Refugees and Asylum

What you need to know

Across the world, there are more than 100 million people who are refugees - people forcibly displaced because of war, political turmoil, and other hardships. Some of these individuals will come to the United States and request refugee status, enabling them to live and work in America. This status enables individuals to skip to the front of the immigration line, thereby bypassing the complex application process that limits the number of people who can legally enter the U.S. each year.

What laws govern the admission of refugees to the United States?
Where do refugees and asylum seekers come from today?
How have admissions changed in recent years?

What are refugee and asylum protections, and how are they different?

A refugee is someone who is outside their country of origin and is unable or unwilling to return due to persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Refugees are not in the U.S. at the time they request refugee status. They apply for refugee status at the U.S. embassy or consulate in the country where they are staying.

In contrast, an asylum seeker is someone who has arrived at a U.S. port of entry or is already present in the United States and requests protection under the same criteria. If their claim is approved, they are granted asylum and may eventually apply for lawful permanent residence.

How many refugees and asylum seekers does the U.S. admit today?

Each year, the President sets a ceiling for the number of refugees to be admitted. Actual admissions depend on the number of cases decided in any given year. In 2024, the ceiling was 125,000, but just over 100,000 individuals were admitted. Currently, no refugee applications are being processed due to an executive order issued in January 2025 by the current administration.

Asylum claims are not capped and far outnumber applications for refugee status. As of mid-2024, over 1.5 million asylum applications were pending in the system. Before 2025, critics argued that existing procedures strained processing resources and allowed many individuals with weak claims to remain in the U.S. for extended periods while awaiting court hearings. Currently, relatively few new asylum claims are being filed due to new policies established by the current administration in January 2025.

Where do U.S. refugees and asylum seekers come from?

In 2024, the largest number of refugees admitted to the U.S. came from:

Africa: 34,017 (mostly Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Near East/South Asia: 29,939 (mostly Afghanistan and Syria)
Latin America/Caribbean: 25,358 (mostly Venezuela)
East Asia: 7,504
Europe/Central Asia: 3,299

See our migration brief for details on the countries of origin for asylum seekers.

The Takeaway

The U.S. has both legal obligations and policy discretion in how it handles refugee and asylum protection.

The number of refugees admitted annually is generally much smaller than the number of individuals claiming asylum.

For refugee admissions, the ability to process applications limits the annual number of admissions.

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Sources

U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (2024). CBP releases July 2024 monthly update. https://tinyurl.com/4h7ku9tt (Accessed 8/30/2025)

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Homeland Security Statistics. (2023). Refugees and asylees: 2022 (Annual Flow Report). https://tinyurl.com/ye298xfm (Accessed 8/30/2025)

Congressional Research Service. (2023). U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (CRS Report R47399). https://tinyurl.com/3knv4e27 (Accessed 8/30/2025)

Roy, Diana (2025). How the U.S. asylum process works. Council on Foreign Relations. https://tinyurl.com/txb2pbn3 (Accessed 8/30/2025)

U.S. Department of State (2024) The United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) Consultation and Worldwide Processing Priorities, https://tinyurl.com/2pc2x7rz (Accessed 8/29/25)

National Immigration Forum. (2023). The reasons behind the increased migration from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. https://tinyurl.com/muhv7f8c (Accessed 8/30/2025)

Contributors

Lindsey Cormack (Content Lead) is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Stevens Institute of Technology and the Director of the Diplomacy Lab. She received her PhD from New York University. Her research explores congressional communication, civic education, and electoral systems. Lindsey is the creator of DCInbox, a comprehensive digital archive of Congress-to-constituent e-newsletters, and the author of How to Raise a Citizen (And Why It’s Up to You to Do It) and Congress and U.S. Veterans: From the GI Bill to the VA Crisis. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek, Big Think, and more. With a drive for connecting academic insights to real-world challenges, she collaborates with schools, communities, and parent groups to enhance civic participation and understanding.

William Bianco (Research Director) is Professor of Political Science at Indiana University and Founding Director of the Indiana Political Analytics Workshop. He received his PhD from the University of Rochester. His teaching focuses on first-year students and the Introduction to American Government class, emphasizing quantitative literacy. He is the co-author of American Politics Today, an introductory textbook published by W. W. Norton now in its 8^th edition, and authored a second textbook, American Politics: Strategy and Choice. His research program is on American politics, including Trust: Representatives and Constituents and numerous articles. and a current grant from the Russell Sage Foundation on the sources of inequalities in federal COVID assistance programs. His op-eds have been published in the Washington Post, the Indianapolis Star, Newsday, and other venues.

An earlier version of this brief researched in June 2023 by Policy vs. Politics Interns Eli Oaks and Julia Acevedo and drafted by Team Lead Mary Adams.