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What is the Lautenberg Amendment?

The Lautenberg Amendment, originally enacted as part of the 1990 Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill, established a presumption of eligibility for refugee status for certain categories of people from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and Southeast Asia seeking to resettle in the United States. Today, the Lautenberg Amendment mostly serves to facilitate the resettlement of Jews, Christians, Baha’is, and other religious minorities fleeing Iran, which was added to the Lautenberg Amendment in 2004, while it continues to cover religious minorities from the FSU.

Under a program established by the U.S. State Department and negotiated with the government of Austria, members of certain Iranian non-Muslim religious minority groups are eligible to receive visas to travel to Austria, where they can be safe while the U.S. government processes their applications for refugee resettlement. This arrangement is a lifeline for Iranian religious minorities, since the United States has no embassy in Iran, and cannot interview applicants there.

https://www.hias.org/sites/default/files/lautenberg_amendment_backgrounder.pdf

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