Humanitarianism for Whom? Postwar Refugee Policy and Politics in Canada and the United States.

The contemporary form of refugee policy in Canada and the United States emerged from the post-World War II era, when policymakers confronted growing displaced persons populations in Europe, as well as increased refugee dislocations around the world with the advent of the Cold War. This paper will begin by briefly reviewing the development of postwar policy in both countries up to the Hungarian Refugee Crisis in 1956, and will then discuss refugee politics in the context of 1960s legislative reform. Worldwide refugee crises forced legislators to rethink their entrance requirements and were partially responsible for the liberalization of immigration law in the United States in 1965, and in Canada in 1967. Still, while refugee politics could be mobilized to press for more expansive immigrant rights, legislators seized upon this moment of reform to divorce humanitarianism from immigrant admissions, relegating it solely to the refugee arena. This shift allowed leaders in both countries to define only those arriving as refugees in terms of their individual need, and to select immigrants instead by their possible contribution to the nation. The relegation of humanitarianism to refugee admissions would in turn shape the debates over future immigration policy in both countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]