Where refugees in Virginia are arriving from

Within the first five months of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early February 2022, the U.S. admitted more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. Most of these refugees were admitted through a special program called humanitarian parole, which falls outside the scope of the data tracking carried out by the Refugee Processing Center. Humanitarian parole allows refugees who meet certain criteria to gain temporary legal status in the U.S. and applications are processed differently than traditional refugee resettlement applications.

In November 2022, the greatest number of refugees admitted by the U.S. came from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, and Ukraine. Each nation struggles with a unique set of circumstances that can make their citizens unsafe if they stay in their home country.

For the last three decades, the DRC has been struggling with a vast humanitarian crisis that has left millions of people displaced, both internally and externally, with many people fleeing to neighboring countries. Myanmar's sitting government is currently engaged in a war against its people, and the country is expected to have approximately 1.2 million refugees seeking asylum by the end of 2022.

Stacker referenced data from The Refugee Processing Center to compile statistics on the number of refugees and their countries of origin resettled in Virginia in November 2022.

November refugee statistics
Countries where refugees arrived from in November
Virginia
#1. Afghanistan: 8
#2. Colombia: 6
#3. Iran: 3
#3. Somalia: 3
#5. El Salvador: 2
#6. Ethiopia: 1

National
#1. Democratic Republic of the Congo: 414
#2. Burma: 366
#3. Ukraine: 227
#4. Syria: 199
#5. Afghanistan: 169

States that accepted the most refugees in November
#1. California: 145
#2. New York: 136
#3. Texas: 132
#4. Pennsylvania: 131
#5. Washington: 123

Read on to see the countries that Virginia has accepted the most refugees from since November 2022