National Refugee Immigration Trends In the Last Decade (2006-2015)

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), sought the creation of a system to better meet the growing need of refugees throughout the world as their numbers increased and other durable solutions diminished.  Because time is of the essence, the Refugee Processing Center was created to meet this need so that refugees all over the world could be processed more quickly and efficiently. This database system, referred to as the Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System (WRAPS), supports the tracking of refugee case status information, processing pipeline and resettlement statistical data for federal, state, and local partners, and, enhanced coordinated mechanisms to ensure program integrity within the context of modern security concerns.  All of these features allow for a faster, more integrated process so that case processing issues can be quickly addressed and resolved.

The following data is for the nation over the last decade (2006 to 2015). Below is a chart showing the flow of immigrants into the country from five regions of the world: Africa, Eastern Asia, Europe (including the republics of the former Soviet Union), Latin American and the Caribbean, and the Near East and Southern Asia.

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In addition, here is a table showing the numbers of refugee immigrants from those five areas for each of the last ten years.

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To see data on the Herkimer Oneida Counties' region for refugees, visit the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees data page.

New York Times Article on Utica as a Refugee Haven

This article from the New York Times is very insightful into the life of refugees that have made their way to Utica and begun anew. It's well worth the read ! The article focuses on Sadia Ambure, a junior in high school.

"Sadia’s family belongs to the Mudey clan and over 100 extended family members live within blocks of one another. Family ties are everything, yet Sadia and her sisters have stitched together American and Somali Bantu identities. She keeps Steve Madden boots in her school locker to wear under skirts that were ordered from Somali Bantu catalogs. She covets Subway sandwiches — and occasionally hides one in the refrigerator — but is devoted to her mother’s goat stew. She wants to try her hand at modeling, but so far her mother, who has the final word on everything — even a trip to the movies — has said no."

Utica: The Town That Loves Refugees

A recent article in Refugee Magazine (download it here as a pdf) touts Utica as the "Town That Loves Refugees". Refugee magazine is published through the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

According to the Utica Observer-Dispatch, a Zogby Analytics study looked into how Utica has become synonymous with welcoming foreign-born populations that have streamed into the city. It also suggests that the attraction of refugees is a situation that is unique to the region. The Community Foundation of Herkimer and Oneida Counties Inc. funded the $50,000 study. About $30,000 went toward conducting the study, with the rest of the money going toward efforts and recommended improvements cited in the study.

Here are several of the main findings in a Zogby Analytics study about why Utica is such a welcoming city for new populations:

• The Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, though not the sole organization that caters to immigrants and refugees, is prominent in the community as the main resource for those populations.

• The area’s history of assimilating other immigrant groups, such as the Irish and Italians, provide a base for welcoming new immigrant populations.

• Though the Refugee Center has relationships with several area agencies that serve refugees, better communication and collaboration among those serving this population was cited as a need..

• Local places of worship have embraced much of the refugee community, offering them spiritual guidance as they settle into the area.

To see where our refugee populations are coming from, you might want to look at the table on this previous post about refugees in Utica.

Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees: Primary Immigration Data Through 2013

For over 200 years, Utica, New York, a city of 60,000 has attracted immigrants and refugees.  The immigrant communities that have settled in the city include Italian, Irish, German, Polish, and Arab populations.  In the past 30 years, Utica has been host to more than 13,000 refugees.

This phenomenon has been the subject of numerous national and international news articles and has provided Oneida County with the fourth highest concentration of refugees in the U.S. and the City of Utica with a refugee population of nearly 12%. Refugees have been resettled to the region by the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees  (MVRCR), one of the largest resettlement agencies in the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service network.

The MVRCR has become an important part of our region by promoting the well-being of culturally diverse individuals and families within our communities. They welcome refugees and immigrants, and provide individual and community-centered activities designed to create opportunity and facilitate understanding. They offer a combination of programs and services that help teach refugees practical life skills that: (a) enhance their ability to integrate into the community; (b) build individual and community capacity to integrate our new neighbors into the local Utica community; and (c) foster an atmosphere of understanding and tolerance through the engagement of individual clients, the refugee/immigrant community and the local community.
 
Since its inception, the Center has assisted refugees from more than 31 countries, including Bosnia, Cambodia, Czechoslovakia, Haiti, Hungary, Laos, Poland, Romania, the former Soviet Union, Vietnam, Sudan, Somalia Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, China, Somalia, Burma and others. To see primary immigration data on all of the immigrant populations that have come to the region via the MVRCR through the first quarter of this year, click the table below.

 

 

 

 

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Top 25 Countries From Which Foreign Born Residents Come to OC

Oneida County, and specifically Utica and Rome, are centers in which foreign born residents often reside. With the Refugee Center in Utica, the last 20 years has seen the county become home to many foreign nationals.

Below you can see the Top 25 countries from which foreign born residents are coming to Oneida County.