans arrived (American Indians). The rest all came, clustered and dispersed, and added new cultural layers to the general society. This has always been the strength of the United States."

"The first attempt to centralize control of immigration in general in the hands of the federal government came in 1864 with a law that authorized the president to appoint an immigration commissioner under the secretary of state. That law established provisions for contracts in which immigrants could be bound to use their wages to pay off the cost of their transportation to the United States. That law was repealed in 1868."

"The earliest decades of the new nation saw relatively little new immigration. During the 1780’s, while the nation was governed under the Articles of Confederation, the loosely joined states went through difficult economic times, and the future of the independent country seemed too insecure to encourage new immigration. However, even as the nation began settling into a more stable form after adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, immigration was still well below the levels it would later reach. Europe’s Napoleonic Wars, which lasted until 1815, and the War of 1812 between Great Britain and the United States made it difficult for emigrants to leave Europe. During the three-decade period between 1789—when the United States adopted its new Constitution and form of government— and 1820, fewer than 500,000 new immigrants arrived in the United States. During that same period, the same political conditions that made leaving European more difficult also motivated some Europeans to emigrate. For example, during the 1790’s, English radicals and Irish opposed to English rule fled their homelands to America. The Revolution in France brought new French arrivals at the end of the eighteenth century. Other French-speaking immigrants fled slave uprisings in Haiti and other West Indies colonies around the same time. These French-speaking newcomers settled mainly in coastal cities, notably in Charleston, New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, as well as in New Orleans, which became part of the United States in 1803 as a result of the Louisiana Purchase. The most numerous non-English-speaking immigrants in the United States at the time of independence were Germans. Germans also constituted one of the significant immigrant groups at the opening of the nineteenth century. Many of those Germans came from what is now the southwestern part of Germany, which was then a poor area. Bad German harvests in 1816-1817 set in motion a flood of emigration out of that region. Although many of the emigrants moved east, to Russia, about 20,000 people from southwestern Germany came to America to escape famine."

"Immigrants comprise almost 14 percent of the U.S. population, or more than 44 million people out of a total of about 327 million, according to the Census Bureau. Together, immigrants and their U.S.-born children make up about 28 percent of U.S. inhabitants. The figure represents a steady rise from 1970, when there were fewer than ten million immigrants in the United States. But there are proportionally fewer immigrants today than in 1890, when foreign-born residents comprised 15 percent of the population. Mexico is the most common country of origin for U.S. immigrants—constituting 25 percent of the immigrant population—but the proportion of immigrants from South and East Asia—who number about 27 percent—is on the rise."

"The report — “Freezing Out Justice: How Immigration Arrests at Courthouses Are Undermining the Justice System ” — found 67 percent of police officers surveyed reported that immigrants’ fear affected their ability to protect survivors of crime. Sixty-four percent indicated there was “an adverse impact on officer safety.”"

"Until the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the new federal government was content to leave control over immigration policy to the individual states. The first major federal law to deal specifically with immigration—and not naturalization— was the Steerage Act of 1819."

"“Prosecutors surveyed stated that in prior years, as cooperation between prosecutors and immigrant communities increased, survivors of crime were increasingly willing to come forward and assist law enforcement in prosecuting cases,” the ACLU report said. “However, over the past year, many categories of crimes have become more difficult to prosecute as a result of an increase in fear of immigration consequences.” The ACLU study found that 82 percent of prosecutors reported that since President Donald Trump got into the White House, “domestic violence is now underreported and harder to investigate and/or prosecute.” Similarly, 70 percent of prosecutors reported the same was true for sexual assault, and 55 percent indicated “the same difficulties for human trafficking and 48 percent for child abuse.”"

"Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists."

"If America doesn’t keep out the queer alien mongrelized people of Southern and Eastern Europe, her crop of citizens will eventually be dwarfed and mongrelized in turn."

"Congress created the U.S. Border Patrol in 1924 and the agency slowly grew in size as its mission changed. At first, the agents sought to keep out Asian immigrants and later worked to stall alcohol trafficking in the Prohibition era. Slowly, it evolved into stalling unwanted migration from Mexico."

