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Conference celebrates 30th anniversary of Refugee Act, calls for renewed U.S. commitment to refugee protection ruler

By Ann W. Parks

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres speaks at the March 16 conference.

Thirty years after the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, the United States has granted asylum to half a million refugees and resettled another two and a half million around the world. Yet much remains to be done. On March 16, a group of experts led by Georgetown Law’s Human Rights Institute and the international group Human Rights First gathered at the Law Center to renew the call for U.S. protection of refugees.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres noted that the Act — which established the current U.S. asylum, refugee admissions and resettlement systems — is crucial for refugee protection, since other countries follow the United States’ example. “When I speak about refugees all over the world, the United States is still one of the very few countries in which refugee protection is a popular cause,” he said. “This is very important to be preserved.”

Guterres also thanked Georgetown Law for “generously relinquish[ing] its dean,” — a reference, of course, to former Law Center Dean T. Alexander Aleinikoff, who began a new role in February as United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees.

Keynote speaker Eric Schwartz, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration at the U.S. Department of State, praised the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D.-Ma., for his role in championing what became the Act. Kennedy and others, including Sen. Patrick Leahy (L’64), D-Vt., “recognized that our country had to replace a politicized, ad hoc and inconsistent set of processes with those that expressed our highest aspirations and our most noble values,” Schwartz said. A day earlier, Leahy, Richard Durbin (F’66, L’69), D-Ill., and others introduced the Refugee Protection Act of 2010 to address shortcomings in the 1980 act.

Panels during the day-long conference examined the achievements and challenges of the U.S. asylum and refugee resettlement systems. Participants included Georgetown Law Professor Philip G. Schrag and Visiting Professor Andrew Schoenholtz, who pioneered a study — leading to a 2007 law review article and 2009 book — on disparities in the success rates of asylum seekers in the U.S. immigration system; NPR’s Deborah Amos and Reps. Zoe Loftgren, D-Ca., and Christopher Smith, R-N.J., co-chairs of the Congressional Refugee Caucus. “The fact that the United States resettles more refugees than anyone else, that we stand as a beacon of hope for the free world … is an important element of immigration law, but also of our national character,” Loftgren said.

A webcast of the event is available here