No Western country has accepted more refugees since the end of World War II than the United States (Holman 1996). Between 1946 and 1994 the US allowed almost 3 million refugees and other foreigners seeking protection access to permanent residence. While this remarkable inclusiveness has sometimes been attributed to a peculiarly American sensitivity to immigrants in need, less partial observers have seen it as evidence of the way refugee admissions have become entangled with foreign policy. As Kathleen Newland noted, refugee policy in the US has long been a ‘handmaiden of foreign policy’. The belief that it would ‘contribute to the overarching objective of damaging and ultimately defeating Communist countries, particularly the Soviet Union’ (Newland 1995: 190) encouraged an openness that, at times during the Cold War, reached breathtaking heights. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson issued an open invitation to Cubans discontented with Fidel Castro's rule to head for the US. Standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, he declared that all Cubans ‘seeking refuge here in America will find it’ (quoted in Masud-Polito) 1988: 57).

Throughout much of the post-war period this inclusiveness has had a less admirable flip side: callous disregard for and even hostility to refugees fleeing right-wing dictatorships and other non-communist regimes. While all Western countries gave special preference to refugees from communist countries during the Cold War, no country knit together its definition of a refugee with escape from communism as tightly as the US.