Sponsor Circles Let Ordinary Americans Resettle Refugees

After years of attrition and lost funding, refugee resettlement agencies are hard pressed to meet the needs of those fleeing persecution in many parts of the world. Private citizens are stepping into the void with citizen-led resettlement efforts in Canada and the U.S.

One prominent example, the Sponsor Circle program, is featured in a New Yorker article about the emergency response to the arrival of Afghani and Ukrainean refugees. This American program is modelled on a citizen-led resettlement effort in Canada. Group of five or more adults can work together to establish network of ordinary americans — e.g. pastors, professors, military veterans — ready to welcome newcomers. They meet airplanes at U.S. bases, find apartments or host families in their own houses, facilitate applications for schools and health services, assist with obtaining legal documents such as asylum applications, provide job-hunting support, and help buffer the countless day-to-day adjustments to living in a new land. All told, Sponsor Circle volunteers commit to background checks, developing a welcome plan, fundraising $2,275 per refugee, and providing three months minimum of assistance. The model is successful precisely because it cultivates these kinds of local bonds that researchers show facilitate immigrant integation.

In the midst of several global migration crisis, interest in starting these programs has proliferated to dozens of other countries. For example, the U.S. has Sponsor Circles for Afghani refugees and more will house the 100,000 Ukrainean refugees President Biden has pledged to admit through Uniting for Ukraine. In the U.K., two hundred thousand people and organizations have expressed interest in housing Ukrainians displaced by Russian invasion through Circle Health and other Sponsor Circles.

Of course, citizen-led efforts are not the only way to respond to refugee resettlement and these efforts can be challenging given the lack of comprehensive skills in well-meaning and yet decentralized, amateur networks. The history of refugee resettlement efforts includes waves of voluntarism and government refugee resettlement offices, with the balance of resettlement shifting toward the professionalized efforts of government offices since the 1980 Refugee Act. That history and recent sagas of the private sponsorship system are retold in the article.

MHC