(STACKER.COM) – Within five months after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in early February 2022, the U.S. admitted more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. Most of these refugees were admitted through a special program called humanitarian parole, which falls outside the scope of the data tracking carried out by the Refugee Processing Center. Humanitarian parole allows refugees who meet certain criteria to gain temporary legal status in the U.S. and applications are processed differently than traditional refugee resettlement applications.
During September 2022, the U.S. admitted most refugees from either the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma (also referred to as Myanmar), or Syria, with about 60% of all refugees admitted hailing from one of those three countries. Each nation struggles with a unique set of circumstances that can make their citizens unsafe if they stay in their home country.
For the last three decades, the DRC has been struggling with a vast humanitarian crisis that has left millions of people displaced, both internally and externally, with many people fleeing to neighboring countries. Myanmar’s sitting government is currently engaged in a war against its people and the country is expected to have approximately 1.2 million refugees seeking asylum by the end of 2022. Syria has seen nearly 7 million refugees leave the country since 2011 while a longstanding civil war rages and has displaced an additional nearly 7 million people internally.
Stacker referenced data from The Refugee Processing Center to compile statistics on the number of refugees and their countries of origin resettled in South Dakota in September 2022.
September refugee statistics
Countries where refugees arrived from in September
South Dakota
#1. Democratic Republic of the Congo: 11
#2. Eritrea: 4
National
#1. Democratic Republic of the Congo: 2,181
#2. Burma: 658
#3. Syria: 493
#4. Afghanistan: 429
#5. Ukraine: 370
States that accepted the most refugees in September
#1. Texas: 489
#2. California: 363
#3. Washington: 328
#4. Ohio: 325
#5. Kentucky: 320
Read on to see the countries that South Dakota has accepted the most refugees from since October 2022.