What’s in a name? — Refugee, Asylum-seeker, Parolee
What’s in a name? — Refugee, Asylum-seeker, Parolee
When I first arrived in the Charlotte area, most of my neighbors and colleagues were born in the United States. Today, many of my co-workers and my children’s school friends have moved here from countries all over the globe. Grocery stores that stock foods from different parts of the world have become commonplace. I routinely hear several languages, in addition to English, spoken while riding the bus uptown.
Some of this change is due to the work of the Carolina Refugee Resettlement Agency. CRRA was founded as a non-profit in 2011 but traces its roots to the mid-1990s when it began its work resettling refugees in Charlotte.
The agency’s responsibilities expanded following the evacuation of Afghan nationals from Kabul in August of 2021 and again in April of this year, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
CRRA’s Executive Director Marsha Hirsch spoke with me by phone about the services and benefits available to newcomers based on their specific legal status and the challenges she and her staff have faced in the past year.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q — What are the different statuses, assigned by the government to people fleeing from their home countries, who have permission to remain in the U.S.?
A — Our office receives individuals who had fled from their home to a second country, registered with the United Nations as refugees and then have been moved forward to the United States Government and the State Department to enter the United States with that specific status.
A refugee has a very specific set of service requirements and will be eligible for lawful permanent residency and eventually naturalization.
An asylee is someone who came to the United States in some other manner and then made an application to the U.S. Immigration Court system stating that they feared to return home. They had a persecution claim that was reviewed by the U.S. court system and a judge granted them asylum, their application to remain in the United States.
Q — What about asylum-seekers, whose cases are still pending?
Based on the federal funding that we have, CRRA would not be able to work with them until they had been granted asylum.
Q — More recently two humanitarian parole programs have been introduced, first for Afghan nationals and then for people fleeing the war in Ukraine. Is this a new status?
A — Humanitarian parole is not a new or special status. Many people, particularly coming through the southern border, are granted parole. That means that they are allowed to enter the United States legally, under the government’s protection, but they are not able to remain in the country permanently.
There is also an alternative to parole, for people from some countries, Temporary Protected Status. It is not a pathway to lawful, permanent residency or citizenship. It’s a status that requires an ongoing renewal process. TPS is up for renewal at the discretion of the United States government every so many years moving forward. Sometimes it’s 12 months, 18 months, 24 months. Each country is a little bit different.
Q — Why is legal status — refugee, asylee or parolee, so important?
A — I can understand how people fleeing from a war zone would perceive themselves as refugees. But, from a legal point of view and point of view of an office where there are federal dollars tied to very strict eligibility requirements, I’m going to be more specific in my language.
The refugee resettlement program is administered through the United Nations and U.S. State Department and the asylum program is administered through the U.S. Immigration Court system, so they are two different sets of procedures.
There was no funding in our office for people that have come into the United States with humanitarian parole, until the program with the Afghan evacuees last year.
Q — What is different about the humanitarian parole program for Afghan evacuees?
A — The Afghan parole program was devised under a unique set of circumstances whereby people were specifically evacuated from Kabul and came to U.S. military bases around the country last fall. They were then dispersed throughout the country. Some were assigned to our office for us to provide resettlement services.
Their resettlement services were not to the same specificity as we are required to provide for refugees but included certainly the bulk of the work such as assisting with housing, going to the health department, enrolling children in the public school system, enrolling adults into the ESL classes and assisting with employment.
The Biden Administration’s allowing this particular group of people to enter the country with parole and then funding refugee resettlement services was unique.
Q — The parole period for Afghan nationals lasts for two years and they are also eligible for help with immigration applications, correct?
A — We’re making our best effort on that. We don’t have an attorney on our staff. Even in immigration firms in the area, it is rare that people want to become involved in the asylum process.
While they received refugee resettlement services to a fair degree, they do not have refugee status so they’re not eligible at this time for lawful, permanent residency and certainly not for citizenship. If their asylum claim was granted, then they could wind up getting a green card through the asylum process.
Q — A two-year Ukrainian Humanitarian Parole (UHP) program was introduced in April. Each parolee is sponsored by someone already in the U.S. Are there other differences between the Afghan and Ukrainian programs?
A — With refugee resettlement, the cases are assigned to us. We have an arrival date, we have plans for them, and the staff is prepared for each case in an orderly fashion.
One difference is that Ukrainians are not being assigned to our office. This is an unassigned program. So randomly people may be calling us for guidance or assistance.
The prospect that people are just randomly calling, arriving in the local area, trying to find their way is going to create a sense of chaos and confusion not only for the people themselves but also for our staff.
I think as we move forward we’ll start to understand a little bit better what these ‘parolee-sponsor’ relationships are shaping up to be and how that is going to affect the people that have come in through this program.
Q — What adjustments did your agency make to accommodate UHP?
A — First and foremost I looked to hire people with those language skills and the ability to learn refugee resettlement procedures in order to even begin to launch the program.
That person has been hired in this past month. Now we need to go through the inquiries of people who started arriving back in the late spring and early summer.
In the meantime, we have continued to receive inquiries from other newer arrivals. So that’s a process that we’re just now stepping into.
Q — Each program you described has its own complexities. What other challenges does your staff face?
A — The needs people have are often filled at multiple levels of government. Social Security cards would be a federal government office where food stamps or Medicaid or cash assistance would be happening at the county office level and then be processed through the state government.
Each need is a different government entity and each government entity has its own paperwork and procedures. Even for the resettlement offices, sometimes these government offices are not always functioning smoothly.
Right now, Mecklenburg County has a massive EBT food stamp card backlog. So even refugees that we’ve applied for weeks ago have not received their food stamps. It’s not just for refugees, not just for Ukrainian parolees but for all the residents of this county.
Layered on top of that a parolee from another group, another country may not be eligible for food stamps. But the Ukrainians are.
The Department of State Refugee Coordinators’ office communicate each group’s eligibility to appropriate supervisors and counterparts in the state government and then they would need to inform the county-level DSS supervisors who in turn need to update their staff!
So, you could see that taking quite a few layers to get that information to flow down to a given worker who would then recognize the eligibility of a Ukrainian parolee.
Q — What would you suggest to someone who has arrived under the Ukrainian parolee program?
A — I would advise patience and to have them try to understand how all these different government offices operate.
Whatever you imagined the United States to be before you arrived here, that you need to set that aside and experience the country and the system that you are now living inside of on its own set of processes.
Don’t compare yourself to other newcomers, don’t compare yourself to other people in other parts of the country. You’re living in North Carolina. These are the procedures of the North Carolina government.
Q — It feels like, within the country and within our region there are distinct groups forming of people who are fleeing their countries, who are all trying to build a better life. But, at least initially, they are receiving different treatment. How do you think the status they have been assigned will impact them in the long term?
A — Refugees will continue to receive the same services and to have the same clear pathway that has always been the case.
But, for these other populations of people and the non-refugee statuses they’ve been granted, they will have to continue to pursue, or update, or renew their legal status on a regular basis.
That, I think, is a big responsibility.
