Here & Now

Noon Wednesday: Wisconsin Prepares for Afghan Refugees

Marisa Wojcik:

Welcome to “Noon Wednesday,” Im Marisa Wojcik, multimedia journalist with “Here & Now” on PBS Wisconsin. Today is August 18. Afghan people who have helped the United States military over the last two decades are fleeing Afghanistan, which is now under Taliban rule over fear of retaliation. Thousands of refugees will be temporarily housed at Wisconsin and Texas military installations before finding a permanent home. Dawn Berney, Executive Director of the resettlement nonprofit Jewish Social Services in Wisconsin explains how local agencies are preparing for a potential influx of refugees, and, Dawn, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dawn Berney:

Thank you. So, this is work that we have been doing for a number of years now as have affiliates all over the country, and we are getting ready primarily by finding and figuring out where there are available apartments, which, for us, is the number one priority to get ready for new arrivals. In the short term, because we do expect a very quick turnaround, people will likely need to go into extended stay hotels, so we are reaching out to those, and, also, reaching out to landlords to make connections. We are working with our volunteers.

Marisa Wojcik:

And I —

Dawn Berney:

Oh —

Marisa Wojcik:

And I want to back up just a little bit, kind of just starting with how quickly this process has rolled out, and so, you know, we’ve seen images just in the last few days of people flooding the Kabul airport, and that’s as the Taliban quickly took power. When all of this started, what has been going through your mind as you have seen the events in Afghanistan unfolds over the last few weeks?

Dawn Berney:

It’s been very upsetting. These are — we know that SIVs are people who have been working alongside the US military and the military contractors to for the last 20 years, and we want to make sure that we are ready to welcome them with open arms. This is just a horrifying situation, particularly the images of people fleeing on the runway and climbing and trying to climb up on airplanes as they are taking off the ground.

Marisa Wojcik:

And the situation and information is changing very rapidly, as we said, and where have you been getting your information and updates, and is anybody concrete at this point?

Dawn Berney:

There’s very little concrete. To be completely honest, I have gotten a lot of my information from watching tv and the internet, and the same as everyone else, which is not typical for how things happen, but with that’s just how quickly it is. We work with a national agency called HYAS, and we learned about the — about people coming to Fort McCoy before they did. We learned about it, actually, from a local affiliate who has gotten news information from a local tv affiliate who had gotten the news from their national, and the national had cornered the secretary of defense to ask him questions, and so, typically, the state department and department of defense will provide information to our national and international will then send us information, and it is all happening so quickly that it is not work withing in the normal communication direction.

Marisa Wojcik:

How difficult does that make your job?

Dawn Berney:

It makes it very stressful for me, and it makes it incredibly, incredibly stressful for my staff, who are ready around the clock for new arrivals. We have been told we have 24 hours to agree to take on a case, including weekends, and that’s very different for us. Usually, we have a week or even longer to make that decision, and then once we agree to take a case, we have been told we could potentially expect someone in as soon as 24 to 48 hours. It doesn’t seem to be happening right now. There seems to be a bottleneck. These people coming into fort lee currently in Virginia, and it’s been a very slow process, and that is why they are opening up these new places to be able to help bring people to speed up the process. I think once they get some of these kinks figured out, it will happen rather quickly.

Marisa Wojcik:

And, so, people understand that process, if an afghan person aided US military, they are eligible for a special immigrant visa or SIV, as you sated, and Wisconsins Fort McCoy is preparing for some of these afghan refugees to be brought to their military installation near Tomah, possibly in the thousands, and then they will be there temporarily, and from there, they’ll determine where to resettle permanently?

Dawn Berney:

Correct. If — and SIVs are once they get to the United States, they — they are pretty similar to all other refugees, but one difference that SIVs have is they can choose where they want to go. I don’t know if that’s going to change with this large influx, but historically, an SIV who comes to the United States can say, I want to move to a different location, and very often, they will decide they want to move where they already have family and friends. Our area actually has quite a few people from Afghanistan, so we do expect a number of folks to decide they want to come to Madison.

Marisa Wojcik:

And someone who is at Fort McCoy might not necessarily stay in Wisconsin at all, so, again, do we just not have any idea of what the landscape looks like?

Dawn Berney:

We don’t have any idea. The only thing that we have to compare this to is reaching all the way back to 1980 when the Cubans were getting resettled in the United States, and thousands came through Fort McCoy at that point, and I don’t think very many of the Cubans stayed in Wisconsin. I believe that was before my time, but I don’t think they stayed here.

Marisa Wojcik:

And so, as you said, you havent been getting much information trickling down to you besides through the media. Who normally gets you the information that you need? Have they told you anything at this point?

Dawn Berney:

We normally get our information from HYAS. HYAS is one of nine national agencies that work to do refugee resettlements, and they typically hear from the office of resettle — of refugees resettlement, which is part of the Department of Atate, but with the military action that is taking place in Afghanistan, the Department of Defense is now very heavily involved, and from my understanding, even at the federal level, things are changing so quickly, it is hard for the feds to send out information to the nationals so that that information can trickle down to us.

Marisa Wojcik:

And so, do you even know when you’ll know more?

Dawn Berney:

We do not. The latest piece of information we received was yesterday, and it was in a statement from the Secretary of Defense that said that these new places like Fort McCoy will be starting to receive refugees in somewhere between 2 to 4 weeks, and so Im hoping that between now and then we will have some additional information, but I strongly suspect that the processing has to happen before anyone decides who is going where. Typically, there’s a long screening process that happens overseas, and somewhere between 6 to 7 federal agencies are involved in screening refugees. The process because of this crisis situation, a lot of that work is now going to be happening here in the United States. And so, we don’t even know how long people are going to be at Fort McCoy before they are allowed to resettle into their new homes.

