They change as the US State Department’s refugee resettlement program focuses on the refugees the United Nations designates for us from year to year.
From the Houston Chronicle:
More than 700 refugee students resettled in the Houston area for the start of the new school year, a sharp increase from the roughly 500 last year. “At the very least, we’re doing about 30 percent more,” sad Joseph Henderson, refugee program coordinator for the Houston Independent School District.
And the countries these students fled are different, part of the nature of refugee resettlement. Houston schools, for instance, didn’t start enrolling large numbers of Iraqi students until the 2007-08 academic year.
Now, more than two-thirds of Harris County’s 1,978 refugees come from Iraq, Myanmar and Bhutan. Just seven years ago, the top countries of origin were Bosnia, Cuba, Vietnam and Sudan.
See a post earlier this month about the tough time refugees are having in Houston, here.