Making Sense of U.S. Refugee Resettlement: Utica as a Model for the Nation

• DOI: 10.1177/0002716220941463
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020
• Subject Matter: Sense-Making and Policy-Making

941463ANN
The Annals of The American AcademyMAKING SENSE OF U.S. REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT
research-article2020
Refugee integration is a complex process, realized dif-
ferently by different groups at different times. This
article examines the larger global and national context
in which decisions about refugees are made and illus-
trates impacts of these decisions at the local level. A
close look at refugee resettlement in Utica, New york,
reveals that positive benefits have accrued to the com-
munity there over decades. Trump administration poli-
cies have cut in half the number of refugees arriving in
Making Sense that city, but the resultant advocacy for the Utica refu-
gee resettlement office led to new income from the
of U.S. Refugee State of New york, preserving the city’s ability to par-
ticipate in the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program now
and in the future.
Resettlement: Keywords: refugees; refugee resettlement; U.S. cities;
Utica as a
Utica; U.S. policy
Model for the
Nation
The city of Utica, New york, is a refugee
resettlement success story. Of the three-
million-plus refugees brought to the United
States under the U.S. Refugee Assistance
Program (USRAP) since its inception in 1975,
more than 16,500 refugees have been resettled
in Utica, with hundreds more secondary
By
migrants joining them. Foreign-born people
ANNe C. RIChARD
make up nearly 20 percent of the city’s popula-
and
tion of 60,100 and many of them arrived as
SheLLy CALLAhAN
Anne C. Richard is affiliated with the Institute for the
Study of International Migration at Georgetown
University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. She was
the Sol M. Linowitz Professor of International Affairs at
Hamilton College during fall 2019.
Shelly Callahan is the director of The Center in Utica,
New York. The Center was formerly known as the
Mohawk Valley Refugee Resource Center. In 2016, she
was instrumental in securing a $2 million appropria-
tion for refugee resettlement from New York State that
has been renewed each year since.
NOTe: This article is based on a joint lecture delivered
by the authors at hamilton College in Clinton, New
york, on September 26, 2019.
Correspondence: acr9@georgetown.edu
DOI: 10.1177/0002716220941463
176
ANNALS, AAPSS, 690, July 2020

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MAKING SeNSe OF U.S. ReFUGee ReSeTTLeMeNT
177
refugees.1 having a large percentage of foreign-born residents makes Utica far
above the national average (according to the U.S. Census, 12.9 percent in 2010)
and more like big east and West Coast cities (New york, Miami, Los Angeles,
San Francisco) than Midwest cities.
All across the United States one can find refugees living peacefully and pro-
ductively, as they do in Central New york. Utica is exceptional only in that the
contributions from refugees are so obvious. With only minor changes, churches
that were on the verge of being torn down have been converted to mosques and
other places of worship. Customers now flock to refugee-owned stores and res-
taurants, such as europa Foods, Golden Burma Asian Market & halal Foods,
and SD home Improvements. And the Chobani yogurt plant in the nearby town
of South edmeston routinely hires refugees; founder (and immigrant) hamdi
Ulukaya has an explicit policy to do so (Fieser 2019).
Despite recent antirefugee rhetoric from the White house, in Utica bipartisan
support for refugee resettlement still exists, as it has for decades. Globally, the
significant refugee presence in Utica represents only a tiny fraction of the world’s
displaced. As of June 2019, the United Nations high Commissioner for Refugees
(UNhCR) reported that more than 70 million persons were forcibly displaced,
most of whom (40 million) were internally displaced within their own countries
and 26 million were refugees, that is, persons who had to flee their home coun-
tries to a neighboring country or farther afield.
The number of refugees and immigrants living in Utica sounds like a lot of
people (16,500 could be a small town in rural America), but it is actually quite
small relative to the number of displaced people in the world (70 million). The
Trump administration has moved to shut down the refugee resettlement program
because, it insists, the refugees are dangerous and headed this way, or they will
end up reliant on welfare benefits. But Trump rhetoric overstates the number of
people who actually end up in the United States—a tiny share when contrasted
with the world’s displaced and also a tiny share of the U.S. population.
At a time of record displacement, the White house and some politicians are
trying to stop the flow of refugees to this country. In this article, we provide back-
ground on shifts in federal refugee policies and how they affect Utica and other
cities like it. The Utica story is remarkable because it shows how an influx of refu-
gees can help to spearhead urban renewal and reinvestment in aging cities that
have suffered with the end of a factory-based economy.
...