Featured Idea: USA Refugee Corps - Export hope and revitalize our national moral standing

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published December 15, 2008 @ 08:18AM PT

At the Skoll World Forum last year, in his formal acceptance of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, Paul Farmer opened his remarks almost sadly noting how much it said about the current state of the world that it would be considered "innovative" and "entrepreneurial" for an organization to work to ensure that everyone had equal access to basic health treatments when they needed it and to put into practice the idea that every human life should be equal to every other.

This is the way I feel about our most recent featured Idea for Change in America. How much does it say about us that although the war in Iraq has left millions displaced, either in the country or in places like Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, we have let in just a handful of asylum seekers ourselves? Significantly less even, than we did during the 1990s Gulf War. How much does it say about us when we declare Darfur a Genocide in 2004 and yet grant almost no Darfurian refugees asylum in the USA? How much does it say about us that in 1980, we granted asylum access to 200,000 but that that number has decline by 80%?

Michael Kagan writes: "In a world with 16 million refugees, a Byzantine UN and federal system somehow fails year after year to find enough refugees to fill a meager resettlement quota of 70,000. The U.S. refugee program has atrophied so badly that in October the State Department expressed pride that it had managed to come just 10,000 refugees short of its target, which was nevertheless its best performance in years."

This is the issue that more than anything else launched me into the world of social change. When I was a junior I spent four months in Cairo doing English tutoring with refugees from the Horn of Africa. In Cairo, refugees are rightless non-citizens. They can't get jobs, they can't go to school, they lack the most basic provision of their security. Small nonprofits do the best that they can, but even the most innovative groups like Townhouse Gallery can't change the fundamental fact that most refugees' destinies are determined by bueauracrats half a world a way.

This is why this idea is so important. Proposed by Michael Kagan, a former director of African and Middle Eastern Refugee Aid (AMERA) - Egypt (one of those organizations doing incredible work on the ground) and current Policy Director for Asylum Access, he suggests an entirely new approach to our refugee policy. Notably, he wants to see:

• Increase our refugee quota. The quota for immigrants coming to work is currently at least 140,000 per year -- double the refugee quota. If we can invite an immigrant to our shores to earn money, can't we also let someone come to find freedom?
• Let average Americans sponsor refugees who want to come to the United States. Canada and Australia already do that. While the federal government should retain final say on issuing visas, we should unleash the potential for private citizens to energize our national mission abroad.
• Establish a U.S. Refugee Corps to recruit young American professionals to go around the world and be the face of our refugee program. The new Refugee Corps should streamline bureaucracy to process applications that today languish in red tape.
• Do it all with high-profile presidential leadership. Our open door can again be a source of pride for the U.S., hope for the oppressed and a golden chance to lead others by example.

Please go vote for this idea now, and then add the widget to your facebook, your blog, or wherever else you share with people. We need innovative, intra-praneurial solutions to problems that concern the government as well as private sector solutions. This is just such an idea. Let's make it happen.