Map › Northern America › USA
United States
Name as used by UNHCR: United States of America
United States — forced displacement statistics — 1951–2025.
#19 host country for refugees (2025)Most refugees from here are now in CanadaLargest origin of refugees hosted here: Unknown origin
Source: UNHCR Refugee Population Statistics Database (data as of 31 December 2025; retrieved 19 August 2026). UNHCR · CC-BY-4.0
Year-end 0
Not reported
UNHCR footnotes (4)
- All · REF · Now in — The United States of America has also offered temporary status in certain circumstances to people in need of international protection. UNHCR is in discussions with the U.S. government about how to best reflect such datapoints for all relevant populations in future reporting cycles.
- All · ASY · Now in — Asylum applications which are reported as cases can be multiplied overall by average number of person per case of 1.501 when summarising the data by country of asylum, but not origin. This is due to the significant variance in the average case size by country of origin.
- All · REF,ASY · Fled from — A limited number of countries record refugee and asylum statistics by country of birth rather than country of origin. This affects the number of refugees reported as originating from the United States of America.
- All · STA · Now in — The United States of America has not adopted a formal status determination procedure to identify stateless persons, and there is no official government data-tracking of the stateless population in the USA. As such, while the USA has a stateless population, the actual number is unknown.
1951–2025 time series
Source: UNHCR Refugee Population Statistics Database (data as of 31 December 2025; retrieved 19 August 2026). UNHCR · CC-BY-4.0
Age and sex (0)
Age and sex (2010)
A total of 270,781 was reported for this year, but no age/sex breakdown — common for high-income host countries.
Source: UNHCR Refugee Population Statistics Database (data as of 31 December 2025; retrieved 19 August 2026). UNHCR · CC-BY-4.0
Top countries of origin
Top countries of origin (2000)
| Country | Refugees | Asylum-seekers |
|---|---|---|
| El Salvador | 1,918 | 176,197 |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 106,410 | 51 |
| Guatemala | 3,612 | 101,646 |
| Unknown origin | 87,238 | 4,679 |
| Viet Nam | 49,008 | 203 |
| Somalia | 34,005 | 1,802 |
| Haiti | 5,160 | 19,425 |
| China | 11,148 | 11,810 |
| Iraq | 19,290 | 370 |
| Cuba | 15,683 | 3,049 |
Top host countries
Top host countries (2000)
| Country | Refugees | Asylum-seekers |
|---|---|---|
| Canada | 148 | 86 |
| Sweden | 20 | 0 |
| Netherlands (Kingdom of the) | 5 | 0 |
Source: UNHCR Refugee Population Statistics Database (data as of 31 December 2025; retrieved 19 August 2026). UNHCR · CC-BY-4.0
Sources
| Source | License | data as of | retrieved | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UNHCR — Refugee Population Statistics Database — country list | CC-BY-4.0 | 2026-08-19 | 2026-08-19 | up to date |
| UNHCR — Refugee Population Statistics Database — population figures | CC-BY-4.0 | 2025-12-31 | 2026-08-19 | up to date |
| UNHCR — Refugee Population Statistics Database — demographics | CC-BY-4.0 | 2025-12-31 | 2026-08-19 | up to date |
| UNHCR (data: IDMC) — IDMC internal displacement figures via UNHCR API | CC-BY-IGO | 2025-12-31 | 2026-08-19 | up to date |
| UNHCR — Refugee Population Statistics Database — solutions | CC-BY-4.0 | 2025-12-31 | 2026-08-19 | up to date |
| UNHCR — Refugee Population Statistics Database — asylum applications | CC-BY-4.0 | 2025-12-31 | 2026-08-19 | up to date |
| UNHCR — Refugee Population Statistics Database — footnotes | CC-BY-4.0 | 2025-12-31 | 2026-08-19 | up to date |
| United Nations, DESA, Population Division — World Population Prospects 2024 — total population by sex | CC-BY-3.0-IGO | 2023-07-01 | 2026-08-19 | up to date |
| Natural Earth (via world-atlas) — Admin 0 – Countries, 1:50m | Public Domain | 2022-05-01 | 2026-08-19 | up to date |
Snapshot f1a2b53a · Methodology · Boundaries
Data coverage
How complete is the record for this country — metric by metric.
| Value | Hosting / Originating | First reported | First non-zero | Last reported | Years reported | Longest gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Refugees | Hosting | 1951 | 1951 | 2025 | 75/75 | — |
| Refugees | Originating | 1991 | 1991 | 2025 | 35/35 | — |
| Asylum-seekers | Hosting | 1951 | 2000 | 2025 | 75/75 | — |
| Asylum-seekers | Originating | 1991 | 2000 | 2025 | 35/35 | — |
| Stateless persons | Hosting | 2004 | 2019 | 2025 | 22/22 | — |
| Others of concern | Originating | 1991 | 2013 | 2025 | 35/35 | — |
| Returned refugees | Hosting | 1951 | 1989 | 2025 | 75/75 | — |
| Returned refugees | Originating | 1991 | 2024 | 2025 | 35/35 | — |
A missing year is not zero — it is missing. And the start of counting is not the start of events: several metrics only began collection later (stateless 2004, OIP 2018; the IDP series runs from 1993 and switches to IDMC compilation in 2009).