"African immigration to North America dates back to the time of the first European arrivals. During the entire period of American colonial history, involuntary immigrants arrived as slaves from Africa, mainly West Africa. Between 1700 and 1775, an estimated 278,400 Africans reached the original thirteen colonies that became the United States. Slave importation to the coastal states of the South grew rapidly during the late seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century because of the growth of the tobacco and rice economies. Imports of slaves to tobacco-growing Virginia reached 7,000 per decade for the 1670’s through the 1720’s and then nearly doubled to 13,500 per decade until the 1750’s. South Carolina, where rice had become an important crop, began importing slaves at about the same level as Virginia during the early eighteenth century and then increased to more than 20,000 during the 1720’s. While slave importation began to slow in Virginia during the later eighteenth century, it continued at about 17,000 per decade in South Carolina from the 1750’s to the 1790’s. By the time of the first U.S. Census in 1790, as a result of involuntary immigration and the increase of native-born slaves, people of African ancestry made up one-fifth of the American population."

"Every man has a right to one country. He has a right to love and serve that country and to feel that it is absolutely his country and that he has in it every right possessed by anyone else. It is our duty to require the man of German blood who is an American citizen to give up all allegiance to Germany wholeheartedly and without on his part any mental reservation whatever. If he does this it becomes no less our duty to give him the full rights of an American, including our loyal respect and friendship without on our part any mental reservation whatever. The duties are reciprocal, and from the standpoint of American patriotism one is as important as the other."

"It is unwise to depart from the old American tradition and discriminate for or against any man who desires to come here and become a citizen, save on the ground of that man's fitness for citizenship. ... We can not afford to consider whether he is Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile; whether he is Englishman or Irishman, Frenchman or German, Japanese, Italian, or Scandinavian, or Magyar. What we should desire to find out is the individual quality of the individual man."

"Does the security environment affect immigration and border policies among advanced industrial states? The tragic events of September 11, 2001, made the connection between international migration and security quite clear: all 19 of the terrorists exploited loopholes in existing laws to infiltrate the United States. Less recognized is the fact that international migration has had significant implications for security long before 9/11-a process inherently linked to the multiple facets of security in an age of rapid globalization. Understanding the politics of international migration and border control policies not only is important in terms of national security and economic growth among advanced industrial countries but reveals changing conceptions of sovereignty and the role of the state in policy development."

"This is a disgrace. No child should go hungry in the United States of America. My first executive orders will be to reverse every single thing President Trump has done to demonize and harm immigrants."

"What he [Donald Trump] is doing and this is his entire political strategy is to divide the American people... you have a president who gives tax breaks to billionaires... wants to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security... tried to throw 32 million people off health care... gave 83 percent of the tax benefits to the top one percent... So how do you win... What do you say — You see those undocumented people, they are your enemy. 'Stand with me. Hate them. Let's divide this country up.'"

"Family separation is perhaps the most emblematic moment of his presidency thus far. It was cruel, sloppy, needless, racist, and ultimately exactly what we should have expected."

"The peopling of America considered as a means of relieving pressure of population in Europe. The two grand themes of American history are, properly, the influence of immigration upon American life and institutions, and the influence of the American environment upon the ever changing composite population. The first voyage of Columbus, an Italian, with a crew of Spaniards an Irishman, an Englishman, and an Israelite, prefigured the subsequent movement. Even the people of the thirteen English colonies were a mixture of racial breeds. While the religious motive has been stressed in the history of American colonization, the economic urge sent scores of thousands. Jamestown, the Penn Colony typical, not solitary. Desire to be rid of criminals and paupers accounts for other streams of emigration, perhaps to the extent of one-half the white emigrants during the larger part of the colonial period. Franklin deplored the arrival of Germans in Pennsylvania-“generally the most stupid of their own nation.”"

"Naureen Shah, Amnesty International USA's senior director of campaigns, said the initial guidance was "simply heartless," and showed "a cruel indifference to families, some already torn apart by war and horrifying levels of violence". She also called it a poor way to label families, noting: "It defines close family relationships in a way that ignores the reality in many cultures, where grandparents, cousins and in-laws are often extremely close.""

