In 2013, 69,926 people were admitted into the United States as refugees, according to the 2014 Fiscal Year Refugee Admissions Statistics published by the U.S. State Department.

That number is increasing and will continue to grow in the coming year. In February 2015, the Office of Refugee Resettlement reported that 69,986 refugees came to the U.S. in 2014. The U.S., though, often does not have enough jobs for refugees that come into the country.

The reason for the rise in refugee amount is largely due to the crisis in Syria, which has displaced thousands. So far, about 647,000 people have been forced to flee the region.

The Syrian conflict has been called the largest migration by a single group of people since 1999 when war in Kosovo resulted in the displacement of more than 867,000 people.

The United Nations’ High Commission for Refugees releases an annual report on the total amount of people driven from their homeland. In June 2013, it was at 45.2 million people. This was the highest ever in recorded history.

The five countries most impacted by wars are Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Syria and Sudan. In fact, these countries were the source of 55% of all refugees in 2013.

In the 2012 report, nearly half of the population of refugees were female, and about 46% were children aged 18 or younger.

In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Srirupa Dasgupta owns a socially-minded restaurant. Beginning at first as a catering company in 2010, the restaurant opened in April 2014. Dasgupta wanted to create a place where refugees and other marginalized people could find jobs.

“I realized that Lancaster has a large refugee population,” says Dasgupta, “These women had the skills to get a job and had jobs in their country but they couldn’t get past the language barrier in this country.”

She saw that, hired as cooks, women did not have to read the recipes because they had curated them on their own. Currently, she has three regular employees that are each paid $14.50 per hour, which is twice the amount of minimum wage in Pennsylvania.

Dasgupta came to the U.S. from India to attend college in Massachusetts. Her grandparents fled Bangladesh in 1947 and their struggle, along with many others she has come across, inspired her to start her business.

“Upohar’s lead chef is Rachel Bunkete who grew up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She left her home in order to escape political, ethnic and religious conflicts in 2008, but was forced to do so without her husband and three children. Ever since she was allowed to come to the U.S., she has been working toward being reunited with her family.

Another chef, Tulsha Chauwan, fled Bhutan with her family and lived in refugee camps in Nepal for year before they were allowed to settle in the U.S.

Upohar, the name of the restaurant, is the Bengali word for ‘gift’.

So far, Dasgupta has yet to yield any profit from her restaurant, but she is thrilled just knowing that she has made a difference in the lives of those involved.

– Lillian Sickler

Sources: NPR, Upohar, Lancaster Online, International Rescue Committee, U.S. Department of State, The Guardian, Office of Refugee Settlement
Photo: Flickr