Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The US government authorizes a limited number of NGOs to provide local post-resettlement support to refugees in the years after their arrival in the US. Key support areas include employment, access to social services, and children's K-12 enrollment. Recently, support offices have closed en masse in parallel with the Trump administration's drastic restrictions on new refugee admissions. In FY2017, 323 offices served 139 metropolitan areas across the US; in FY2019, 206 offices served only 108 metropolitan areas (according to data from the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration). These closures have left many previously-resettled refugees without access to support services from which they might otherwise have benefited.

Using a difference-in-differences approach and monthly data from the Current Population Survey, I estimate the effect of these closures on refugee employment. Preliminary results suggest that closures have had an immediate negative effect, harming refugees' access to employment in affected metropolitan areas. The final paper will incorporate additional months of CPS data and will include a discussion of data limitations and strategies to address these limitations. I will also discuss possible long-term implications of these findings for refugee communities, local policymakers, NGOs, and other stakeholders.