"More than 13,000 migrants looking for asylum protections are now waiting just across the border in Mexico, according to the most recent Department of Homeland Security statistics. So far, the ad-ministration’s efforts have largely failed to stem the flow of migrants. In May, more than 144,000 surged across the border, a majority of whom were from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. While arrests declined in June by 28 percent, officials estimate that by the end of the year, nearly a million migrants may have crossed the southwestern border, most of them hoping to stay permanently by claiming asylum. Under the new rule, migrants would still be allowed to apply for asylum at the southwestern border if they have proof that they applied and were denied the protections in at least one country they traveled through. Filippo Grandi, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, released a statement on Monday that he was “deeply concerned” by the new rule. “It will put vulnerable families at risk,” Mr. Grandi said. “It will undermine efforts by countries across the region to devise the coherent, collective responses that are needed.”"

"Few asylum claims are granted — the Trump administration says only 20 percent are, and immigration advocates say some 40 percent are — but both sides agree that immigrants who are ultimately denied asylum often defy deportation orders and stay in the United States illegally. Previous administrations did not make it a priority to find and deport them and instead focused on illegal immigrants who had committed serious crimes. But Mr. Trump and his immigration brain trust — led by Stephen Miller, the chief architect of his border policies — say such a loose policy lures people to the United States. They are determined to break it by any means necessary. “Folks are incentivized by the gaps in our legal framework to come to the United States right now,” Kevin McAleenan, the acting homeland security secretary, said recently in an interview. “That’s a group we don’t think should be coming, don’t think should be crossing unlawfully, don’t think should be in the hands of smugglers and enriching criminal organizations.” “That is a flow we think should stop,” he said."

"We study the effects of European immigration to the United States during the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1920) on economic prosperity today. We exploit variation in the extent of immigration across counties arising from the interaction of fluctuations in aggregate immigrant flows and the gradual expansion of the railway network across the United States. We find that locations with more historical immigration today have higher incomes, less poverty, less unemployment, higher rates of urbanization, and greater educational attainment. The long-run effects appear to arise from the persistence of sizeable short-run benefits, including greater industrialization, increased agricultural productivity, and more innovation."

"Soon after asking for asylum, migrants are usually interviewed by a trained asylum officer to determine whether they have a “credible fear” of persecution in their home country “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.” If the officer determines that there is a “significant possibility” that the migrants will be able to prove such persecution, a court date will be set for a final determination about whether they will be granted asylum. More than 75 percent of migrants pass the initial screening because of congressionally mandated rules that set a fairly low bar for approval to ensure that persecuted people have the opportunity to apply for refuge in the United States. Trump administration officials argue that the credible-fear screening should be far less generous."

"People seeking refuge in the United States must show that they have a “well-founded fear” of being persecuted if they were to return to their own country. That is often demonstrated through direct testimony about the situation they expect to face if they return home, as well as other evidence of the situation they faced before coming to the United States. Immigration judges typically deny 80 percent of the applications, weeding out fraudulent claims and ineligible applicants. When the process was devised, there was a fairly short period between the initial screening and an appearance in immigration court. But that has changed significantly, and a backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases has led to asylum seekers waiting years to appear in court."

"Since FY2004, Congress has appropriated funding to the Department of Homeland Security’s(DHS’s) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for an Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program to provide supervised release and enhanced monitoring for a subset of foreign nationals subject to removal whom ICE has released into the United States. These aliens are not statutorily mandated to be in DHS custody, are not considered threats to public safety or national security, and have been released either on bond, their own recognizance, or parole pending a decision on whether they should be removed from the United States. Congressional interest in ATD has increased in recent years due to a number of factors. One factor is that ICE does not have the capacity to detain all foreign nationals who are apprehended and subject to removal, a total that reached nearly 400,000 in FY2018. (ICE reported an average daily population of 48,006 aliens in detention for FY2019, through June 22, 2019.) Other factors include recent shifts in the countries of origin of apprehended foreign nationals, increased numbers of migrants who are traveling with family members, the large number of aliens requesting asylum, and the growing backlog of cases in the immigration court system."

