Hi! I was doing some reading on South Korea and came across the claim that South Korea has only ever granted refugee status to 60 people (I assume excepting the fact that refugees from the north are granted citizenship automatically, I think). This led me to be curious about rates around the world, and though it's pretty sticky out there (since it's hard to find data on admitted refugees without also getting general data on asylum seekers), I came across the numbers of refugees in the United States and in Europe. Since 1980, the U.S. has admitted 2,671,511 total refugees, and I've seen government websites stating that over 3 million refugees live in the U.S. (which may include assylum seekers who have not yet been granted refugee status - the phrasing is non-specific). The article also states that the U.S. accepts more than half of those refugees resettled into a third country.

In comparison, there are only 1.5 million refugees living in the E.U., Norway, and Switzerland.

The E.U. overall has a high rejection rate and low acceptance rate (65% and 15%, respectively)

So what gives? Why and how does America accept so many refugees, and why does the rest of the west not even come close?

Before anyone says that this breaks the 10 year rule, I understand that it does in some ways. But I'm interested in the historical events that got us here, not in current policy. I assume it all starts in 1980 with the Refugee Act in the U.S. But what is the U.N.'s role in this, and why is the U.S. such a unique case in the west? This has been going on for over 30 years, as far as I can tell.