Annual Survey of Refugees, 2016

Since the 1980s, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) has conducted the Annual Survey of Refugees (ASR), which collects information on refugees during their first five years after arrival in the U.S. The ASR is the only scientifically-collected source of national data on refugees’ progress toward self-sufficiency and integration. ORR uses the ASR results alongside other information sources to fulfill its Congressionally-mandated reporting following the Refugee Act of 1980. Historically, the microdata from these surveys have generally been unavailable to researchers. In the Spring of 2017 ORR completed its 50th Annual Survey of Refugees (ASR). The data from the ASR offer a window into respondents’ first five years in the United States and shows the progress that refugee families made towards learning English, participating in the workforce, and establishing permanent residence. This public use data deposit is only for the 2016 ASR with future years likely to be added to the ICPSR archive..