"Congress did not move to impose federal controls over entry into the country until the second half of the nineteenth century. Several of the earliest federal immigration laws were directed against Chinese immigrants, who had begun arriving in the United States in significant numbers during the 1850’s."

"The year 1820 is the first year for which detailed immigration statistics for the United States are available, thanks to the Steerage Act of the previous year. During 1820, 8,385 immigrants arrived in the United States. Most, 43 percent, came from Ireland. The second-largest group, 29 percent, came from Great Britain. Hence, almost three-quarters of all immigrants who arrived in the United States during that year came from the British Isles alone. The next-largest groups came from the German states, France, and Canada. During the 1820’s, French immigrants moved ahead of Germans as the second-largest group after people from the British Isles. The second half of that decade also saw a steep rise in overall immigration, with the numbers of arrivals rising from slightly fewer than 8,000 in 1824 to more than 22,500 in 1829. People from Ireland, who already constituted the greatest single immigrant group during the 1820’s, were drawn to the United States by both continuing poverty in their original homeland and the growing demand for labor in America. For example, New York State’s Erie Canal, which was under construction from 1818 to 1825, drew heavily on immigrant Irish labor. That project began a long history of Irish immigrant labor helping to build the American transportation infrastructure. The rapid commercial success of the Erie Canal stimulated the building of more canals in other parts of the country, increasing the need for immigrant labor."

"Without immigration, our population would begin to decline in 2037, according to United Nations projections. Even continuing to admit a million legal immigrants a year would leave our population flatlining within half a century. Maintaining our historical population growth rate of 1 percent would suggest admitting nearly four million individuals a year. While that may be more than today’s politics can withstand, we should care about keeping the number of Americans growing at a reasonable rate. Immigration is our defense against the challenges of an aging society. Fewer workers supporting more retirees makes it harder to adequately fund Social Security and Medicare. Given that unemployment is at 3.7 percent, near the all-time low, no one can sensibly argue that these additions to the labor force would cost Americans jobs. Increasing legal pathways would also help reduce the illegal labor that endangers migrants and undercuts American workers. Moreover, reshaping our immigration policies to prioritize skills that are in particularly short supply would be a win-win. At present, only 27 percent of green card recipients are chosen for their skills. And we still don’t automatically provide green cards to non-Americans who graduate from our universities. That is insane."

"Superman, a native of the fictional planet of “Krypton,” landed on Earth as an infant and some suggest that he would therefore be eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, DACA. President Trump recently announced that he would end the program, though he called on Congress to provide a new path for DACA holders."

"Both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama sent National Guard troops to the border when they were in the White House. And throughout the history of the borderlands, the military or armed militias have been dispatched there to keep black slaves from fleeing, remove Native Americans from ancestral lands and suppress Mexican-American revolts stemming from anger over white mob violence."

"“The new regulations aim to end asylum, but the harm does not stop there,” said Archi Pyati, Tahirih Chief of Policy and Communications. “This is part of a targeted attack on immigrant communities and a culmination of racist and xenophobic policies that have built an invisible wall at our borders and sown divisions among us. They have undermined our nation’s obligations to the international community and stripped us of the oneness of our humanity.”"

"The average temperature in June in El Paso is 98 degrees. In July, it's 97. In August, it's 94. And "temporary" in this context, and with this crowd running things, has developed a very flexible new definition. Of course, if the kids are still in the tents in November, things will have cooled to an average of 66. The great outdoors! Anyway, because this is America, where the enterprise is always free, and because this is 2019, almost a decade after the Supreme Court legalized influence-peddling, our politicians are free to take money from those who make money off facilities like these, because that's what keeps us free. [...] There's the usual yadda-yadda from spokesfolk about how this is really about constituent service; Cuellar's mouthpiece argues that there are so many prisons in Cuellar's district, that Cuellar's getting correction-industry money is like, say, Jay Inslee getting money from yacht manufacturers. [...] There is a historic exercise in human misery being undertaken by the United States government in South Texas right now, and if you take money from people making a pile out of that misery, you're complicit. Sorry, but that's the iron logic of atrocities."

