Invitation Letter

U.S. Refugee Admissions Program

The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) is an inter-agency effort involving a number of governmental and non-governmental partners, both overseas and domestically, whose mission is to resettle refugees in the United States. 

 The U.S. Department of State’s (DOS) Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) has overall management responsibility for the USRAP and has the lead in proposing admissions numbers and processing priorities.  Within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has responsibility for interviewing refugee applicants and adjudicating applications for refugee status.  Through its cooperative agreements with Overseas Processing Entities (OPE), PRM handles the intake of refugee referrals from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), U.S. embassies, and certain non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well as the prescreening of cases and the out-processing of individuals for travel to the United States. 

Iraqi Refugee Processing

Part of the humanitarian mission of the USRAP is to provide resettlement opportunities to especially vulnerable Iraqi refugees. Since large-scale Iraqi refugee processing was announced in February 2007, DHS and DOS have worked cooperatively to increase the number of Iraqi refugees admitted to the United States as part of the worldwide commitment.   Throughout fiscal year 2008, DHS and DOS worked closely to enhance processing capacity of Iraqi refugee applicants while ensuring the highest level of security. In support of these efforts, USCIS deployed more than 150 officers to the Middle East to conduct 29 refugee processing circuit rides and interviewed more than 23,000 Iraqi refugee applicants.

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