According to Refugee Resettlement Watch, refugees are still arriving in American despite the COVID-19 pandemic — and all the travel restrictions that come with it.
“In mid-March we reported that the UN’s International Organization for Migration had halted refugee travel due to the virus crisis, so imagine my surprise this morning when I checked the data for the last two weeks of March and learned we admitted 221 regular refugees and 373 Special Immigrant Visas from Afghanistan in those two weeks,” wrote the Refugee Resettlement Watch.
According to the Refugee Processing Center, there were 1,110 refugees who arrived in American during the month of March. In addition, there were 844 Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) arrivals. Of those 844, 821 came from Afghanistan.
SIVs are treated similarly to refugees, though some are able to choose where they live in the U.S.
Two of the top-10 most welcoming states for March are border states with Iowa — Illinois and Missouri.
Iowa, for its part, had 39 arrivals.
According to the same article on Refugee Resettlement Watch, 221 regular refugees were placed since the suspension of travel. Iowa had nine of those.
