Afghan refugees could be arriving in Whatcom County with help from this aid agency
Bellingham and Whatcom County could see several dozen immigrants from war-torn Afghanistan within a year, if the U.S. State Department approves an aid agency’s request to open a local refugee-relocation center.
Whatcom County resident Steven Shetterly was at the Army’s Fort Lee south of Richmond, Virginia, this week, working with World Relief in Seattle and anticipating the arrival of the first Afghans with special immigrant visas either approved or in the application process.
“We’re waiting on the State Department to OK us as a resettlement site,” Shetterly told The Bellingham Herald by phone from Fort Lee on Wednesday, Aug. 18.
“I don’t know if this current crisis will change that timeline,” Shetterly said. “We don’t know when or how many people we might start seeing here.”
World Relief has proposed resettling 75 people in Whatcom County in 2022, he said.
Washington state saw more than 4,000 Afghans arrive with special immigrant visas from 2010 to 2020, according to the state Department of Social and Health Services Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance.
That includes 508 people from Afghanistan between Oct. 1, 2020, and Aug. 14, 2021, with more expected, Social and Health Services said at its website.
And Washington is among the top U.S. states for refugee resettlement, according to the advocacy group National Immigration Forum, the Pew Research Center and the Migration Policy Institute.
Shetterly said the process for Afghans fleeing their homeland has been approved by the federal government in cooperation with nonprofit agencies and was established by law.
“This is a completely separate issue from people crossing at the southern border to claim asylum,” Shetterly told The Herald in an email.
“Afghans who have worked with the U.S. government over the past two decades qualify for what’s called a ‘special immigrant visa.’ Instead of being admitted based on persecution or a fear of persecution (although that may exist) they and their families are admitted to the U.S. based on their service with the government — usually the military,” he said. “Often this means they were interpreters for military units, but can also mean they were contractors working on Army bases, or perhaps worked with a government contractor in some other capacity.”
Once they arrive in their new home, the sponsoring agency will help immigrants find housing, jobs, enroll their children in school, and get home furnishings and clothing.
They’ve left home with literally the clothes on their back, Shetterly said.
“Usually maybe a couple of suitcases at most,” he said. “Anything you think they’d need starting over, they’d need.”
U.S. committed to assistance
Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday, Aug. 20, that the United States is committed to evacuating all Afghans who assisted in the war effort — a potentially vast expansion of the administration’s commitments on the airlift so far, given the tens of thousands of Afghan translators and others, and their close family members, seeking evacuation, according to The Associated Press.
Biden’s comments at a White House news conference come as the U.S. government readies a massive airlift clearing Americans and other foreigners and vulnerable Afghans through the Kabul airport amid a Taliban takeover of the country, the AP said.
Critical of the effort was the Washington state office of CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“Contrary to what is being reported by the U.S. government, no persons who CAIR Washington or other advocates are working with have been able to reach the airport and board flights out of the country,” CAIR said in a statement emailed to news organizations Friday.
Islam is the majority religion of Afghanistan, but the nation also has small communities of Christians, Sikhs, Hindus and Baha’i, according to the online Cultural Atlas.
Shetterly addressed the Whatcom County Council in a June 1 presentation to make government leaders aware of World Relief’s intent to begin resettling refugees.
Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees settled in the Lynden area during the 1970s, he said.
“Some of the most resilient folks that you can find in the world you find are going to be refugees. They are the ones over time who are going to be transforming this community in really positive ways,” Shetterly told the County Council.
“I would love to see a community that is able to welcome these people and to raise my kids in a place where they are going to be able to rub shoulders with people who are different from them,” he said.
