"Before the Holocaust, the United States made little distinction between people fleeing their countries because of persecution and immigrants seeking economic opportunity. But the end of World War II gave rise to a new system of laws and organizations designed to help European refugees immigrate.
In 1951 the United Nations adopted the Geneva Refugee Convention, which defined refugees as those who are unable or unwilling to return to their country because of persecution — or a well-founded fear of persecution — based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. In 1967 the U.N. expanded the scope of that definition, which had been limited to people fleeing events before 1951 and in Europe, to people fleeing any part of the world and to any time.
The United States didn’t sign the Geneva Refugee Convention, but Congress adopted some of its key provisions, including the international refugee definition, into U.S. immigration law when it passed the Refugee Act of 1980. In the United States, a person must also meet this definition to be granted asylum: The primary difference, according to the International Rescue Committee, is that refugees are granted refugee status outside a host country and asylum seekers within it.
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