Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program aims to create a new foundation for vulnerable displaced individuals to achieve their full potential in the United States. To that end, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provides resettled individuals with a number of critical services to support their transition and successful integration. The evidence-base to inform ORR’s programming is relatively thin and suffers from a shortage of reliable, representative data, especially on experiences in the immediate period following resettlement. As a result, we have a limited understanding of the dynamics and needs of an understudied and at-risk population.

This analysis begins to broaden the evidence base. Using data from the Annual Survey of Refugees (ASR), the only nationally-representative data on experiences during refugees’ first five fiscal years in the U.S., I identify characteristics associated with differential outcomes for recently resettled refugees. The results shed light on this understudied area and raise multiple questions for further research. Data from the Annual Survey of Refugees is now available to researchers, offering new opportunities to inject evidence into decisions about how best to target limited federal resources and services for this vulnerable population.