Albany's Afghan Americans Help Afghan Refugees Resettle
Albany, New York — A group of Afghan Americans in Albany, New York, have opened a community center to help resettle newly arrived Afghans in the United States.
The Afghans, who fled their country after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021, received help navigating the U.S. immigration system and starting a new life in the United States.
"[When] the [Afghan] government collapsed and more Afghans came to the U.S., the [U.S.] government could not handle [the cases], so we considered it necessary to support them," Yousaf Sherzad, vice president of the Afghan American Community Center, told VOA. "We rented this office to help the newly arrived Afghans begin their new life here [in the U.S.]."
The center, which mostly serves families and single men, was launched in 2021, the same year the United States and its allies left Afghanistan, evacuating some 130,000 people from Kabul in the chaotic last weeks of August.
Through Operation Allies Welcome, about 88,500 Afghan nationals arrived in the U.S. and resettled in communities across the country. Operation Allies Welcome was a program that coordinated efforts to resettle vulnerable Afghans.
But those left behind are still making their way to the U.S., and there are limited immigration paths available for those hoping to come to the United States.
One way is to apply for a visa, but that requires them to travel to a U.S. embassy for an interview. The closest U.S. embassies to Afghanistan are in Qatar, Pakistan, or the United Arab Emirates.
Another way is to apply for humanitarian parole on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, but that is a lengthy process. And although it approves only a few hundred people annually, it does lead to permanent U.S. residency.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services receives fewer than 2,000 requests for humanitarian parole overall from all nationalities over the course of a typical year. Of those requests, approximately 500 to 700 are approved.
Since July 1, 2021, the USCIS has received more than 50,420 requests for humanitarian parole for Afghan nationals, of which they have denied about 11,020.
"USCIS has conditionally approved humanitarian parole for approximately 480 Afghan nationals outside the U.S.," a Biden official wrote to VOA in an email on last August.
A third option for Afghans is to travel to the U.S.-Mexico border and request asylum protection. The center also helps those who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization and ended up in Albany.
And that is what newly arrived Afghan, Shakor, who did not want to give his last name for security reasons, decided to do.
"It has been 15 days since we came from Mexico," Shakor said. "One of my friends guided me and brought me to the Afghan community."
Most people working at the center are volunteers who arrived in the U.S. before August 2021. They went through immigration procedures themselves and want to help refugees and asylum-seekers because of their own experience.
"Based on what we have learned, listened and experienced, we want to make things easier for them by providing them with addresses, translation and filing their forms," Sherzad said.
Volunteers at the center say that every day they see and help three to five Afghans who entered the United States at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Roshan Noorzai contributed to this report.