Weighing the Morality of Refugee Admissions

At the end of 2023, 117.3 million people worldwide had to flee their homelands to escape persecution “for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” These escapees qualify as “refugees” under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the terms of which are incorporated into U.S. law under the Refugee Act of 1980. Because the United States does not persecute inhabitants based on their religion, race, or politics and enjoys the world’s highest living standards, we are unsurprisingly the destination of choice for multitudes of aliens, even when they are traveling from countries that are thousands of miles from our border, are separated from us by oceans, deserts, or mountain ranges, and are risking maltreatment by criminal gangs en route. This isn’t sustainable, both for the U.S. and for refugees. There are, however, other solutions that may be wiser and, indeed, morally preferable.  

While persecuted aliens seeking entry into the U.S. are treated as “refugees,” an alien who happens to be present in the U.S. when the threat of persecution emerges, or who has entered the country in search of “refuge,” whether legally or illegally, is treated as seeking “asylum.” Annual numerical ceilings on refugee admissions to the U.S. are proposed by the president and require Congressional approval. There is no similar ceiling on the number of aliens who may be granted asylum. According to the Department of Homeland Security, in 2022 the U.S. admitted 25,519 refugees and granted asylum to 36,615 aliens. More than 1.16 million asylum claimants who have entered the U.S. remain here while awaiting adjudication of their claims.

If a refugee is admitted to the U.S., or an asylee is allowed to remain, that person will be subject to federal, state, and local income taxes, but he or she will also be entitled to public schooling, police protection, water and sewage services, Social Security, welfare, and other benefits afforded by the federal, state, and local governments to lawful U.S. residents. Determining whether the tax contributions of a refugee or asylee exceed or fall short of the costs of his or her governmental benefits is no easy task. A foreign university professor escaping persecution on account of his or her unorthodox teachings may contribute more in taxes than he or she consumes in government benefits, while an uneducated villager escaping persecution on account of belonging to the wrong tribe in a third-world civil war may consume considerably more public benefits than he or she ever pays in taxes.  

Given that aliens granted refuge or asylum in the U.S. tend to come from nations where English is not the national language and average educational levels are relatively low, we should not be surprised that data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement indicate that, during their first five years of U.S. residence, refugees are three times more likely than the average native-born American to be receiving cash welfare programs and Medicaid, four times more likely to be on Food Stamps, and twice as likely to be in public housing or receiving housing assistance. Based on these and other federal government findings, the Center for Immigration Studies, an independent research organization, has calculated the average fiscal cost of granting refuge or asylum to an adult refugee to be $133,000, which would amount to over $125,000,000,000 just for those asylum claimants already in the U.S.   

The question presented by this data is whether financially enabling a refugee to remain in a country through which he or she passes on the way to the U.S., and which offers refuge from persecution, is morally preferable to granting him or her refuge or asylum in the U.S. Given the vast numbers of individuals fleeing persecution, it should go without saying that cost-effectiveness is an overarching concern. Unsurprisingly, the cost of providing food, shelter, and security in the U.S. is many times higher than in nearly all of the countries through which a refugee may pass on his or her way.  

The aforementioned Center for Immigration Studies addressed this very issue with respect to the resettlement of Middle Eastern refugees and concluded that “for what it costs to resettle one Middle Eastern refugee in the United States for five years, about 12 refugees can be helped in the Middle East for five years.” In other words, assuming comparable ratios for resettlement costs in other foreign regions, what the U.S. will pay to care for the 62,000 aliens to whom it granted refuge or asylum in 2022 could have taken care of 744,000 refugees in safe countries closer to their own countries’ borders.  

The moral implications of these findings are apparent. While the U.S. cannot financially support all of the many millions of aliens seeking refuge from homeland persecution, it can support by far the greatest number by (1) granting refuge or asylum only to those aliens who have entered our country directly from the nation that was persecuting them or who were resident in the U.S. when the threat of persecution emerged and (2) using the funds that are thereby saved to provide financial support to refugees in any safe country they are able to enter before reaching the U.S.  

While it is hard for Americans to say “no” to a specific, persecuted individual who has shown up at our borders, doing the right thing for the greater part of humanity is seldom very easy.  

William Chip has served on the Board of Directors of the Center for Immigration Studies and the Federation for American Immigration Reform. He was Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security under the Trump administration.

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