Jan Reeves, director of the Idaho Office of Refugees, said Idaho’s refugee resettlement program, like those in many states, started with the fall of Saigon more than 40 years ago. “A very, very small minority of refugees worldwide ever have an opportunity to be resettled permanently in a country like the United States,” he said. “We generally say one-half of one percent of refugees may be resettled.”

Other than resettlement, the two main ways of responding to refugee crises include repatriation, meaning the refugees go back to their home country once it’s safe; and long-term integration into the society and economy of a neighboring state.

The Refugee Act of 1980, which was passed by Congress and signed by President Carter, is the governing law for refugee resettlement programs like those in Idaho, Reeves said. That provided “permanent and systematic procedure for refugees to be admitted to the United States,” with the goals of “early economic self-sufficiency for refugees after they enter our country,” and a primary objective of “effective resettlement and absorption of refugees into our society.”

In the early years, amid the Cold War, Reeves said, refugee resettlement was seen as “a method that the United States used to demonstrate the openness of the democratic society we lived in, as opposed to the totalitarian regimes that refugees were escaping from. As the Cold War faded away, it became a different rationale.” Refugee resettlement focused on “people who were extremely vulnerable as a result of ethnic cleansing, genocide,” he said. Refugees were “very vulnerable people,” women and children, people who had experienced torture, people who had been denied health care and other life-sustaining resources for many years. “These are the folks that are most likely to be eligible for our programs – the most vulnerable people in the world.”