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See Also

See also

Cuban refugee policy;

Florida illegal-immigrant suit;

Helsinki Watch report on U.S. refugee policy;

Justice and immigration;

Proposition 187;

Proposition 227;

Refugee Relief Act of 1953;

Refugees and racial/ethnic relations.

Issues in U.S. Immigration

Refugee fatigue

by Robert F. Gorman

Definition: Reluctance of host countries to extend or expand assistance, asylum, or resettlement to refugees

Immigration Issues: Refugees; Sociological theories

Significance: Also known as “compassion” fatigue, refugee fatigue develops when the citizens of nations receiving large numbers of refugees begin feeling overburdened by the needs of the newcomers and fear being overrun by outsiders.

Refugees are typically victims of political persecution who are fleeing from their homelands in attempts to find asylum in other nations. Refugee, or compassion, fatigue is most likely to occur when the refugee population begins to become a significant burden on the host community's economic and social infrastructure, or at least when the perception develops that such burdens are growing. Refugees sometimes flee into areas where they can find support among ethnic kinspeople, as often happens in Africa. In Asia, however, the flight of Sino-Vietnamese refugees into the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia during the 1970's and 1980's excited substantial xenophobic responses that greatly accelerated perceptions of compassion fatigue in the region.

President Gerald Ford during his April, 1975, visit to California, where he greeted arriving refugees from Vietnam.

iusi_p0680.jpg

(NARA/Gerald R. Ford Library)

Such concerns may be allayed somewhat if other countries agree to provide opportunities to resettle in a third country and to finance the costs of temporary haven in the country of first asylum. However, donor country populations and governments often grow tired of accepting resettled refugees and financing large overseas programs. When both host nations and countries of resettlement experience refugee or compassion fatigue simultaneously, pressures grow to eliminate humanitarian aid programs and to repatriate refugees or asylum seekers to their original homelands. In some cases, racial or ethnic biases heighten popular resentment of such humanitarian programs; more often, economics is the central cause of compassion fatigue.

During the 1980's, owing to the civil wars in Central America, large numbers of asylum seekers joined the stream of illegal immigrants or undocumented immigrants from Mexico seeking work and safe haven in the United States. For many Americans, this influx led to fears of uncontrolled immigration and a hardening of attitudes toward those in distress.

Further Reading

1 

Balgopal, Pallassana R., ed. Social Work Practice with Immigrants and Refugees. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

2 

Bischoff, Henry. Immigration Issues. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002.

3 

Chang-Muy, Fernando, and Elaine P. Congress. Social Work with Immigrants and Refugees: Legal Issues, Clinical Practice, and Advocacy. New York: Springer, 2008.

4 

Cohen, Steve. Deportation Is Freedom! The Orwellian World of Immigration Controls. Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley, 2005.

5 

Legomsky, Stephen H. Immigration and Refugee Law and Policy. 3d ed. New York: Foundation Press, 2002.

6 

Potocky-Tripodi, Miriam. Best Practices for Social Work with Refugees and Immigrants. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

7 

Zolberg, Aristide R., and Peter M. Benda, eds. Global Migrants, Global Refugees: Problems and Solutions. New York: Berghahn Books, 2001.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Gorman, Robert F. "Refugee Fatigue." Issues in U.S. Immigration, edited by Carl L. Bankston III, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=IUSI_0184.
APA 7th
Gorman, R. F. (2015). Refugee fatigue. In C. Bankston III (Ed.), Issues in U.S. Immigration. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Gorman, Robert F. "Refugee Fatigue." Edited by Carl L. Bankston III. Issues in U.S. Immigration. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.