Here & Now

Wisconsin Refugee Resettlement Drastically Slows

Zac Schultz:

Now to our partners at WisContext and new reporting on refugee resettlement in Wisconsin. While the current political fight in Washington revolves around DACA and the so-called dreamers, there’s been a downward shift in another type of immigrant, refugees. Our partner at WisContext, Scott Gordon has new reporting on this topic. Thanks for your time.

Scott Gordon:

Thanks for having me.

Zac Schultz:

Your numbers show a big drop-off in the number of refugees resettled in both the United States and Wisconsin in the last year. What’s behind those numbers?

Scott Gordon:

Well, the Trump Administration has been, it’s fair to say, less hospitable refugee settlement than any administration in probably about a generation. Going back to Reagan, this has been a fairly noncontroversial, almost nonpartisan thing. And of course over the past year, they’ve implemented multiple versions of the travel ban, targeting several countries that tend to send a lot of refugees to the U.S. and they’ve also lowered the target of the number of refugees that they want to welcome in a given fiscal year.

Zac Schultz:

During the presidential election Donald Trump was stoking fears about Syrian refugees and terrorism. And we heard about the need for so-called extreme vetting. Has the vetting process changed?

Scott Gordon:

To start with the vetting process was already very strict. It already involved first the United Nations and second a number of federal agencies interviewing people, biometric screening, background checks. It’s something that could take up to two years for a lot of people, and that’s before they even have a chance to get on a plane to the United States. So the whole extreme vetting thing has put, it’s fair to say, a disingenuous frame around the whole debate. It already was pretty strict. Of course, one could argue the details of that if they wanted to. But it certainly wasn’t people pouring into the country willy-nilly via this process.

Zac Schultz:

In 2016 Governor Walker said he didn’t want any Syrian refugees in Wisconsin. And while as a governor he doesn’t have control over that, your numbers show only 57 Syrians were resettled here in 2017, which looking at the graphic on the screen, that’s not the top bar or the first few. That’s way down the list.

Scott Gordon:

That's correct. The big bar at the top of the chart is refugees from Burma. In recent years they’ve been the fastest-growing refugee group entering Wisconsin, although they don’t enjoy nearly the same media visibility as the crisis in Syria. Of course Burma is a country has been in crisis on multiple fronts for decades. But as you pointed out, it’s a relatively small number of people from Syria entering Wisconsin. Although that’s, of course, people from Syria are a big driver of refugee resettlement in the country as a whole.

Zac Schultz:

This drop-off in refugees in Wisconsin is not new. Some of your other research shows there have been spikes up and down over time for Wisconsin. Why is that?

Scott Gordon:

Yeah. This year is especially low compared to any time in the last decade. But refugee resettlement is a process that is inherently tied to crisis and instability and to shifts in policy, not necessarily whether or not we welcome refugees, but whether people want to focus on bringing a certain group of refugees over. For example, in the early aughts, the federal government made a big final push to bring over Hmong refugees from this last refugee camp in Thailand. That accounted for a big spike of people being resettled in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

Zac Schultz:

The Hmong are a great example in Wisconsin of a success story for refugees. They’re well-established in a number of communities: Wausau, Eau Claire, Green Bay, over to the Twin Cities. So it’s not like they failed to assimilate into Wisconsin.

Scott Gordon:

Well, yeah. If you look at a community like that, obviously they’ve had several decades to get established here and are a pretty visible part of Wisconsin's public life. Again, I think people across the political spectrum were generally really proud of how the United States welcomed Hmong refugees. And of course as you see now, there’s tons of different groups and countries where people are fleeing crisis or persecution of one kind or another. So it really is a diverse population that’s coming in. Even in Wisconsin, which has a relatively small number of refugees compared to the country as a whole.

Zac Schultz:

Scott Gordon, thanks for your time today.

Scott Gordon:

Thanks very much.