State Letter #05-17
TO: NATIONAL VOLUNTARY AGENCIES
STATE REFUGEE COORDINATORS
OTHER INTERESTED PARTIES
FROM: Nguyen Van Hanh, Ph.D.
Director
Office of Refugee Resettlement
SUBJECT: ORR Annual Survey of Refugees
Section 413(b)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act requires the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to submit a report to Congress each year which contains an updated profile of employment, labor force participation, and welfare utilization for refugees who have entered the U.S. within the previous five years.To fulfill this requirement, ORR contracts with a private organization to conduct the Annual Survey of Refugees. Each year a random sample of newly arriving refugees and entrants is selected from the ORR Refugee Arrivals Data System (RADS). Our contractor, currently DB Consulting of Silver Spring, Maryland, then traces the selected families. In order to trace selected households, DB Consulting will be contacting Voluntary Agencies and their affiliates to obtain necessary contact information. ORR strongly encourages all Voluntary Agencies and their affiliates to cooperate fully with DB Consulting in providing contact information for refugees in this survey.
When a refugee is traced and contacted, a telephone interview is scheduled in the refugee's native language and conducted over the telephone. In addition, refugees who had been included in the previous year's survey-but have not resided in the U.S. for more than five years-are again contacted and interviewed for the new survey. Thus, the survey continuously tracks the progress of a randomly selected sample of refugees over their initial five years in this country. This permits comparison of refugees arriving in different years, as well as the relative influence of experiential and environmental factors on refugee progress toward self sufficiency across five years.
ORR greatly appreciates your cooperation in this endeavor. Survey results may be found in the next Report to Congress.