Officials launch aid effort for Afghan evacuees

Three former presidents and first ladies have joined with religious leaders, faith-based refugee resettlement agencies and others to support a new national organization with the goal of making it easier to help Afghan evacuees arriving in the United States.

Welcome.US launched Tuesday to provide a single point of entry for Americans to donate to frontline organizations, host arriving families through AirBnb and find other ways to help Afghans as they rebuild their lives in the U.S. after fleeing the Taliban.

“We know that doing the work of making our new neighbors welcome is the starting point for the many ways in which their presence will enrich us all,” Cecilia Muñoz, co-chair of Welcome.US, said during a virtual news conference Tuesday morning.

“This is what we do when we’re at our best, and we’re proud to have developed an approach to help Americans do this work together.”

Muñoz, who was director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under former President Barack Obama, is chairing the organization alongside John Bridgeland, who directed the council under former President George W. Bush.

Obama, Bush and former President Bill Clinton — along with former first ladies Michelle Obama and Laura Bush and former first lady and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — also are serving as honorary co-chairs “to lift up everyone else involved and remind us that this is our opportunity, in a time of all too much division, for common purpose,” according to

the Welcome.US website.

They are joined by leaders from several faithbased refugee resettlement groups, which form the backbone of the U.S. refugee resettlement program. Those groups have been working independently to meet the needs of Afghans arriving with Special Immigrant Visas or on humanitarian parole since the U.S. withdrew troops Afghanistan last month.

Since 2009, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service has supported about 10,000 Afghanswith housing, employment assistance, medical support, cultural orientation and other resettlement services, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said during the virtual news conference. The group has seen a “tremendous outpouring of support” in recent weeks, she said, with more than 45,000 people signing up to volunteer.

Americans are looking for ways to help, she added.

“Americans across the country and across the political spectrum … are eager to welcome Afghan allies and refugees as their newest neighbors. So many individuals, communities and congregations have a deeply personal connection to this historic effort, and they are openfrom ing their homes, literally and figuratively, once again for Afghans in need,” Vignarajah said.

Welcome.US also lists a diverse group of religious leaders as part of its Welcome Council.

Among them are Bishop Michael Curry, head of the Episcopal Church; prominent New Age author and alternative medicine guru Deepak Chopra; Cardinal Joseph Tobin, archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., and many others.