---
title: "Most refugees who enter the U.S. as religious minorities are Christians"
description: "A little over a third of the refugees admitted into the U.S. in fiscal 2016 were religious minorities in their home countries. Of those, 61% were Christians and 22% were Muslims."
date: "2017-02-07"
authors:
  - name: "Katayoun Kishi"
    job_title: "Former Research Associate"
    link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/katayoun-kishi/"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/02/07/most-refugees-who-enter-the-u-s-as-religious-minorities-are-christians/"
categories:
  - "Christianity"
  - "Immigration & Migration"
  - "Immigration Trends"
  - "Islam"
  - "Refugees & Asylum Seekers"
  - "Religion & Politics"
  - "War & International Conflict"
  - "War & International Conflict"
---

# Most refugees who enter the U.S. as religious minorities are Christians

[![](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/02/FT_17.02.03_refugeeReligion_640px.png)](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/02/07/most-refugees-who-enter-the-u-s-as-religious-minorities-are-christians/ft_17-02-03_refugeereligion_640px/)

A little over a third of the refugees who were admitted into the United States in fiscal 2016 (37%) were religious minorities in their home countries. Of those, 61% were Christians, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the State Department’s [Refugee Processing Center](http://www.wrapsnet.org/).

Muslims, the next largest group, made up 22% of the religious minority refugees who were admitted to the U.S. Other, smaller world religions and Hindus made up the bulk of the remaining religious minority refugees (9% and 6%, respectively).

The analysis comes as Donald Trump’s administration has [announced](https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/27/executive-order-protecting-nation-foreign-terrorist-entry-united-states) it will give priority to religious minorities who apply for refugee status in the U.S. Trump himself has said that Christians [will be given preference](http://www1.cbn.com/thebrodyfile/archive/2017/01/27/brody-file-exclusive-president-trump-says-persecuted-christians-will-be-given-priority-as-refugees).

[![](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/02/FT_17.02.03_refugeeReligion_by_country_globe.png)](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/02/07/most-refugees-who-enter-the-u-s-as-religious-minorities-are-christians/ft_17-02-03_refugeereligion_by_country_globe/)

The landscape is different when it comes to the two-thirds of refugees who entered the U.S. as religious *majorities *in fiscal 2016. Six-in-ten of these refugees (60%) were Muslim and 35% were Christian. Buddhists made up 6% of these refugees, coming mostly from Burma (Myanmar) and Bhutan.

The U.S. [admitted 85,000 refugees in 2016](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/10/05/u-s-admits-record-number-of-muslim-refugees-in-2016/). Almost all came from these 10 countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo (19%), Syria (15%), Burma (15%), Iraq (12%), Somalia (11%), Bhutan (7%), Iran (4%), Afghanistan (3%), Ukraine (3%) and Eritrea (2%).

Christians are a religious majority in three of these 10 countries. For example, the Democratic Republic of Congo – from which the U.S. accepted the largest number of refugees (over 16,000) in 2016 – is a predominantly Christian nation, split almost evenly between Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians. The vast majority (93%) of refugees accepted from that country were of these Christian denominations. Similarly, 61% of refugees coming to the U.S. from Eritrea in 2016 were Orthodox Christians, the majority religious group.

Christians are also not the only religious minority group in Muslim-majority countries. This is partly because many of the Muslim-majority countries from which the U.S. received the most refugees in 2016 – Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Somalia – are nations where various sects of Islam are considered religious minorities as well. In Syria, for example, non-Sunni Muslim groups (including Shia Muslims, Alawites and Ismailis) are religious minorities. In Somalia, Shia Muslims are estimated to be [less than 1%](http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm?year=2015&dlid=256069) of the population and thus are also considered minorities.

*Note: Data for estimations of countries’ religious group sizes came from the State Department’s [Report to Congress on International Religious Freedom](https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm#wrapper) in 2015. For detailed methodology, see [here](https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2017/02/06164107/Methodology_02-06-17_KK.pdf) (PDF).*