Jessica Darrow leads panel discussion on Afghan evacuee report published by the Urban Institute
By Crown Family School
The Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice hosted a panel discussion about the recently published Urban Institute report: 'Examining Afghan Evacuees’ Resettlement: Insights and Lessons for Future Humanitarian Populations, on April 17 in the Edith Abbott Hall Lobby.
The Urban Institute report explores the resettlement experiences of Afghan evacuees to the United States nearly three years ago when an initial 80,000 Afghans were evacuated to the U.S. in 2021. More than 2,300 Afghan evacuees have since resettled in Illinois, according to the Illinois Department of Human Services.
The report, co-authored by Crown Family School’s Jessica Darrow, is based on 36 interviews with Afghan evacuees who arrived in the United States in the fall of 2021 and 51 interviews with community stakeholders across three study sites—Chicago, San Antonio, and northern Virginia.
According to the report, many of the Afghan evacuees’ lives remain in limbo because many of them entered the U.S. under humanitarian parole. They have temporary authorization to stay, but the report said that status does not offer a pathway to lawful permanent residence status.
“Living in legal limbo is incredibly unhealthy for the mental state of anybody who finds themselves in such a position,” Darrow said during the discussion and presentation of the report’s results. “Evacuees noted several ways their parole status impacted their daily lives.”
Other panelists included report co-author, Diana Guelespe, senior research associate at the Urban Institute; Beatriz Ponce de León, Deputy Mayor of Immigrant, Migrant, and Refugee Rights (IMRR) for the City of Chicago; Karina Lopez, from the Office of Welcoming Centers for Refugee and Immigrant Services at the Illinois Department of Health and Human Services; Mohammed Naeem, from The American Immigration Council; Sima Quraishi, executive director of the Muslim Women's Resource Center, and John Slocum, executive director of the Refugee Council USA.
The report determined best practices supporting Afghan evacuees, such as bridging the cultural and information gap between evacuees and the broader community and creating government-convened collaborations with organizations to help expedite processes and cut through red tape. For example, the report explained how Illinois officials set up a temporary center for hotel evacuees, bringing in state staff and resources while contracting ethnic community-based organizations to provide services.
“If the system is thoughtfully redesigned in an effective, collaborative, stakeholder-led way, we can provide humanitarian protection to those who need it and seek it,” said Naeem. “It’s not outside the realm of possibility.”
Read and download the full Urban Institute report here.
Watch the Panel Discussion with experts here
(This story is adapted from a WTTW Chicago PBS article published on April 18, 2024.)