"We have to send a clear message that just because your child gets across the border that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey."

"The most significant groups of European immigrants to the colonies of North America before the revolution came from the northern lands of Holland, Germany, and Sweden. The Dutch attempted to found their first colony during the late 1620’s, when Dutch trading interests established the colony of New Netherland, with New Amsterdam as its capital. During the mid-seventeenth century, officials in Holland began actively encouraging migration to their colony, so that the population of New Netherland grew from about 2,000 people in 1648 to about 10,000 in 1660. Only about half of these were actually Dutch, though, and the rest consisted mainly of Belgians. In 1664, the British seized New Netherland and changed its name to New York. People with Dutch names and ancestry continued to make up a small but important part of the New York population, particularly among the elite of the area."

"Last week, we were chatting here in the shebeen about a remarkable woman named , a British social worker and radical who took upon herself the job of informing the British people and the world of the atrocities the Empire was committing in its South African concentration camps during the Second Boer War. The parallels to the news of the day seemed obvious. It is important now to realize that the camps that so horrified Hobhouse consisted of women and children living in tents. So imagine my non-surprise to discover that, as a solution to the bad publicity it was getting for housing migrant children in terrible conditions, the administration* decided to move some of the kids out of some of the worst conditions and off to another site to live...in tents!."

"Perhaps the most important component of the growth in the working-age population over the next two decades will be the arrival of future immigrants. The number of working-age immigrants is projected to increase from 33.9 million in 2015 to 38.5 million by 2035, with new immigrant arrivals accounting for all of that gain. (The number of current immigrants of working age is projected to decline as some will turn 65, while others are projected to leave the country or die.) Without these new arrivals, the number of immigrants of working age would decline by 17.6 million by 2035, as would the total projected U.S. working-age population, which would fall to 165.6 million."

"We’ve got to do several things, and I am, adamantly against illegal immigrants. We’ve got to do more at our borders and people need to stop employing illegal immigrants."

"[T]hese old time immigrants are not standing up enough for the newer immigrants—the Latino people who have been coming across the Mexican border and others."

"What we know from criminological research evidence is that first-generation immigrants are less involved in crime than non-immigrant US citizens. And while fewer studies have focused specifically on unauthorized immigrants, the evidence from those studies reveals a similar pattern: unauthorized immigrants are less involved in crime — including violence — than native-born US citizens. Given this evidence, it is unlikely that exclusionary immigration policies will produce any ameliorative effect on rates of crime. Unfortunately, in wake of tragedies like the Athens case, many people are simply not interested in evidence-based conclusions."

"All Americans… are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens and legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more, by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, . . .[and] by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. …We will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens arrested for crimes. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws."

"People from the north of England, Scotland, and northern Ireland made up much of the migration to the western frontier regions of the early American colonies, especially to the rugged mountainous areas. The northern Irish migrants were mainly Scotch-Irish, descendants of people from Scotland who had moved to Ireland in earlier centuries. Most of the Irish in America before the nineteenth century were actually Scotch-Irish. Northern Irish migration peaked between the 1750’s and the early 1770’s, with an estimated 14,200 people from northern Ireland reaching America from 1750 to 1759, 21,200 from 1760 to 1769, and 13,200 in the half-decade leading up to the American Revolution. Most of the Scots migration took place from 1760 to 1775, when about 25,000 new arrivals came to the colonies. The counties of North England, bordering Scotland, experienced a series of crop failures that were especially severe in 1727, 1740, and 1770. Each of these crop failures resulted in famine that sent successive waves of immigrants to America. Together, the Scottish, Scotch-Irish, and North English immigrants probably made up 90 percent of the settlers in the back country of America. Arriving after the lands along the eastern coast had been taken, these hardy individuals made up the original American frontier folk."

"Swedes arrived on the northeastern coast in 1637 and founded a colony on Delaware Bay in 1638. Peter Minuit, a former director-general of the Dutch colony of New Netherland who had been born in the German state of Westphalia, led this initial Swedish settlement. New Sweden included areas of the modern states of New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware along the Delaware River. Tensions with New Netherland led to a Dutch takeover of New Sweden in 1654, but the Dutch continued to recognize the colony as a selfgoverning settlement of Swedes. In 1681, following the British takeover of all the northeastern lands, William Penn received a charter for Pennsylvania, ending the distinctly Swedish identity of the region."

