Election outcome looms over future of Episcopal Church’s refugee resettlement efforts
[Episcopal News Service] One of The Episcopal Church’s longest-running ministries is also among the few directly affected by the presidential election. Refugee resettlement levels depend on each president setting the maximum number of refugees who will be welcomed into the United States each year.
Episcopal Migration Ministries and the nine other agencies that facilitate resettlement on behalf of the federal government are approaching the Nov. 5 election with great uncertainty. The Biden-Harris administration set the annual maximum at 125,000, a historic high. It reversed former President Donald Trump’s policy, which decimated the program by reducing the ceiling to a record low 15,000.
“It has been up and down, but we have been on a growth path since 2020,” Sarah Shipman, director of operations for Episcopal Migration Ministries, or EMM, said during an Oct. 25 webinar about the church’s resettlement efforts. “There has been a significant, although gradual investment in the program over the last four years.”
Sanaullah, son of an Afghan refugee and tribal leader Wazir Khan Zadran who had fought against the powerful Haqqani network of the Taliban, converse with his mother Noorina in the kitchen at their new home in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in January 2023. Photo: Reuters
EMM now has 15 affiliates around the country, up from 11 in 2020, and they helped welcome more than 6,500 refugees in the past fiscal year. In all last year, EMM and the other contracted agencies resettled about 100,000 refugees, a significant turnaround, though still short of the 125,000 a year who are now allowed entry.
One of EMM’s affiliates is Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Services, an agency of the Diocese of Los Angeles in California. Its executive director, Troy Elder, said his staff is bracing for another potential reversal if Trump wins the election over Vice President Kamala Harris.
A Harris victory likely would mean a continuation of the Biden administration’s support for refugee resettlement, Elder said, while a Trump election could bring reductions to the levels of his first term – or it could produce “a doomsday scenario,” the near elimination of refugee resettlement.
“That really is, frankly, contemplating a possible shutdown of our ministry, and it is very scary,” Elder said during the webinar, which was co-hosted by the church’s Washington, D.C.-based Office of Government Relations.
The Episcopal Church first began assisting refugees in the 1930s and 1940s through the Presiding Bishop’s Fund for World Relief, supporting people from Europe fleeing the Nazis. Since the Unites States created the current refugee resettlement program in 1980, EMM has resettled more than 100,000 refugees, providing a range of services for individuals and families upon their arrival in the United States, including English language and cultural orientation classes, employment services, school enrollment and initial assistance with housing and transportation.
In addition to refugees, EMM supports other migrants who are in the United States legally under a series of federal programs, including special immigrant visas, humanitarian parole and the asylum process.
Asad Bigzad knows firsthand the importance of maintaining a strong spirit of welcome for those facing violence and persecution overseas. He grew up in Afghanistan, in a rural area of Kabul province. His family first fled when the Taliban took control in the 1990s but returned after the United States invaded in 2001 in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
It was a time of renewed hope, Bigzad said. “I was the first one in my family to even finish high school, and shortly after, I had the opportunity to find a job working as an interpreter for the U.S. troops,” he said during the webinar. “I thought I was going to stay in my country, have a career, get married, have family and kids. I never thought I would have to leave everything and migrate thousands of miles away.”
Instead, he was forced to flee again in 2016, when he came to the United States with a special immigrant visa. He now works for EMM as program officer for post-arrival.
In August 2021, the Biden administration withdrew the last of the United States’ troops from Afghanistan, and Kabul soon fell again to the Taliban. At that time, the U.S. allowed an additional 50,000 Afghans entry to the country through the program known as humanitarian parole, which was offered to those at risk of retaliation for working with the U.S.
Global resettlement needs have only increased in recent years. The refugees who are resettled in the United States typically are fleeing war, persecution and other hardships in their home countries. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, estimates there are more than 31 million such refugees worldwide, and tens of millions more have been displaced within their home countries.
To increase its capacity, EMM for the past two years also has received authorization to assist arriving individuals and families through congregations and other groups that volunteer to serve as remote placement community partners. Congregations that apply and are accepted by the State Department can help one individual or family at a time during those crucial first three months. More and more partners eventually could add up to many more refugees resettled.
Additional information on becoming a remote placement community partner is available on EMM’s website and by emailing emm@episcopalchurch.org.
– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.