Marisa Wojcik:

And so, based on how quickly this is happening and the large scale, how different is this from any other resettlements that your agency has helped with?

Dawn Berney:

This is very different because we expect potentially to be asked to resettle a large number of people at the same time. We generally only resettle historically about one family per month. We are now talking about considerably more. We may be seeing two or three families in a week. That would be a big change for us.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, can you describe just the resettlement process? What happens once a person or family is resettled here, and what kind of funding and support is available for the efforts?

Dawn Berney:

So, when a person comes to the United States, we are given on average, about $1,000 per person total that can be used for the expenses of the family, and so our agency does a lot of fundraising to help with — because that is just not enough money, and our responsibility is to find an appropriate place to live. For us, it needs to be in a bus line, and we are required to fully furnish and provide household goods for the homes. We are required to provide a pantry and a refrigerator full of food for about a week, a culturally appropriate meal, an then we go and collect the individual families from the airport, and once they come into their new home, then we work with them, particularly for the first three months, to make sure they go through the medical screenings, help them get their social security cards, and enroll children in schools, to enroll parents in ESL, if they need that to help with employment, and so all of the things that they need so that hopefully as quickly as possible, they will be completely self-sufficient. Families who arrive are eligible for Badger Care, which is Wisconsins version of Medicaid, and they are also, if they have children, are eligible for wu2, which is Wisconsins version for what used to be called welfare. If you do not have children, you are eligible for refugee cash assistance for about eight or nine months. You are available for food share when you first arrive, and we continue to work with families for as long as they need our support.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, it is a very involved process, especially when you are considering adding so many more families to the process. Was there any way to avoid how kind of chaotic and hurried this is considering how much is involved for your organization?

Dawn Berney:

I think there would have been, but I think that the work that is needed to start several months ago, already in Afghanistan. As soon as it was becoming clear there was going to be a crisis, it would have with been very helpful for people to start being able to leave the country much more quickly than they were leaving because even though an SIV could leave the country when they chose to, if they didn’t have the money to buy a plane ticket, they had to wait their turn to be put on a list to be allowed to come to the United States. Most people couldn’t afford to pay for plane tickets for their entire families.

Marisa Wojcik:

Governor Evers put out a statement saying, quote, just as they protected us in serving our country and helped keep our troops safe, we owe it to them to protect and keep them safe. Is there anything preventing these refugees from seeking sanctuary in the United States?

Dawn Berney:

The biggest thing I believe is physically getting from Afghanistan to the United States. There are no more commercial flights. It is really going to be up to our government to figure out a way to get people safely from Afghanistan to the US and that really is important that we figure out how to do that because SIVs and their families are not safe in Afghanistan right now. There are a lot of other people as well who are not safe, but at least this is a start for us to be able to give back to people in Afghanistan. So, for example, a journalist who has all along be reporting the news, which is a very important thing both for the afghani people and people here in the United States, they would not meet the criteria of being a SIV, and they are still going to be in danger.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, it sounds like you are very concerned about anyone who must remain under the Taliban rule and in Afghanistan. Are you feeling concerned about people that are unable to be helped by the United States?

Dawn Berney:

I feel horrible about that, and right now, it is just got that much more complicated because we have that, we have the earthquake in Haiti, and there’s just so many things, and people and people, how we can focus our effort is difficult because there are so many difficulties going on, and it is important for us to at least focus on what we do and what we do well and continue to make sure that we are able to do that.

Marisa Wojcik:

Now, you’ve already resettled some people that are family members of SIVs, and you had a little time to do that, but you said your organization is small and is already overwhelmed with people calling wanting to volunteer. What could they do instead if volunteering is not an option?

Dawn Berney:

Well, right now, the best thing you can do for the people we are going to be resettling is to donate money to our organization. That, in turn, gives us stability. While we do receive for the families that’s $1,000 per person, one of the things our agency does is we fundraise so that we can cover four months of rent and security deposits for every family we resettle, and we get a cell phone with a data plan for six months for every family we resettle. We do not receive any government funds for those kinds of things as well as a number of others, and so receiving donations, financial donations, really makes it possible for us to support, really support folks that are coming to the United States in a way that will make it long-term easier for them to become self-sufficient.

Marisa Wojcik:

Some are comparing the Taliban seize of power to the fall of Saigon, and we have not seen this scale of immigrant refuge coming to Wisconsins Fort McCoy since 1980, as you said. How unique is this moment in history right now?

Dawn Berney:

This doesn’t happen. I would — I mean, as you said, the fall of Saigon, 1980 with the Cubans, but because we do have quotas on who can come and when they can come, I — certainly, not in my lifetime has there ever been anything like this happening where we are just trying to bring in so many people in such a short period of time, and we need to do right by them. It is not enough to just bring them to the country. We need to provide enough support that they can take care of themselves and that they can do it in a way that gives them a good quality of life.

Marisa Wojcik:

All right. We leave it there. Dawn Berney of Jewish Social Services, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dawn Berney:

Thank you.

Marisa Wojcik:

For more from “Here & Now” and PBS Wisconsin, you can visit pbswisconsin.org, and thank you so much for joining us on “Noon Wednesday.”