Sharifa (left) and Homayoon Ghafoori resettled in Hunstville, Alabama after fleeing Afghanistan last year. One of Sharifa’s first goals was to get a driver’s license.
Julie Johnson
hide captions
switch captions
Julie Johnson
Sharifa (left) and Homayoon Ghafoori resettled in Hunstville, Alabama after fleeing Afghanistan last year. One of Sharifa’s first goals was to get a driver’s license.
Julie Johnson
With refugee resettlement organizations thinning out, the State Department is trying to make it easier for everyday Americans to sponsor refugees from abroad and help them resettle. United States
The private funding program announced today, called welcome legion, could mark a significant change in the way refugee resettlement works in the United States. So far, the State Department has relied on refugee resettlement organizations to do this work. But those groups have struggled to rebuild following deep cuts under former President Donald Trump’s administration.
The new pilot program is modeled in part on previous efforts to resettle Afghans evacuated last year and Ukrainians fleeing war in their country. Now that approach is extending to other refugees from around the world.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “The Welcome Corps is the boldest innovation in refugee resettlement in four decades.
How it works
The State Department said the new private funding program will allow US citizens and permanent residents to sponsor refugees from around the world.
Groups consisting of five or more private donors will do much of what nonprofit resettlement agencies typically do for newcomers: help them find housing and employment, and show them How to navigate your new home.
The program aims to tap “the energy and talent of Americans from all walks of life eager to serve as private donors,” Blinken said, “from members of faith and civic groups, veterans, the diaspora, businesses, colleges and universities, and more.”
In the first phase of the program, the State Department said private donors will be matched with refugees who have been approved to resettle in the US.
Those refugees can come from anywhere in the world. In reality, however, the majority of refugees approved to settle in the United States have been displaced from a relatively small number of countries. So far in this financial year, the top countries that list including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burma, Syria and Afghanistan.
The State Department first tested the method earlier this year in a new route for Afghan evacuees. In that program, known as the Donor Circle, any group of Americans can come together to welcome Afghans, but they must meet some basic requirements. The groups had to donate more than $2,000 per refugee to cover rent and other expenses. They must also submit a rigorous resettlement plan and pass a background check.
“What you get out of this expansive resettlement model is more people,” said Sasha Chanoff, CEO of RefugePoint, a nonprofit that works to identify refugees for resettlement. More organizations, more geographies and locations can welcome refugees.” United States, who helped advise the State Department on new programs.
New private funding groups are not required to work through existing refugee resettlement offices, said Chanoff, which means “they can happen anywhere in the country – in states that have not yet been resettled by refugees, in places that have not yet attracted many refugees”. refugees, in religious organizations or constituencies are not required to participate, but may participate.”
Julie Johnson, Sharifa Ghafoori, Ben Johnson, Homayoon Ghafoori. Julie and Ben Johnson organized a group of private donors to help Ghafooris resettle in Huntsville, Alabama.
Julie Johnson
hide captions
switch captions
Julie Johnson
Afghans in Alabama
When the Ghafoori family came to America, they hadn’t even heard of Alabama.
“When they showed us the pictures, I loved it. And now that we are here, we are very pleased,” Sharifa Ghafoori told NPR in Dari through an interpreter earlier this year. “This is the best place for us, and we’re not going anywhere.”
Sharifa and Homayoon Ghafoori fled Kabul last year with their six children. He used to work as a security guard at the US Embassy. They have no friends or family in America. But that changed pretty quickly when they arrived in Huntsville, Ala. early last year.
The Ghafooris family was welcomed by Julie and Ben Johnson, who organized a donor circle to help them resettle. Ben Johnson served in the US Army in Afghanistan. So when they saw the fall of Kabul, they felt the need to help.
“I’m fully aware that a lot of the people I’ve served – the Afghans I served with – have been killed,” Johnson said. “So when we had the opportunity to pay off this kind of personal debt, I had to say yes.”
The Johnsons helped find an apartment for Ghafooris and their six children, who had never slept in a bed before. When NPR first spoke to Ghafooris last April, Sharifa said she is eager to learn to drive. Now they both have driver’s and car licenses, and both work at the same nursing home in Huntsville.
In an email this week, Julie Johnson called the experience “truly transformative” and “life-changing” — not just for Ghafooris but for her own family.
Efforts to rebuild capacity
The announcement of the Welcome Corps program comes at a time when major refugee resettlement agencies are struggling to rebuild capacity after the Trump administration’s deep cuts forced them to close their offices and lay off their jobs. worker discharge.
Since then, the Biden administration has allowed a maximum cap of 125,000 refugees per year, but fewer than 7,000 refugees were actually resettled during the first three months of the fiscal year that began in October, according to the report. Data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Advocates of traditional resettlement agencies argue that those numbers don’t tell the whole story. They note that those organizations have also helped resettle more than 80,000 Afghans and tens of thousands of Ukrainians, who are not counted in official refugee data.
The number of refugees resettled under the new private funding scheme will be relatively small at first. The State Department’s goal is to mobilize at least 10,000 Americans to come forward as private donors within the first year, Blinken said, while also welcoming at least 5,000 refugees from around the world. places in the world.
Officials say private funding is supposed to complement the traditional resettlement process. Some traditional refugee resettlement agencies will participate in the private grant program by helping to advise and support emerging private groups.
The new pathway is partially modeled in Canada, which has long relied on private funding as a major part of the refugee resettlement system.
“That has dramatically changed Canada’s view on immigration in general,” Chanoff said. “You see that it’s not as polarized or politicized as it is in the US. And that’s one of the things that I hope this can achieve.”
