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My friend Maureen from West St. Paul has come together with a small group of Minnesotans to sponsor a family of refugees from Afghanistan. During the Afghan war and American occupation, this family was an ally to the United States and helped international organizations address the needs of the Afghan people. Now, Maureen, her friends and this Afghan family are participating in Welcome Corps, the boldest innovation in refugee resettlement in four decades. For the first time, individual Americans can now directly sponsor refugees instead of only resettlement agencies being able to do so. Thanks to Welcome Corps, Maureen and her friends now know this family personally and can raise funds and find housing and support to welcome this family to the U.S.
Welcome Corps is the product of a world that is getting smaller. We benefit every day from social media, allowing us to easily build connections around the globe and maintain friendships across distance. In the 1990s when my family members were refugees seeking a home in this country, we relied on sending letters abroad through the mail, which could take weeks to get to their destinations, and occasional international phone calls, which were extraordinarily expensive. Now as I travel for my work, I video chat with my children and am instantly updated on family news from my mother in California, my siblings in England or relatives in Somalia.
But as people across the world became closer, the federal bureaucracy did not update the process for welcoming refugees to this country. The refugee resettlement program was too institutional, formal and inhumane. Worse than this, Donald Trump spent the four years he was in office attacking refugees and finding ways to discourage those fleeing war and persecution from coming to the U.S. While the American people have shown extraordinary generosity and warmth toward our Afghan allies, Ukrainians displaced by war, and those fleeing violence and oppression in Venezuela and other countries, the U.S. government has been failing refugees.
As a member of the Biden-Harris administration and a former refugee myself, I am proud of our efforts to establish Welcome Corps, which democratized and modernized the welcoming of refugees to this country. We launched it in January 2023, a collaboration that put the American people at the center of refugee resettlement with support of the government, civil society and the private sector.
You might not know it, but Worthington, Minn., welcomed the first family to benefit from Welcome Corps in the summer of 2023. Three generations of Congolese women — a grandmother, two daughters and two granddaughters — found a new home in a thriving, diverse rural community. This happened because 15 residents of Worthington came together, tapping their unique skills and community connections, to help these new Americans find a home, enroll in school and make friends. This sponsorship was assisted by Alight, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit where I sit on the board.
Sponsors through Welcome Corps come together as friends and families in the community to lend a hand to refugees. Using their networks, they help refugees resettle by finding housing, schools and employment. Sponsor groups must have a minimum of five members who are at least 18 years old, U.S. citizens and live in the community where they intend to sponsor the refugee.