"[U]naccompanied minors are usually kept in shelters, where immigration attorneys can find them and try and help them. But by citing public health concerns, the government’s instead been quietly keeping kids in hotels supervised by private contractors. And the rare glimpses that we’ve gotten of this have been absolutely chilling."

"Before implementation of the Zero Tolerance Policy, when CBP apprehended an alien family unit attempting to enter the United States illegally, it usually placed the adult in civil immigration proceedings without referring him or her for criminal prosecution. CBP only separated apprehended parents from children in limited circumstances — e.g., if the adult had a criminal history or outstanding warrant, or if CBP could not determine whether the adult was the child’s parent or legal guardian. Accordingly, in most instances, family units either remained together in family detention centers operated by ICE while their civil immigration cases were pending, or they were released into the United States with an order to appear in immigration court at a later date. The Zero Tolerance Policy, however, fundamentally changed DHS’ approach to immigration enforcement. In early May 2018, DHS determined that the policy would cover alien adults arriving illegally in the United States with minor children. Because minor children cannot be held in criminal custody with an adult, alien adults who entered the United States illegally would have to be separated from any accompanying minor children when the adults were referred for criminal prosecution. The children, who DHS then deemed to be unaccompanied alien children, were held in DHS custody until they could be transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for the long-term custodial care and placement of unaccompanied alien children."

"“These regulations are the final nail in the coffin of ever-increasing barriers to access asylum. If enacted, the rule would treat asylum seekers as nothing more than a nuisance unworthy of consideration or care,” said Richard Caldarone, Tahirih Litigation Counsel. “It would complete the transformation of immigration courts into conveyor belts in a deportation machine that rapidly returns people to violence, torture, and death without the slightest regard for their humanity. The Tahirih Justice Center intends to challenge the rule by any and all possible means.”"

"Even as we are a nation of immigrants, we are also a nation of laws. Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws. And I believe they must be held accountable, especially those who may be dangerous."

"This year the senate passed an immigration reform bill by a wide bipartisan majority… It would strengthen our borders… It would make sure that everybody plays by the same rules by providing a pathway to earn citizenship for those who are living in the shadows. A path that includes passing a background check, and learning English, and paying taxes and penalties and in getting in line behind it, everyone trying to come here by the right way. And each of these pieces would go a long way toward fixing our broken immigration system."

"Representatives from the resettlement agencies meet frequently to review the biographic information and other case records sent by the Department of State’s overseas Resettlement Support Centers (RSC), seeking to match the particular needs of each incoming refugee with the specific resources available in U.S. communities. Through this process, they determine which resettlement agency will sponsor and where each refugee will be initially resettled in the United States. Many refugees have family or close friends already in the United States, and resettlement agencies make every effort to reunite them. Others are placed where they have the best opportunity for success through employment with the assistance of strong community services. Agencies place refugees through a network of approximately 200 local affiliates operating in communities throughout the United States. Through its local affiliates, each agency monitors the resources that each community offers (e.g., interpreters who speak various languages, the size and special features of available housing, the availability of schools with special services, medical care, English classes, employment services, etc.)."

"To demonstrate a reasonable fear, the individual must show that there is a “reasonable possibility” that he or she will be tortured in the country of removal or persecuted on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. While both credible and reasonable fear determinations evaluate the likelihood of an individual’s persecution or torture if removed, the reasonable fear standard is higher. If the asylum officer finds that the person has a reasonable fear of persecution or torture, he or she will be referred to immigration court. The person has the opportunity to prove to an immigration judge that he or she is eligible for "withholding of removal" or "deferral of removal"—protection from future persecution or torture. While withholding of removal is similar to asylum, some of the requirements are more difficult to meet and the relief it provides is narrower. Significantly, and unlike asylum, it does not provide a pathway to lawful permanent residence or citizen-ship."