The wars in Syria and Iraq and other humanitarian problems around the world pushed the total number of people seeking asylum in industrialized nations last year to the highest total since the 1992 war in the Balkans, the United Nations said in a report released Thursday.
In all, an estimated 866,000 new asylum applications were filed in the United States and other industrialized nations last year, a 45 percent increase from 2013, when 596,000 claims were filed. The all-time high was set at almost 900,000 in 1992 amid the fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Our response has to be just as generous now as it was (in 1992) — providing access to asylum, resettlement opportunities and other forms of protection for the people fleeing these terrible conflicts,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said in a prepared statement.
Syrians filed most of the asylum requests in 2014, totaling nearly 150,000, followed by Iraqis, 68,700; and Afghans, almost 60,000. Germany received the most applications at more than 173,000. The United States received the second highest number at 121,200, mostly from Mexico and Central America.
In the fiscal year ending in September, Georgia took in the ninth largest number of refugees among states at 2,694, federal figures show. Most came from Myanmar, Bhutan, Somalia and Iraq. Nationwide, nearly 70,000 refugees resettled in the U.S. that year.
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