Trusting your voice requires expanding your knowledge and your perspective, sometimes on complicated topics. In this episode of the Trust Your Voice podcast, host Sylvie Légère sat down to review a brief and topic covered by The Policy Circle, refugee crisis.
Sylvie walks through this topic that can feel rather difficult to navigate and understand, by giving listeners insight into:
- Sylvie’s “Lens of Care” and personal lens at looking at the refugee crisis
- International Laws and Definitions around refugees - United Nations Refugee Convention (1951)
- Definition of Asylum Seekers
- Role of US Federal Government
- Role of Congress - judiciary committees
- Executive Branch & United States Refugee Admissions Program
- Refugee Act of 1980 established formal refugee and asylum programs in the U.S., and brought U.S. law into greater alignment with the UN Refugee Convention.
- Difference between Refugee and Asylum Seekers
- Special Immigrant Visas (interpreters) - and Humanitarian Parole “allows an individual to be in the United States for a temporary period for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
- Process for specific individuals who have met humanitarian priorities - Refugees (P1), Asylum Seekers have 2 paths - Affirmative Asylum Processing with USCIS or Defensive Asylum Processing with EOIR
- Management and funding of refugee-related programs and services comes from the federal government, implementation is the responsibility of states and localities
- PRIVATE SECTOR - Federal, state, and local governments rely on non-governmental partners to provide resettlement assistance and services to arriving refugees. See Office of Refugee Resettlement.
- Challenges & Areas for Reform - Backlog of Asylum Cases
- Impact on communities
- Ways to Get Involved/What You Can Do
To learn more on this topic, The Policy Circle recently published a brief on Responding to the Refugee Crisis – you can find it on thepolicycircle.org
We hope you enjoy the episode! Tell us what you think by leaving a review on Apple podcasts. Stay tuned for more episodes and be sure to subscribe to the Trust Your Voice podcast on your favorite podcast player.
