Afghan evacuees subjected U.S. refugee workers to racism and sexism because they were “unaccustomed to the norms of U.S. society” and the ad hoc nature of the 2021 airlift left the government with too little time to blunt their racism through a full orientation, according to an inspector general’s report.
Some evacuees refused to work with caseworkers who were women or minorities.
Agency workers were putting in 14-hour days, seven days a week, only to face what the audit called “verbal abuse” by evacuees who thought they weren’t being treated very well.
The workload and the abuse took their toll, with resettlement agencies reporting an unprecedented attrition rate of up to 20% in less than a year.
Employees begged for mental health resources to help them deal with the whirlwind they were thrown into, according to the State Department’s inspector general.
Investigators found the chaotic airlift and the overwhelming numbers — some 72,000 Afghans were welcomed and resettled by the Afghan Placement and Assistance program — were too much for the U.S. to accommodate seamlessly.
“The APA Program was an unprecedented and demanding effort that presented substantial challenges for the nine [resettlement agencies] that implemented the program,” the audit found.
On the plus side, the resettlement agencies said they had no complaints about Uncle Sam’s funding — nearly $2.8 billion that Mr. Biden allocated for helping the evacuees — and said coordination among federal agencies was generally good.
The Washington Times has reached out to the State Department for comment on the report.
The arriving Afghans were fleeing their homes amid the Taliban’s takeover in the summer of 2021.
The U.S. evacuation effort was intended to bring out those who assisted the 20-year U.S. war effort, but experts say in reality many of those who made it onto the planes were Kabul’s middle class, with little ties to the U.S. effort.
Meanwhile, thousands of authentic allies who did assist in the war effort were left behind.
The chaos of the airlift meant the new arrivals weren’t refugees but rather were brought in under Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s power of “parole.”
If they’d come as refugees, they would have been required to take part in cultural orientation both overseas and after arrival here. Parolees have no such requirement — and the inspector general said that created many of the problems encountered by resettlement agencies.
“For example, some RA staff reported experiencing racism and sexism from Afghan clients unaccustomed to the norms of U.S. society. Another RA reported that some parolees refused to work with female case managers or case managers from minority groups,” the audit found.
The clash of cultures has played out in criminal cases, too.
The Times has reported on one evacuee accused of molesting a teenage girl who defended his actions to investigators by saying it was part of his culture to hug and kiss children.
Another case involved a man accused of beating his wife and slashing her wrists with a razor because she took a seat at an evacuee meeting, while his brother had to stand.
The inspector general said some new arrivals came with mental health issues, exacerbated by the sudden move from Afghanistan to the U.S. and trauma they faced back home.
The chaos of the evacuation meant resettlement agencies weren’t always alerted to those needs before the evacuees arrived, and there just wasn’t enough capacity in some clinics to care for those issues.
“Even when such care was available to parolees, many did not believe that they were necessary or effective in treating mental health issues,” the audit found.
Health care capacity did improve when Congress made evacuees eligible for Medicaid, the inspector general said.
The crush of people overwhelmed housing supplies in some cities, forcing Afghans to be stashed in hotels or vacation rentals. That meant they struggled to enroll their kids in school or to apply for jobs because they didn’t have a permanent address.
And Afghans were often disappointed when they moved from cushy hotels to permanent homes in less opulent apartments or houses.
