Refugees De Jure versus De Facto: Legal Recognition and the Difference That It Makes

Research on the integration of refugees in the United States has uniquely focused on the experience of persons resettled with the refugee label. Yet many, if not most, refugees resettled in the United States have been ordinary migrants, persons whose departure from home was discretionary not compelled, but to whom the refugee label was affixed for political reasons. By contrast, the same body of research has ignored the experience of persons who exited home because of compulsion but arrived in the United States as self-settlers, a population consisting of persons granted asylum (the legal equivalent of refugee) and the still larger number of de facto refugees, whose quest for asylum has been denied. Correcting this deficiency, this paper contrasts the experiences of Vietnamese and Salvadoran immigrants to the United States, populations that fled violence, arrived simultaneously in the United States in large numbers, and have since grown in parallel fashion. Although most Vietnamese and Salvadorans arrived after passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, which defined eligibility for refugee recognition in universalist terms, the United States only granted de jure recognition to Vietnamese, denying legal protection to de facto refugees from El Salvador. This paper analyzes the history behind that decision, shows how it affected subsequent immigration and naturalization patterns, and considers long-term impacts on integration.