Immigration—Almost Four Hundred Years of American History - War Created Refugees

Official American refugee programs began in response to the devastation of World War II, which created millions of refugees and displaced persons (DPs). (A displaced person was a person living in a foreign country as a result of having been driven from his or her home country due to war or political unrest.) This was the first time the United States formulated policy to admit persons fleeing persecution. The Presidential Directive of December 22, 1945, gave priority in issuing visas to about 40,000 DPs. The directive was followed by the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 (PL 80-744), which authorized admission of 202,000 persons from Eastern Europe, and the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 (PL 83-203), which approved entry of another 209,000 defectors from Communist countries over a three-year period (A History of U.S. Refugee Policy, Washington, DC: USA for UNHCR, 1992). The Displaced Persons Act counted the refugees in the existing immigration quotas, while the Refugee Relief Act admitted them outside the quota system.

Parole Authority—A Temporary Admission Policy

In 1956 the U.S. attorney general used the parole authority (temporary admission) under Section 212(d) (15) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 for the first time on a large scale. This section authorized the attorney general to temporarily admit any alien to the United States. While parole was not admission for permanent residence, it could lead to permanent resident or immigrant status. Aliens already in the United States on a temporary basis could apply for asylum (to stay in the United States) on the grounds they were likely to suffer persecution if returned to their native lands. The attorney general was authorized to withhold deportation on the same grounds.

According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, this parole authority was used to admit approximately 32,000 of the 38,000 Hungarians who fled the failed Hungarian Revolution in 1956 (An Immigrant Nation: United States Regulation of Immigration, 1798–1991, June 18, 1991). The other 6,000 entered under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 and were automatically admitted as permanent residents. This parole provision was also used in 1962 to admit 15,000 refugees from Hong Kong to the United States.

Refugees as Conditional Entrants

In 1965, under the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments, Congress added Section 203(a) (7) to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, creating a group of "conditional entrant" refugees from communist or Middle Eastern countries, with status similar to the refugee parolees. Sections 203(a) (7) and 212(d) (15) were used to admit thousands of refugees, including Czechoslovakians escaping their failed revolution in 1968, Ugandans fleeing their dictatorship in the 1970s, and Lebanese avoiding the civil war in their country in the 1980s.

Not until the Refugee Act of 1980 did the United States have a general policy governing the admission of refugees. The Refugee Act of 1980 (PL 96-212) eliminated refugees as a category in the preference system and set a worldwide ceiling on immigration of 270,000, not counting refugees. It also removed the requirement that refugees had to originate from a Communist or Middle Eastern nation.