The harrowing images of people evacuating from their homes in Israel and Gaza are a stark reminder that the plight of the more than 33 million refugees and 108 million displaced people around the world is only intensifying. Everything they've spent their lives building—communities, homes, careers, and social structures, has been wiped out. Between persecution, global conflicts, natural disasters, and climate change, the circumstances of refugees have steadily become more complicated. This is the moment for not only the federal refugee program, but also each of us, as members of the global community, to reconsider how we can help respond to this crisis.
Traditional U.S. resettlement assigns refugees to one of 10 refugee resettlement agencies, such as the International Rescue Committee (IRC), or the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), who is then responsible for providing the support, tools, and resources refugees need to begin their new lives. The trained staff of social workers, employment specialists, and other social service experts at these agencies help navigate all the elements of their transition—finding and helping to set up housing, identifying employment opportunities, assisting with school enrollment, health care navigation, cultural acclimation, and language literacy, among other elements.
In January 2023, the U.S. Department of State introduced the Welcome Corps, a community-based sponsorship model for refugee resettlement, and the first major innovation to the U.S. refugee resettlement process in over four decades. In this model, five or more U.S. citizens—a church group, a family, a block association, any group of folks who want to help—can form a Private Sponsor Group (PSG) to welcome a refugee family to the U.S. and into their community. Once people form a PSG, they need to raise funds for their sponsee, complete a training course facilitated by Welcome Corps, and be vetted by the State Department. They are then matched with a newly arriving refugee family and take on all the tasks of resettlement, but they do it for a single family at a time, forming a close-knit community of support. This is an exciting model—but it will only work if citizens step up and form these groups.
In the Welcome Corps, refugees quickly start to feel a sense of belonging, as they are welcomed by individual guides to help them navigate their new lives. In watching their hosts, refugees can see the challenges and joys faced by all human beings across very different cultures. For the PSGs, this kind of hands-on engagement helps remove the "otherness" of refugees and puts a human face on a conflict or crisis that is perhaps half a globe away.
While the Welcome Corps may seem innovative and perhaps untested, private sponsorship of refugees has in fact been the model in other countries around the world. Our northern neighbors in Canada have used the private sponsorship model since the 1970s (termed the Private Sponsorship of Refugees) to resettle over a million refugees. Australia's Special Humanitarian Program has also used this model with considerable success. The U.K., Argentina, Ireland, Germany, Spain, New Zealand, and others are all working on similar programs.
Relying solely on traditional refugee resettlement is risky. The per capita funding provided to resettlement agencies is wholly dependent on a refugee pipeline and continued financial, programmatic, and political support at the federal level, all of which have seen considerable losses and ongoing threats over the past decade. The changes in administrations, the COVID-19 pandemic, Afghan crisis, Ukraine war, and conflict in Israel and Gaza only scratch the surface. Since PSGs are required to independently raise funds to support arriving refugees, this shifts costs away from reliance on fickle government and often politically driven programs and helps to ensure better funding sustainability.
The Welcome Corps won't eliminate the need for traditional agency-based resettlement. Instead, each is stronger as a complement to the other. As Welcome Corps ramps up, it will take time to engage, train, and vet private groups to support the increasing volume of refugees. The 2024 refugee admissions cap is set at 125,000, more people than private sponsors could ever handle, and more than the U.S. has seen since the early 1990s. Additionally, while community sponsorship is ideal for individuals and families with standard resettlement needs, refugees with medically complex needs or other social challenges may be beyond what a volunteer community group is able or willing to take on. By offloading more straightforward cases, resettlement agencies will have better bandwidth to take on more complex individuals and families.
This model of community-based sponsorship as a complementary strategy to traditional refugee resettlement has many benefits for communities, resettlement agencies, and most importantly, for refugees. The call to action here is simple: The means and guidance you need to form a PSG is here—all you need to do is to take that first step. Click this link and you'll be on the road to helping a family that needs it ... and opening a door wide in your own life.
Pooja Agrawal, MD, MPH, is an emergency physician and a global health specialist with over 15 years of experience working with displaced populations around the world. She is a Public Voices fellow of The OpEd Project in partnership with Yale University.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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