For Rohingya refugees displaced in Bangladeshi camps, conditions grow ever more dire as international aid dwindles, Rohingya social justice activist Yasmin Ullah reported during a webinar co-sponsored by HIAS and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on November 16.
Together with partners in the American Jewish community, HIAS is launching a network of what it hopes will be at least 100 sponsorship circles. Through these Welcome Circles, HIAS plans to resettle between 500 to 1,000 Afghan refugees in communities across the country.
Title 42 has largely closed America’s borders to refugees and asylum seekers. When the pandemic hit, Trump administration invoked the 75-year-old public health law that, they claimed, gave immigration authorities the power to expel migrants without providing them their legally mandated opportunity to seek protection in the U.S.
HIAS, along with 70 other organizations, has signed a letter demanding that the Biden administration "immediately end its embrace, defense, and advancement of illegal and cruel Trump administration policies that harm families and people seeking protection and bolster xenophobic rhetoric by treating people seeking protection as threats."
In a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, Mark Hetfield argued that Afghan humanitarian parolees should have access to the same rights and benefits as refugees.
