KEN R. CRANE, Iraqi Refugees in the United States: the Enduring Effects of the War on Terror (New York: New York University Press, 2021)

The last three decades have seen scholarship expose the racial and colonial underpinnings of the United States’ welcome to refugees and immigrants alike.1 The American welcome for refugees, which has historically dwarfed countries in the European Union in terms of its numbers, has been inconsistent and much less generous over the past few years: from allowing 132,531 refugees in 1992 to a measly 11,411 in 2021.2 This decline mirrors political developments and rival ideologies: from the “War on Terror,” which began in 2001 and slowed arrivals to 27,131, to Donald Trump’s “Muslim Ban” in 2017, which sent numbers into a decline from which they have still not recovered.3 During the period 2015–2021, Germany has stood out in the EU with its welcome of over a million refugees from countries in the Middle East and Africa.