The article examines the link between the admission of refugees to the United States and the country’s foreign policy interest during the Cold War. The author analyses the post-war American refugee assistance acts and immigration laws to reveal U.S. policy choices made between safeguarding country’s security during the Cold War to taking political advantage of the refugee arrivals. The factors that provided for the refugees’ entry to the U.S. during the Cold War were determined by foreign policy concerns and the decisions related to the refugee crises were the domain of the executive up until 1980s. Given the Cold War context, most of the refugee crises occurring behind the Iron Curtain in Europe benefited U.S. psychological warfare programs, while Asian and Latin American refugees, often a consequence of direct (at times covert) U.S. political-military-economic involvement, put the U.S. on the defensive.

The article examines the link between the admission of refugees to the United States and the country’s foreign policy interest during the Cold War. The author analyses the post-war American refugee assistance acts and immigration laws to reveal U.S. policy choices made between safeguarding country’s security during the Cold War to taking political advantage of the refugee arrivals. The factors that provided for the refugees’ entry to the U.S. during the Cold War were determined by foreign policy concerns and the decisions related to the refugee crises were the domain of the executive up until 1980s. Given the Cold War context, most of the refugee crises occurring behind the Iron Curtain in Europe benefited U.S. psychological warfare programs, while Asian and Latin American refugees, often a consequence of direct (at times covert) U.S. political-military-economic involvement, put the U.S. on the defensive.