Sunday, November 30, 2025

So these Episcopal churches and Charities, the EMMs, Episcopal Migration Ministries, receive their money from the State Department to resettle "refugees" and effectively become the welfare arm of the state?  The church volunteered to do that? 

All Saints Church welcomes all refugees, and certainly in this Christmas season when Mary and Joseph were technically internally displaced persons.  But soon after Jesus was born, they were refugees as they fled to Africa to avoid Herod's wrath and this is a good time of year and this is a good time of year look at this and to learn what is going on in our church.  The Episcopal Church is a major player in refugee resettlement and to dream a little about how all Saints Church can continue to be involved.

2:00.  Now I want to speak a little bit about EMM in general before we get into the Asylum process.  So EMM prior to 2016 had 31 affiliate offices throughout the country.  And after the previous presidential Administration we landed with 11 affiliate officers now that's because we get funding through the US State Department to resettle refugees, and when that funding dried up because we just weren't resetting refugees at the same rate, we had to let go of a lot of staff.  And so are we dropped 20 affiliates.  When Afghanistan, when Kabul fell and we began to realize that we were going to be starting to relocate thousands upon thousands of Afghans, we had to staff up very significantly as did all the other refugees settlement agencies throughout the country.  Just to give you a sense, in 2020 all 9 Refugee resettlement agencies resettled about 18,000 refugees in the year 2020.  Right now, all nine Refugee resettlement agencies of which EMM has one we are resettling 4,000 refugees 4,000 Afghans a week so $18,000 for the whole year in 2020 and now we're at 4000 every week.  So the need for places to relocate Afghans is enormous.  They become a an asylee and they become eligible for public benefits, SSI, Medicaid, and are able to work legally.  Asylees can also apply to have some family members join them in the United States and a year after being granted Asylum asylees are eligible to apply for a green card.  So I work as a missionary for neighbor to neighbor so what is it well neighbors and neighbor is a program of EMM that equips congregations to welcome and the company known as Community sponsorship.  Community sponsorship in our context is we are inviting Episcopal congregation to minister to the needs of Asylum Seekers and Afghan arrivals I promised you it would Circle back through a model known as Community sponsorship.  So it's a unique opportunity for us to welcome a new neighbor into our community.  And sponsors we'd ask congregations to sponsor individuals by providing physical spiritual and emotional support to a newly arriving neighbor.

4:42.  Now, this is a lot of work, right, as Mike mentioned you'll have participated in sponsoring a family before.  And for anyone who's involved, you know it is not an easy lift and it takes about 5 to 10 people with to designated co-chairs of the committee to make this all happen.  As I mentioned, Afghan arrivals have complicated refugee resettlement in a way that is really we haven't seen since in the last 40 years.  So there are two tracks within neighbor-to-neighbor to respond to the need.  So, one, you can be matched with an Asylum Seeker right someone who either comes to the US border at a Port of Entry or maybe comes here on his tourist visa and, says, "Oh my gosh.  I don't feel safe going back to my home country."  They claim Asylum or we could you know it can be matched with an Afghan parolee so amidst the entire Afghan situation with Cobble falling the Department of Homeland Security issued a process known as "Humanitarian Parole," where they paroled in thousands of Afghans and that those were the planes that you saw, right, leaving the tarmac in Afghanistan.  So they were all paroled into this country and then placed on military bases and from these military bases right that's where all the 11 affiliate offices are relocating the Afghans throughout the country.  What's happening is there are so many Afghans and the military bases are not equipped to handle the winter that is upon us and so the US state department instituted a thing called sponsorship circles and so emm is becoming a sponsorship umbrella and local congregations can serve as a sponsor Circle so a sponsor circle is 5 to 10 people who say yep we are going to do the work of relocating an Afghan family and then emm supports you in that work and that is considered track two of neighbor to neighbor and based on the needs of the time the neighbor to neighbor missioner will determine which program best fits the congregation circumstances because the reality is the needs are changing so quickly within this work that one week we may think yep we have an Afghan arriving to Seattle or to Austin Texas or to Miami Florida and then everything changes and all of a sudden we have a Honduran family who needs a sponsorship and so that's why we have to be nimble and always on our toes ready to react to what is going on at the time

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