By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — Laurie Spiegler, the co-chair and co-founder of Welcome Home, a volunteer group that assists refugees to settle in San Diego, has put out an SOS. Between now and February 15, as many as 1,500 Afghan refugees will be transferred from temporary lodging on U.S. military bases to the City of San Diego, where they will need everything including places to stay, furniture, bedding, personal hygiene items, paper towels, diapers, cleaning supplies, and just about everything else that cannot be purchased with food stamps.
Spiegler, a member of the Jewish community, said that she and other volunteers and contributors to Welcome Home will emphasize meeting these needs over the next three months, as well as continuing to help refugees from a variety of countries to obtain job training and educational opportunities. However, more San Diegans are needed to organize donation drives, to fundraise, and to mentor the families who are coming, she said.
Mentoring involves “making sure that the refugees get to appointments, get the right services, and ideally there would be a financial component too, perhaps from corporate sponsors, of a couple thousand dollars per person in a family.”
Money contributed to Welcome Home via its website is held in an account at the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego and used to provide for educational, vocational, and training fees; provide required books and manuals; purchase tools required for trade and assist with transportation expenses to commute to school or work, according to Spiegler.
In addition to those refugees who are being transferred from military bases, Spiegler said others from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Congo, Somalia, and Burma are being continuously resettled in San Diego County.
Four years ago, a group calling itself “Nine Angry Women” reacted negatively to former President Donald Trump’s plan to ban immigration from certain Muslim countries, feeling that arbitrarily excluding Muslims was no different than excluding Jews or any other religious or ethnic group.
“We went to this rally and we asked what can we do? We connected with Jewish Family Service and they said, ‘Do a donation drive for all the things that new Americans can’t buy with their food stamps.'”
Most of those original “angry women,” but not all, were members of the Jewish community, and after coordinating such drives, their organization morphed into “Welcome Home.” That name was chosen, according to Spiegler, because “people were saying to the refugees ‘you are not welcome’ and we wanted to say ‘you are welcome,” and furthermore that “we want this to be a new home for you, a new start, a new beginning, a place that eventually you can call ‘home’ and establish roots and have the life you are looking for.”
She said the 1,500-refugee figure is a compilation of the numbers given to Welcome Home by the four agencies most involved in assisting in their local resettlement: Jewish Family Service, Catholic Charities, International Rescue Committee, and the African Alliance. Welcome Home members do their best to provide goods and services that these agencies are unable to provide, either because of financial constraints are lack of staff.
Spiegler said she was drawn to helping refugees because of her own family history. “My grandparents came from Russia,” she said. “My grandmother saw her parents executed in front of her by the Russians in pogroms. My grandfather wrestled on the streets of New York to earn money for train passage to Omaha, where his wife had preceded him. I’m the recipient of their efforts, I am very aware, and I feel that this is my opportunity to give back. I think that for most of the people on the committee, that’s what keeps them invested and involved in ‘welcoming the stranger.'”
While the group’s steering committee consists of ten people, there are approximately 400 volunteers who have become involved in one way or the other. Current volunteer activities range from a gift card drive at Congregation Beth Israel, with the cards to be distributed to people in the New American community who need it. Another project involves going to schools and picking up jackets and coats that have gone unclaimed from ‘lost-and-founds’ and “washing them and preparing them for kids as we go into winter.” Other volunteers serve on scholarship committees.
Spiegler says strong bonds are created between volunteers and the New Americans. “When you hear their stories and meet the people, you realize how they enrich our community and how grateful they are to be here and how free they feel for the first time. We had a gentleman who was going to become a doctor again. He was working at a restaurant. He was a very kind and young man who was working and studying all the time.” An American doctor listened to the refugee doctor and told him, “I’m hopeful that this can happen.” The refugee “looked at us with tears in his eyes and he said, ‘No matter what happens I’ll always remember that you gave me this time.'”
Interestingly, the doctor who came to his aid previously was “on the fence about how he felt about refugees,” Spiegler said. But after getting to know the young man, he decided, “I want to fund him and I want to mentor him,’ and so he wrote a check for him to take the course he needed.”
In another case a young Hazara family from Afghanistan — persecuted by people from other ethnic groups — fled across the Middle East, spent time in refugee camps, and eventually made it to the United States, only to find that their three-year-old child has leukemia. Nevertheless, Spiegler said, “they are extremely optimistic young people.” The parents are working, the son’s leukemia is being treated; “they have a wonderful mentor from Jewish Family Service … they have a great apartment.”
Many of the refugees come from Muslim countries, and as a result of their interaction with Welcome Home, Spiegler said, stereotypes “are being burst on both sides, which is one of the most wonderful things. Even that young couple told us ‘Oh, what we heard about Jews; you wouldn’t believe what we heard.’ Another young woman, we fell in love with her; she fell in love with us. We have interest in their customs. I always tell people who say they want to do this because it’s American, ‘Don’t lose your customs, your food, culture or language — integrate; you don’t have to assimilate!'”
When people collect items for the refugees, Welcome Home will direct them to a drop off point, or, in the case of a very large assemblage of goods, it will arrange for several cars, or a truck, to pick them up.
Tax deductible checks can be made payable to the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego and earmarked for the Welcome Home account. The mailing address is 4950 Murphy Canyon Road, San Diego, California 92123.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com