PORTLAND, Ore. — Oregon will receive about 180 Afghanistan refugees in the next few months, the Biden administration told Gov. Kate Brown’s office earlier this month.
The refugees are being processed at military bases throughout the nation and will arrive in their respective states in the coming weeks, said Salah Ansary, a regional director at Lutheran Community Services Northwest.
The agency is one of three federally contracted refugee resettlement groups in Oregon, along with Catholic Charities of Oregon and Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon.
The number of refugees coming to Oregon is small compared with California, which will receive 5,255, the most in the country. The next is Texas with 4,481, while a handful of states, including Wyoming and South Dakota, will resettle none. Refugees are often sent to places with strong Afghan communities that can help them acclimate to their new lives.
Hundreds of thousads of people fled Afghanistan in the past few months as the United States completed its military withdrawal from the country and the Taliban took over the government.
The resurgence of the religious militant group has many Afghans fearing a return to an era of oppressive rule and draconian adherence to Islamic jurisprudence that led to thousands of killings and effectively removed women from the public sphere.
Women leaders and activists, human rights workers, journalists and those who have worked for the U.S. military during the past 20 years of military occupation fear retaliation against themselves and their families.
Ansary, who was born and raised in Afghanistan, is reminded of his own journey to the United States after a coup in 1978 that led to the Soviet Union’s invasion of his homeland.
“I never thought that after 43 years, once again I will be facing this incredible, tragic — on the receiving end of refugees coming from Afghanistan,” Ansary said.
The Biden administration has requested funding from Congress to help resettle 65,000 Afghans in the United States by the end of September and 30,000 more over the next year. This recent allocation of refugees for Oregon is through the end of March 2022, the governor’s office said.
A majority of Afghan refugees are in the United States as humanitarian parolees rather than having formal refugee status. The designation allows people to enter the country legally for urgent humanitarian reasons and stay for two years.
Other types of visa applications can take years to complete and often require individuals to first escape to another country before coming to the United States.
The biggest needs for resettlement agencies are cash donations and long-term housing options, Ansary said.
The application fee for humanitarian parolee status is $575, posing a sizable financial barrier for many Afghans — a family of five would need to pay nearly $3000. Applicants can apply for a fee waiver.
And unlike Afghans with formal refugee status, parolees will only receive a one-time stipend of about $1,250 and will not receive federal assistance after the first 90 days, Ansary said. They don’t have a legal path to a longer-term immigration visa and will not have access to any of the medical, counseling and other public benefits refugees would normally have.
“They say, ‘OK, you’re not eligible for any of this federally funded assistance, but your other fellow refugee that comes from another country is eligible,’” Ansary said.
Ansary said his agency’s cooperative agreement with the State Department says the program is “partially funded,” an acknowledgement that the federal government is not providing enough.
“The hope is that these communities then will provide the kind of resources that folks need,” Ansary said.
AirBnb is providing support with short-term housing, and resettlement agencies say they are looking for landlords willing to rent to refugees and people with accessory dwelling units that may be able to house refugees long-term.
Lutheran Community Services Northwest is also looking for storage space in the Vancouver and Portland areas to house donated items, as they are currently full and unable to collect more donations of furniture or household goods.
The Refugee Care Collective, a local organization that works with resettlement agencies, has raised more than $82,000 in the latest fundraising push to support arriving Afghan families.
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The funds will go to emergency housing, restart kits full of essential household items, gift cards for foods, and providing family and youth mentorship among other services, said Megan Cegla, executive director and co-founder of the organization.
“The most important thing that we need now is people who will value coming alongside our new neighbors, long after the news headlines,” Cegla said. “It will take those arriving from Afghanistan and other countries years to rebuild their lives.”
Cegla said her group is already working to help a few Afghan families settle in the area. Most are special immigrant visa holders whose applications were already in progress when they evacuated Afghanistan and were able to be processed faster than the bulk of refugees.
Oregon is only one of three states in the nation that allocates state funds to refugee resettlement.
“When the previous administration’s efforts to decrease refugee resettlement had a direct impact on the services that they were able to access, Oregon stepped in and recognized that the right thing to do was to make sure those services were available,” said Matthew Westerbeck, director of refugee services at Catholic Charities of Oregon.
His agency has seen a stark decrease in the number of refugees resettled in the past few years, from 589 in 2016 to only 66 in 2020.
The refugee cap was raised to 62,500 per year by President Joe Biden in May. President Donald Trump had previously set the yearly cap at 15,000 refugees.
Oregon’s refugee services are expanding just in time, as Salem For Refugees and Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization based in Portland will soon join the other three organizations as federally recognized refugee resettlement agencies, Westerbeck said.
Westerbeck said he and other agencies have been continuously been in conversation with state Sen. Kayse Jama, state Rep. Khan Pham as well as Gov. Kate Brown’s office to figure out what resources are needed.
The organizations are preparing for a unique influx of refugees to begin arriving in the next few months that will require communities to mobilize and provide support.
“Refugee resettlement is not usually geared towards a specific response … it’s year over year over year,” Westerbeck said. “This is a different type of a response because it is so specific to a very short timeline, and the timeline reflects the need to be serving those people here and helping them rebuild their lives.”
