Milwaukee Volunteers Helping Afghan Refugees Adjust

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It has been a year and a half since more than 120,000 people were evacuated from Afghanistan during the withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops from the country. Hundreds of those evacuees have been resettled to Milwaukee and other cities in Wisconsin with what local and state officials say are mixed but overall positive results. 

Thousands of the evacuees were initially sent to a resettlement staging area located at Ft. McCoy in western Wisconsin and about 200 of those refugees still reside in Wisconsin. Hundreds more have since been resettled here from other locations, bringing the state’s influx of recent Afghan refugees to 868. The Milwaukee area is home to about half of those. 

Sheila Badwan, a committee member with the Milwaukee-based Hanan Refugee Relief Group, said many of the Afghan refugees, especially those who worked for or with the U.S. government in Afghanistan and who speak at least some English, are adjusting well. For others, however, it has been a struggle to become comfortable with an American culture which has such stark differences from that which they left behind.

Some of the refugees are already independent or mostly self-sufficient because they have come to understand that we have a more regimented and scheduled daily life than they were used to, especially in regard to being part of the American workforce. “Some still struggle to understand things like household budgeting, paying bills and even being on time for work every day. It’s the types of things they didn’t have to deal with where they came from,” Badwan said. 

Refugee Settlement Agency

Hanan began as a volunteer organization which relied solely on donations to assist refugees from several parts of the world. Badwan said its initial involvement with the new Afghan refugees was through working with the Muslim Women’s Coalition in Milwaukee to send a truckload of donated supplies to those housed temporarily at Ft. McCoy. It has since morphed into an official refugee resettlement agency after receiving federal funding for programs to help Afghans and other refugees learn English, get drivers licenses, enroll in schools, find housing, get employment and enter the process of earning American citizenship. 

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But it’s addressing cultural differences which is often at the heart of helping any refugee population and, for the Afghan refugees it includes acceptance of western world attitudes about gender equality. 

“It’s difficult for many of them to simply adjust to our culture, especially when it comes to freedoms for women,” Badwan said. “Some husbands at first didn’t want their wives and daughters coming to ESL classes (English as a second language) or even taking the bus. But we’re getting through those problems by providing transportation and other incentives like offering day care onsite.”

Badwan said much of her organization’s efforts focus on women and girls who were denied access to education in their home country. She said there were difficulties in getting the women to regularly show up for ESL classes until good attendance was made a requisite for enrollment in driving courses and other assistance in getting drivers licenses. “Now we have almost perfect attendance,” she said. Badwan said there is also considerable interest in higher education coursework from many of the women. Many of the refugees are now enrolled in class at MATC. 

Complex Dynamics

Hanan has also focused on helping younger Afghan refugees to understand and engage in the complex dynamics which are present in American teenage culture. “We want them to fit in at school, so we set up a program which exposes them to it. We take them on trips to public museums and things like that. We try to make it fun so it’s not just a boring lecture,” Badwan said.

Resettlement efforts from Hanan and other groups are working well according to Bojana Zoric Martinez, Director of the Bureau of Refugee Programs within the Wisconsin Department of Children Families. She is also the State Refugee Coordinator, a position established to better mesh the state’s assistance programs with those of federal and local governments and refugee assistance organizations.

“We’re all doing a good job of bridging some of the cultural gaps experienced by this population,” Zoric Martinez told Shepherd Express. “Their situation is also unique because of the sudden move they had to make. There was a lot of trauma experienced during that 11 day period when the Taliban took over. They faced very real uncertainty about who would get out and how and then not knowing where or if they would be accepted.”

Zoric Martinez said some of the refugees had connections in already established Afghan communities and that provided at least some familiarity and support upon which they could rely. “But we didn’t have that in Wisconsin, so they have faced a bigger and more unique challenge here,” she said. “We’re building from scratch and from the ground up to help them gain a sense of community and belonging.”

While the process has been mostly successful, Zoric Martinez said it hasn’t been achieved without some hiccups. She cited the affordable housing crisis which affects everyone but has made things especially difficult for Afghan refugee families, some of which are larger than those of the average modern American family structure. But she said local agencies have been able to find stable housing for most refugee families which works for them. 

Companies are Hiring

The COVID-19 pandemic also threw additional challenges at the Afghan population just as it did for other refugees and nearly every employment sector. However, employers here have been supportive. “We have many companies in the Milwaukee area and in Wisconsin which are very excited to hire Afghans and other refugees because they know from experience that people with refugee backgrounds are likely to stay in their jobs and are committed to them. They look at their employers as family as much as anything else,” Zoric Martinez said. 

Both Badwan and Zoric Martinez stressed that long term success for refugee families hinges largely on the assistance they get in the first months or first year after their arrival. But many will likely continue to return to those who helped them even several years later, seeking help in particular with naturalization and citizenship processes. “They don’t need much hand holding after that first year, but they often look to us for some help in navigating the system, whether it’s getting a green card, becoming a citizen or even regaining the certifications necessary for them to return to the jobs they may have had as doctors or accountants or others before they had to leave Afghanistan,” Zoric Martinez said. 

While most of the refugees seem to be adjusting well to their new life in America, including in Milwaukee, Badwan says many still suffer from “survivor’s guilt” because they had to leave family members and other loved ones behind. However, she says the Afghan refugees have demonstrated resilience which has been aided by the communities into which they’ve settled. “The reception they got in Milwaukee has been hugely supportive,” Badwan said. “From churches, synagogues and mosques to 35 different organizations, the hundreds of volunteers and even the mayor’s office, we’ve been able to work together to begin forming a real Afghan community here.”

For Zoric Martinez, not an Afghan but an immigrant refugee herself, it has been gratifying to live in a state which she says appreciates the sacrifices made by this new Afghan population. “I am very, very proud of Wisconsin and Milwaukee for the support they have provided to this particular community and for understanding that so many of them put their lives on the line to protect American servicemen and women and the American government overseas,” she said. “Wisconsin is one of the states which is leading by example in showing how federal, state and local service providers are connected and how they should collaborate to benefit the refugee population and society in general. We should take a lot of pride in that.”