What are the exact state-by-state counts of Somali refugees for each year from 2015 to 2025 in DHS/OHSS data?
Executive summary
The specific, state-by-state annual counts of refugees from Somalia for fiscal years 2015–2025 are not directly available in the provided OHSS extracts; OHSS publishes national-level refugee-by-country tables for FY2015–FY2024 and state-level refugee sheets, but the combined, year-by-year state breakdown for Somali nationals was not included in the reporting supplied [1] [2] [3]. The official sources named — OHSS Yearbook tables and OHSS state immigration data sheets — are the authoritative place to retrieve those exact counts and include important caveats (rounding/privacy, data cut dates) that shape any precise tally [1] [3] [2].
1. What the user is asking and why it's tricky
The request seeks a matrix: each U.S. state as rows and each year 2015–2025 as columns, filled with OHSS counts of Somali refugees; that requires merging two OHSS products — the Yearbook’s country-of-origin refugee arrivals (which gives national totals by country for fiscal years) and the OHSS state immigration data sheets (which report refugee arrivals by state) — and the supplied snippets do not include a ready-made state-by-state Somali table for all years [1] [2] [4].
2. What the OHSS sources actually provide
OHSS’s Yearbook Table 14 lists refugee arrivals by country for fiscal years 2015–2024 and therefore contains national counts of refugees from Somalia for those fiscal years [1]; OHSS also publishes state immigration data sheets that “include … refugee arrivals” by state and are intended to cover all 50 states plus DC and Puerto Rico [2]. The FY2024 refugee flow report confirms data cutoffs and rounding/privacy rules (data as of Feb 15, 2025; cells rounded to the nearest 10; totals may not sum because of rounding) and notes the Yearbook and state estimates are periodically updated [3] [1].
3. Why a direct answer (2015–2025 state-by-state Somali counts) cannot be produced from the provided reporting
None of the supplied snippets include the actual state-by-state breakdown for Somali nationals across 2015–2025; Table 14 covers country-level arrivals through FY2024 but does not give state breakdowns in the excerpts provided here, while the state data index confirms such sheets exist but the specific Somali-by-state-by-year cells are not included in the provided material [1] [2]. Additionally, OHSS Yearbook content in the search results stops at FY2024; FY2025/2025 state-level or country-level refugee arrival data are not shown among the excerpts, so claims about 2025 figures would exceed what these sources in hand support [1] [3].
4. How to obtain the exact matrix the user requested (practical next steps)
Retrieve OHSS Yearbook Table 14 (Refugee Arrivals by Region and Country of Nationality: FY2015–FY2024) for national Somali totals and download each state’s OHSS State Immigration Data Sheet (these sheets include “refugee arrivals” by year for each state) and join the datasets on fiscal year and country-of-origin to extract Somali counts by state and year; both resources are published on the OHSS website and are cited as the authoritative sources [1] [2] [4]. Respect OHSS metadata: table cells are rounded to the nearest 10 and FY2022–FY2024 data were noted as of Feb 15, 2025 in the FY2024 flow report [1] [3].
5. Important methodological caveats and transparency about limits
Any state-by-state Somali refugee counts derived from OHSS will be subject to OHSS rounding/privacy rules (nearest 10) and to the dataset’s reporting cutoff dates and linkage to Department of State refugee case-management systems; OHSS warns totals may not sum exactly because of rounding and that admission ceilings and allocations can be revised [1] [3]. The provided materials do not include FY2025 data or the state-by-state Somali breakdown needed to fill the complete 2015–2025 matrix, so producing a fully populated, source-cited table for 2015–2025 cannot be done from the excerpts supplied [1] [2] [3].
6. Alternative datasets and corroboration paths
For complementary perspective on Somali displacement trends (not U.S. state allocations), UNHCR maintains country dashboards and regional displacement datasets that cover refugee movements globally, and national statistical offices publish migration reports — but those are distinct from OHSS admission counts and do not substitute for state-level OHSS reporting of U.S. resettlements [5] [6] [7]. Any researcher aiming for a definitive table should extract OHSS Yearbook Table 14 plus the OHSS State Immigration Data Sheets and document rounding and data-as-of dates in their output [1] [2] [3].