Creative Commons
Afghan refugees waiting to be resettled on September 8, 2021.
“We are largely a community of immigrants,” says Rabbi Daniel Kaiman of Congregation B’nai Emunah in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “Everyone, even Oklahoma’s Indigenous population, has a story about displacement and relocation. My mother was born in Cuba, and her father was a Holocaust survivor. Both had to set up new lives when they arrived in the United States, so having to adjust to an unfamiliar culture speaks directly to me. But there is something close to universal about immigration that most of our congregation has responded to.”
“As we work to get people settled, we have to prioritize safety and sanity, make sure everyone, including staff and volunteers, are OK, and keep the human element in focus.”
The socially engaged synagogue began working with immigrants in 2016, Kaiman tells The Progressive, first with Burmese, Russian, and Syrian newcomers, and now with Afghan refugees. Along with Catholic Charities, HIAS, and other resettlement agencies, B’nai Emunah is helping new arrivals find and furnish housing, enroll their children in school, navigate the grocery store, and begin to grapple with the cultural nuances of life in the United States.
“There is a vibrant Muslim community in Tulsa,” Kaiman says, “but the hardest part of working with Afghan refugees is that the community is still so small. There are very few Afghan organizations to plug into. This is different from the Burmese community, which is established and has resources. There is not even an Afghan restaurant here yet.”
By the end of 2022, advocates estimate that Oklahoma will be home to 1,800 Afghan refugees, the third highest population behind California and Texas. The rest are being sent throughout the country, with the majority going to Florida, Georgia, New York, Virginia, and Washington. All told, approximately 100,000 Afghans will be relocated.
As Kelly Agnew-Barajas, director of refugee resettlement at Catholic Charities of New York, explains, incoming refugees are being given three distinct types of Visas. Those who worked with U.S. force are arriving with a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV), enabling them access to a green card and to apply for citizenship after five years in the country. Other refugees are being given SQ-SI or “humanitarian parole.”
Here’s where it gets tricky.
Unlike SIV and SQ-SI holders, humanitarian parole provides only temporary protection, with no pathway to permanent residency or citizenship. Rectifying this will require Congress to pass an Afghan Adjustment Act. Similar legislative action was taken twice before: in 1966 to regularize the status of incoming Cubans, and in 1977 for Southeast Asians.
Other obstacles are logistical.
“For the entire 2021 fiscal year, the United States resettled about 11,000 refugees,” Agnew-Barajas explains. “Now we’re expected to resettle more than 75,000 people in a few months.” Afghans fleeing the Taliban, she adds, have been sent to eight military bases for medical screening and COVID-19 and measles vaccines after which they are then sent to their new communities.
“The system is under-resourced,” Agnew-Barajas says. “What people need is money and supplies. As we work to get people settled, we have to prioritize safety and sanity, make sure everyone, including staff and volunteers, are OK, and keep the human element in focus.”
Amanda J., a retired psychologist who volunteers with a secular human rights organization in a southern college town (she requested that neither her full name nor the name of her organization be used for fear of retribution), tells The Progressive that volunteers feel a tremendous sense of urgency.
“Our focus is the common language of humanity, from food to sports.”
“Many of those currently coming from Afghanistan worked with the U.S. government or Afghan Special Forces and had to leave their homes quickly when the Taliban took over,” she begins.“Of course, they’re glad to be here, glad to be safe, but they’re traumatized and have agonized over their friends and family who are still in Afghanistan. They report that people there are terrified and ask us over and over if we can help get their loved ones out. Sadly, this is not something we have the authority to arrange.”
This inability, she explains, makes volunteering extremely stressful. “We always need to be mindful not to set up false expectations about what we can do,” she says. “Our role is to help people learn English. We also help people get their first job.”
But acclimation requires more than a job and language proficiency, which is where One Journey, a national organization that promotes intercultural connections, comes in. Chief operating officer Julia Duncan says that, since 2017, One Journey has organized community picnics, soccer matches, as well as the annual (pre-pandemic) One Journey Festival at the Episcopal Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
One Journey is also compiling a database of volunteers so that resettlement agencies can link them with projects that need their expertise.
“There is generally a lot of support for Afghan refugees,” she says, “but we’ve seen a steady drumbeat of anti-immigrant rhetoric. We combat this by stressing what refugees bring to the United States and remind folks that some of the greatest contributors to American life have been immigrants. Our focus is the common language of humanity, from food to sports.”
Creative Commons
A group from Ruth's Refuge stands in front of a moving truck.
That human connection also undergirds the work of Ruth’s Refuge, a largely volunteer-run nonprofit that grew out of refugee support work done by Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, New York.
“The Afghan families coming to the city usually have a connection here since this is such an expensive place to live. We work with HIAS, Catholic Charities, and the International Rescue Committee. They do the resettlement work and we help furnish apartments with both new and donated items,” Leah Cover, the group’s executive director, tells The Progressive.
Once each family’s needs are assessed, Ruth’s Refuge dives in. “Our first priorities are beds, bedding, and kitchen supplies,” Cover says. “An important part of our model is choice. Refugees go through such traumatic experiences and are usually stripped of agency. This is why we give each person control over their possessions. We see it as critical to let them say, ‘No. I don’t like that.’ ”
Challenges abound. “We’re holding on by our fingernails,” Cover says. “We’re not as staffed as I’d like to be, especially since we’re also assisting families and LGBTQIA refugees and asylum seekers from Africa, Central America, and [Caribbean] island nations. At the same time, the work is really gratifying. There is so much pain and suffering in the world and to be able to help in concrete ways is wonderful.”
While helping newly arrived Afghan refugees is imperative, Diana Duarte, director of policy and strategic engagement at MADRE, a global women’s rights organization, emphasizes that countless Afghans have been unable to leave Afghanistan and remain in danger. Women, especially those who were involved in feminist or community work, are particularly vulnerable, she says.
Many Afghan activists have been pushed underground for their safety, Duarte adds.
“In addition to working with people who have relocated, we represent the needs and demands of those who are unable to leave,” she says. “There is a deepening crisis in Afghanistan. We’ve heard about skyrocketing poverty, food insecurity, and basic needs going unmet.”
MADRE is part of Feminist Action for Afghanistan, a coalition of nine international organizations that is calling on the United Nations to include Afghan women in humanitarian relief, as well as in talks and negotiations.
“Exclusion of women in general, and Afghan women in particular, constitutes de facto complicity with the Taliban’s agenda to eliminate women from public life and reverse previous commitments to the human rights of Afghan women and girls,” states a letter to U.N. Secretary General António Guterres from the coalition.
Though MADRE is hopeful that the United Nations will act, Duarte and MADRE are also pushing for more action from the U.S. government.
“We have a moral responsibility to resettle and relocate people who are facing violence because of the U.S. war,” Duarte says. “But the United States also has a moral responsibility to help those who are staying in the country by choice or circumstance.”