Refugee Policy as Foreign Policy: Iraqi and Afghan Refugee Resettlements to the United States

Refugee policy is traditionally understood through the lenses of humanitarianism, international law, national security, and – less often – foreign policy. These first three lenses are insufficient to explain recent US refugee resettlement policy, particularly Iraqi and Afghan refugees. Between 2001 and 2016, the US resettled 143,650 Iraqis but only resettled 29,688 Afghans. Considering that the US military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan had similar goals of statebuilding and stabilisation – why did the US resettle so many Iraqis and relatively few Afghans? This article finds that US refugee policy is often used as a foreign policy tool to pursue strategic interests within the politics of neighbours. I develop the politics of neighbours as a framework for analysing refugee policy using three factors: 1) the origin of displacement, 2) intra-regional dynamics, and 3) US strategic interests in neighbours. The US chose to resettle four times more Iraqi refugees than Afghans after American presidents and Congress expressed responsibility for the Iraqi refugee crisis, the region’s historical experience with Palestinian refugees, and US interests in isolating Iran. Fundamentally, it is not American relationships with refugee-producing countries, but rather their neighbours – the refugee-receiving countries – that determines how the US prioritizes refugee resettlement.