Afghan refugees could resettle in South Florida
Organizers ramp up services as they expect about 300 families
A South Florida man waited an agonizing five years to adopt his son from Afghanistan and bring him to the U.S. He got him out just after the Taliban took over.
Now in his third week living in South Florida with his adoptive parents, 10-yearold Noman will have the opportunity to grow up like any other American kid, attending public school and riding his bike around his neighborhood with his dad, Bahaudin Mujtaba.
In the coming months, South Florida may be an unlikely landing place for an unknown number of Afghan refugees who fled the Taliban regime. It’s more common for Afghan refugees to resettle in areas with more affordable housing and more robust public transportation, according to local refugee assistance organizers.
Since President Joe Biden’s administration more than doubled the refugee cap to 125,000 starting Oct. 1, the organizers say they do anticipate some refugees resettling here. They’re ramping up their services with volunteers to support any families who may arrive.
“That is a massive increase, so we are expecting additional refugees from Afghanistan given the recent crisis there,” said
Joanna Tooke, spokeswoman for the Refugee Assistance Alliance, an organization that supports refugees from Asia, Africa and the Middle East who resettle in South Florida.
They anticipate about 300 families from those areas resettling in South Florida. Because of that anticipation, Refugee Assistance Alliance is beefing up services and training up a team of volunteers who will help refugees learn about U.S. banking, credit, health care, schools and legal systems. “Things Americans take for granted because they’ve absorbed them as they’ve lived here,” Tooke said.
Bahaudin Mujtaba, who immigrated to the U.S. during the ’80s when he was 16, is navigating that very process for his son. Because Noman is one of only 41 children adopted from Afghanistan to the U.S. since 2000, and he is not considered a refugee, there’s no precedence for their situation.
Bureaucratic red tape and corruption in Afghanistan stalled the process for nearly five years. At times, it seemed impossible to do from the U.S., Mujtaba said.
He traveled back and forth between the U.S. and Afghanistan to fill out paperwork and try to obtain necessary documents, such as Noman’s mother’s death certificate. It should have cost the equivalent of 20 cents. Afghan government officials tried to charge him $15,000, he said.
For many adoptive parents, it becomes too much. Back when Mujtaba started the process in 2016, he sought guidance from a relative who works as a lawyer in California who had tried to adopt a child from Afghanistan with his wife.
“Give up,” he told Mujtaba. His relative told him he gave up after six months, that it was better to adopt locally. Mujtaba knows of at least 10 more families who considered adopting a child from Afghanistan, but who gave up. He knows of one family who was successful, but they had to leave their jobs in the U.S. and live in Afghanistan for more than a year to move the process along.
Mujtaba, who works as a professor of International Management and Human Resources at Nova Southeastern University, had approval to bring his son to the states. But he didn’t know how long the approval would hold up once the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan and the government fell to the Taliban. “When the chaos happened, our goal was to get him out of Afghanistan,” he said.
The plan was for soldiers to get him on a plane out of Kabul. But then local adoption agencies he was working with helped connect him with an American man who was living in Afghanistan and trying to adopt his son and bring him to the U.S. He would bring both boys back with him.
They were able to get to Germany first, where they waited for a number of days. It took them 11 days to make it to the airport in Washington, D.C., where Mujtaba met Noman and brought him back home to Florida.
After going back and forth between offices that told him he needed a passport to apply for a Social Security number, and a Social Security number to apply for a passport, Mujtaba hired lawyers to help them through the process. Noman will need a Social Security number to enjoy health care benefits, Mujtaba said.
Luckily Noman doesn’t need a Social Security number to enroll in school. He’s attending a local school with an ESOL program where he can learn English. Instructors told the family to keep speaking Persian at home so Noman can retain his native language and grow up to be bilingual.
The language barrier was a profound challenge for Mujtaba and his younger siblings when they arrived in Florida as high school aged students.
“Luckily Noman is much more courageous compared to when we came to the U.S.,” he said.
“I’m happy that finally it happened for us, and I’m hoping in the future it serves as a model for others who are willing to do the same thing. I’m hoping it eventually becomes a little bit easier,” he said. “The process should be more transparent. There are thousands and thousands of little kids in orphanages that don’t have the resources to serve these kids.”
Noman’s story recently caught the attention of local Broadway director and children’s book author Neil Goldberg. He wanted to do something special for the family.
He donated a brand new Schwinn bicycle to Noman, who knows how to ride a bike but didn’t have one of his own. Mujtaba dreamed of riding bikes with his son, he said.
Goldberg also donated a copy of his new children’s book, Pomp, Snow & CIRQUEumstance, and had the character Pomp himself surprise Noman with the bike. Both the bike and Pomp are blue, Noman’s favorite color.
Asked what he thought of his new bike, Noman said he felt happy. Later he gushed on the phone to his cousin in Orlando, trying to explain in Persian about Mr. Pomp having the color blue all over his skin, Mujtaba said.
The night he got his new blue bike, he was too excited to sleep, Mujtaba said. He woke up early to take his bike on a spin down the street before school. And the minute he got home, he told his dad they had to go on a ride together around their neighborhood.
“It feels great to ride a bike with my son,” he said. “It was so special for them to make this an exciting gift for him that he’ll remember for the rest of his life.”