Policy Fiasco

The refugee resettlement policy of the United States has come a cropper, owing to a host of malpractices and absolute apathy shown by some top officials entrusted with the task of resettling immigrants and refugees. Lurking behind the policy fiasco, the party at fault comprises the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro, Nicholas Mayorkas, a Cuban refugee by himself, who migrated to the United States in 1960 during the Cuban Revolution. The United States granted him U.S. citizenship. Hence a new identity. However, Mayorkas forgot his impoverished past as time passed by.

As things currently stand now, he is no more interested in the welfare of refugees, and is even not in the favour of welcoming refugees to the American land. Thus, the primary purpose for which he was assigned with this key post by the US President has gone up in smoke. The US President Joe Biden thought Nicholas Mayorkas would improve the immigration policy of the United States by electing Alejandro Mayorkas. Akin to humiliating refugees, however, Biden's decision proved to be unfeasible and is not contributing to exacerbate the global refugee crisis.

Several hundred thousand cases, referred by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for resettlement in the United States, are in the pending case backlog. About six U.S. government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Defense, the United States Intelligence Community, the Department of State and the Department of Health and Human Services, have been assigned to screen the refugee vetting process. The process should take no more than 36 months, as per the acts and regulations.

In stark contrast, it now takes more than a six year period to process a resettlement case, but with little or no progress at all, while all the assigned agencies together have failed to carry out their tasks. It has something to do with the fact that currently there are no experts at their disposal, who can submit their reports or give opinion about refugee cases.

It can be presumed that there are corrupt, unscrupulous individuals operating in these U.S. agencies, who register refugees incognito and promise to help them resettle in the United States against a whopping bribe of some five thousand dollars per refugee. In the hope of entering the promised land of milk and honey, many naive and impelled refugees end up giving their lifelong savings away. In the United States, the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security receives a number of complaints in this regard, but instead of taking decisive actions against the culprits, he tends to maintain silence so as not to discredit his department.

The Department of Homeland Security makes tall claims about eliminating immigration fraud in the United States. To be very honest, however, the Department is unable to take the responsible elements to task, who seem to operate right under its very nose, thus robbing refugees of dream and hope as well as all their money.

Having carried out thorough research in this regard, the writer of this article believes there are some refugees who have been able to resettle in the United States because their cases were approved in a two to three-year period in the violation of merit. With regard to intentional pending of cases referred, the UNHCR is also kept in the dark by the concerned authorities.

The applicant refugees are kept waiting on the pretext that their cases are still under process. In the name of resettlement in the United States, thousands of the UNHCR's recognized refugees have lost their savings to the point of penury, but they could not be resettled in the U.S. The U.S. President Joe Biden has not yet reviewed the USCIS, the Department of Homeland Security and the United States Refugee Admission Programme. At this moment of time, the rate of corruption has increased so much that if the US government wants to tackle it, it will take a long time but under the current circumstances, accountability of the responsible individuals seems to be a Herculean task.