“A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence” and “has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.” The 1951 Geneva Convention “clearly spells out who a refugee is and the kind of legal protection, other assistance and social rights he or she should receive from the countries who have signed the document” (“What is a Refugee? Definition and Meaning,” USA for UNHCR, 2021, https://www.unrefugees.org/refugee-facts/what-is-a-refugee/).
Despite the apparent clarity of this definition, only a very small fraction of all persons who conform to it are able to receive resettlement in a country that signed. Instead, nations extend or deny refugee status according to their own standards. Acceptance hinges on factors such as race, religion, politics, nationality, social and economic conditions, and labor force issues. As a case in point, following the cessation of the war between the United States and Vietnam in April 1975, the U.S. Government gave eighty thousand Vietnamese refugee status in only three months. In contrast, two years after twelve thousand persons fled from the CIA-orchestrated coup against Chilean socialist president Salvador Allende, only twenty-six had been cleared to live in the United States (David M. Reimers, Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America [Columbia University Press, 1985], p. 185).
Defining refugees is so complex and contradictory that much literature on the topic reflects the concerns of specific academic disciplines, political groups, religious traditions, and service delivery organizations. Consequently, there is a paucity of writing that presents wholistic, interdisciplinary, and integrated understandings of the ways by which refugees are defined and treated in diverse locations and circumstances.
In Send Them Here: Religion, Politics and Refugee Resettlement in North America, Geoffrey Cameron tackles these issues as he advances our understanding of refugee policy in the two countries—the United States and Canada—that were responsible for resettling 77 percent of all refugees globally between the years 2003 and 2017 (4).
Drawing on an exhaustive review of literature and a nuanced and inclusive historical analysis of U.S. and Canadian refugee policy, Cameron increases and broadens our understanding of the process by which these nations have dealt with often-conflicting interests, agendas, value systems, and welfare policies to develop flexible, widely accepted, and admired systems that have provided refuge to millions. Cameron asserts that religious traditions in existence prior to states’ involvement in refugee resettlement inspired Americans and Canadians to honor the assistance of refugees and immigrants as sacred obligations. The author does an impressive and thorough job of tracing the actions of religious groups as well as political parties, government agencies, and other social actors in building pro-refugee movements.
Cameron notes that at the conclusion of the conflict in Southeast Asia, both the United States and Canada passed comprehensive and wide-ranging refugee policies. These systematized each country's refugee policies, which had been previously applied on an ad hoc basis. The 1976 Immigration Act of Canada and the United States’ Refugee Act of 1980 regulated entry, funding, and sponsorship arrangements for all entrants defined as refugees. These programs also outlined roles for religious and voluntary groups and for the distribution of government resources.
Send Them Here concludes with the author's analysis of current patterns that have transformed refugee policies. He observes that Canada's private refugee sponsorship program has become a tool for family unification, with between 95 and 99 percent of applications for sponsorship being utilized by extended family or close friends as of 2003 (166). Despite the possibility of some modifications, the author sees private sponsor arrangements as continuing to benefit Canadian family members rather than being devoted to the needs of broader, if less locally connected, constituencies.
With respect to the United States, Cameron notes that 2018 marked the smallest admission of refugees since the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. He attributes this constraint to a rise in nativism and the Trump Administration's embrace of anti-immigrant attitudes (167). Citing statements from directors of resettlement organizations, the author argues that limitations on refugee admissions not only constrain entry but further erode the constituencies, resources, and skills that the country's resettlement infrastructure has spent decades to build. In closing, Cameron suggests some basis for optimism regarding the possibility of improving conditions for refugee resettlement in the United States and Canada. At the same time, his analysis highlights the transformed role of religious organizations from that of resettlement advocates to exclusionists.
Send Them Here: Religion, Politics and Refugee Resettlement in North America is an impressive, ambitious, and multifocal study that scholars will find valuable as a comprehensive analysis of refugee resettlement policy.
