One day this week, a refugee will step off an aeroplane somewhere in the United States. He may be a Bantu tribesman from Somalia, or they may be an Iranian mother and children who had been living in Europe.

What makes this person stand out is that he or she will be the 50,000th refugee admitted to the US in the last 12 months. Working together, the international community is providing solutions for refugees worldwide.

What most refugees want is to go home. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) works to ensure that those forced to flee their countries can go home again, voluntarily, in safety and with dignity.

More than 3.5 million refugees returned to their countries in 2002 and 2003. Afghans, going home after the fall of the Taliban regime, make up the largest single group of recent returnees. There has also been much progress in Africa, where more than 300,000 Sierra Leoneans and 200,000 Angolans have returned home. In Europe, refugees from the wars in the former Yugoslavia have been steadily returning home in recent years.

While these figures are encouraging, there are still millions of people worldwide for whom home is only a dream.

The US works through international organisations such as UNHCR and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) and non-governmental organisations in order to provide safety and assistance to refugees.

In our fiscal year 2004, which ends on Sept 30, the US government will spend more than US$900 million on refugee programmes. Almost all of this will be channeled through multilateral, not bilateral, institutions.

Countries in turmoil

Returning home is ideal. Integration in the country of asylum is a second-best alternative. Sometimes, neither can occur. The US is committed to welcoming those refugees for whom repatriation or local integration may never be possible.

In the 1970s and 1980s, many refugees came to America from Southeast Asia. With the collapse of the Soviet empire, we opened our doors to members of religious minorities coming from Europe and Central Asia. Now we are receiving the victims of civil strife in Africa. More than half of the 50,000 refugees who have arrived in the US in the past 12 months are African.

We welcome refugees for humanitarian reasons. We provide new hope and new opportunity for those who have suffered. Many European nations, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are sharing this responsibility and accepted significant numbers of refugees in 2003.

Refugees bring vitality to the countries that receive them. Many speak several languages and have valuable skills to offer. Refugees find jobs, buy homes, and pay taxes. Their children go to school and prepare for the future. The arrival of refugee number 50,000 will go largely unnoticed in the US, but we welcome him or her to begin building a new and better life.

ARTHUR E DEWEY is United States assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration.