Bosnian Refugees in St. Louis: International Law and Integration

Introduction and Purpose of the Study

As the epigraphs from Emma Lazarus and President Donald J. Trump make clear, one of the historic guiding tenets of the United States has been to welcome people in need from other countries — but this view has changed in substantive ways over the years. Today, immigration reform proponents advocate for a wall along the Mexican border and oppose the admission of any more Muslims, irrespective of their plights, while critics counter that the United States has a moral and legal obligation to accept refugees regardless of their countries of origin. As this debate continues to rage, tens of thousands of refugees still manage to make their way to the United States, and many have succeeded in assimilating into their new communities, learning the language and customs of their new homeland, and securing gainful employment.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the pros and cons of the settlement of Muslim Bosnian refugees in an urban community in the United States, together with a legal analysis of the international law that governs refugees, in order to demonstrate how the success of the Bosnian matriculation to St. Louis can be used as a blueprint for the refugee problem currently plaguing Europe. Throughout recorded history there have always been refugees, but the global problem has reached unprecedented levels in recent years. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of refugees around the world seeking safety from violence and persecution in their home countries exceeded 65 million people by December 2015. The UNHCR also emphasized that this number represented "immense human suffering," an assertion supported by the fact that one out of every 113 people in the world today is a refugee, displaced person, or asylum seeker.

Importance of the Study

Unfortunately, despite increasingly aggressive efforts by the international community, the numbers of refugees around the world are expected to continue to increase well into the foreseeable future, due in large part to ongoing crises in hotspots such as Yemen, Syria, Colombia, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Further exacerbating the human suffering concomitant with these unprecedented numbers is that the overwhelming majority of refugees — about 86% — are hosted in emerging countries that lack the infrastructure or economic means to support them. Lebanon hosts 183 refugees for every 1,000 inhabitants, the highest ratio in the world, while Turkey hosts the highest total number of refugees — 2.5 million people.

Although Turkey currently hosts the highest total number of refugees in the world, the United States has also done its part, accepting refugees from all countries. Since the Refugee Act of 1980 was enacted by the U.S. Congress and created the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program, approximately 3 million refugees who successfully passed national screening and admission standards have been resettled in the United States, despite the suspension of refugee admissions for three months following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The current national screening and admission process is rigorous, involving an application review, face-to-face interviews with Department of Homeland Security officials, health screenings, and cultural orientations — a process that typically requires up to two years and sometimes even longer.

While the current executive branch of the U.S. government remains ambivalent about future refugee resettlement programs — most especially from Muslim nations such as Syria — it is clear that there are already millions of these refugees in the country and the United States will be compelled by international law and various agreements to which it is signatory to accept yet more refugees in the future. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that the United States has historically responded to global unrest by accepting refugees from war-torn countries, but the numbers tend to correspond to the intensity of conflicts and national priorities at the time. From 1990 to 1995, an average of about 112,000 refugees arrived in the U.S. each year, with many coming from the former Soviet Union. Refugee admissions dropped to fewer than 27,000 in 2002 following the terrorist attacks of 2001, but this number has since trended upward.

During the fiscal year ending in September 2016, the United States accepted 84,995 refugees — the highest number accepted in a single year during the Obama administration. An additional 31,143 refugees from conflict-ridden countries were accepted during the period from October 1, 2015, through January 24, 2016, including approximately 1,136 who had been admitted since President Donald Trump assumed office in January 2017. Prior to that time, the United States had been on track to achieve the Obama administration's objective of accepting 110,000 during fiscal year 2017, a number that would have been the highest since 1994.

There have been significant differences in the numbers of refugees accepted by country of origin, as refugee acceptance typically corresponds to the level of violence and national priorities at any given moment. During fiscal year 2016, the United States accepted 16,370 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo — the highest of any country that year — followed by 12,587 from Syria, 12,347 from Myanmar, 9,880 from Iraq, and 9,020 from Somalia. Since 2007, Myanmar and Iraq have accounted for the largest cumulative numbers of refugees (159,692 and 135,643, respectively).

