Trusting your voice requires expanding your knowledge and your perspective, sometimes on complicated topics. In this episode of the Trust Your Voice podcast, host Sylvie Légère sat down to review a brief and topic covered by The Policy Circle, refugee crisis.
Sylvie walks through this topic that can feel rather difficult to navigate and understand, by giving listeners insight into:

Sylvie’s “Lens of Care” and personal lens at looking at the refugee crisis
International Laws and Definitions around refugees - United Nations Refugee Convention (1951)
Definition of Asylum Seekers
Role of US Federal Government
Role of Congress  - judiciary committees
Executive Branch & United States Refugee Admissions Program
Refugee Act of 1980 established formal refugee and asylum programs in the U.S., and brought U.S. law into greater alignment with the UN Refugee Convention.
Difference between Refugee and Asylum Seekers
Special Immigrant Visas (interpreters) - and Humanitarian Parole “allows an individual to be in the United States for a temporary period for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
Process for specific individuals who have met humanitarian priorities - Refugees (P1), Asylum Seekers have 2 paths - Affirmative Asylum Processing with USCIS or Defensive Asylum Processing with EOIR
Management and funding of refugee-related programs and services comes from the federal government, implementation is the responsibility of states and localities
PRIVATE SECTOR - Federal, state, and local governments rely on non-governmental partners to provide resettlement assistance and services to arriving refugees. See Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Challenges & Areas for Reform - Backlog of Asylum Cases
Impact on communities
Ways to Get Involved/What You Can Do

To learn more on this topic, The Policy Circle recently published a brief on Responding to the Refugee Crisis – you can find it on thepolicycircle.org
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