There have also been significant differences based on religion. Notwithstanding the fallout from the September 11 attacks and ongoing political controversy about Islamic extremism, the United States accepted almost 39,000 Muslim refugees in fiscal year 2016 — the largest number to date. Muslim refugees accounted for almost half (46%) of all refugees accepted that year, compared to 44% for refugees of a Christian faith. This was the first time since 2006, when a large influx of Somali refugees entered the country, that Muslim refugee admissions exceeded those of Christians. Nevertheless, the cumulative totals from 2002 to 2016 show that more Christian refugees (399,677) were admitted than Muslim refugees (279,339), representing 46% and 32%, respectively.

In sharp contrast to the "melting pot" metaphor that characterized the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the American public has become increasingly wary of accepting millions more refugees. The Pew Research Center reports that "the U.S. public has seldom approved of accepting large numbers of refugees. In October 2016, 54% of registered voters said the U.S. does not have a responsibility to accept refugees from Syria, while 41% said it does." Moreover, there was a sharp political division on this issue: an overwhelming majority of Republican Trump supporters (87%) reported that the United States does not have a fundamental obligation to accept more refugees, versus just over one-quarter (27%) of Democrats.

It is reasonable to posit that the American public's acceptance levels for refugees — even from Islamic countries — would be far higher if more people were aware of the significant successes experienced by the Bosnian refugee community in St. Louis. As Bhabha and Mirga emphasize, the U.S. role in Dayton or Kosovo may be well known, but far less known is the resettlement of Bosnian refugees in Missouri. Higher acceptance levels by the American public might also translate into greater numbers of refugees being admitted to the country, including those without critical skills currently targeted by federal immigration policies, underscoring the importance of studies such as this one.

Context of the Study

Today, more than 70,000 Bosnian refugees — many of them Muslim — live in St. Louis, Missouri, a city of approximately 315,000 people, making them the largest minority population in St. Louis, the largest group of Bosnians in the United States, and the largest group living outside of Europe. Although some of these refugees have expressed a desire to return to their homeland, the overwhelming majority wants to remain in the United States, where they are carving out meaningful lives for themselves and their families.

The unlikely odyssey of these Bosnian refugees to St. Louis began on May 2, 1997, when civil wars erupted in the Croat-controlled region of Drvar, located in the then-Muslim-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and approximately 25 Serb homes were set ablaze. One especially troubling aspect of these Balkanized civil wars was their primary objective of "cleansing" the region ethnically, either through genocidal actions or forced resettlements. As Bobic emphasizes, "The civil wars that broke out in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were inspired by a romantic ideology of 'pure nation' (the so-called eastern model of nation building), and, therefore, ethnic cleansing was one of the means to meet that end. These circumstances explain why the flood of refugees was one of the direct political and war objectives in the 1990s in the Balkans."

Investigations showed that the attack was the responsibility of Croats attempting to prevent the original Serb inhabitants from returning to their homes. The violent events that followed resulted in the displacement of approximately 2.3 million people, including large numbers of Bosnian Muslims, many of whom were ultimately settled in St. Louis, Missouri. The successful assimilation of these tens of thousands of Bosnian refugees can serve as a model for the international community — including most especially the developing nations currently hosting the majority of the world's refugees and the European Union confronting an enormous influx of refugees today.

Research Questions

The study's guiding research questions were as follows:

1. What are the respective pros and cons of the settlement of Muslim Bosnian refugees in an urban community in the United States?

2. What are the controlling international laws that govern refugees?

3. How can the success of the Bosnian matriculation to St. Louis be used as a blueprint for the refugee problem currently plaguing Europe?

Organization of the Study

In order to develop timely and informed answers to the above-stated research questions, this study used a five-chapter format. This first chapter provided an introduction to the issues of interest, the importance and context of the study, and its guiding research questions. Chapter Two provides a systematic review of the relevant literature concerning these issues, followed by a description of the study's methodology. The penultimate chapter provides an analysis of the data collected and a discussion of the findings, followed by a summary of the research, key findings, and recommendations in the concluding chapter.