`Welcome home’: Let’s give permanent status to Afghan evacuees

I grew up in America feeling small every day.

My family and I immigrated to the United States in the early 1980s as refugees from Afghanistan. Our story, like that of so many immigrant families, has faded with time, but I recognize shades of our journey in the experiences of newly arrived Afghans rebuilding their lives in cities and towns across America. The Philadelphia area has been the gateway to safety for more than 30,000 of these evacuated Afghans, and home of the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, where more than 10,000 Afghans lived for months as they underwent processing and awaited resettlement.

Like many of the Afghans who have come to the United States in the last year, my family’s path to America was long and perilous. Our family was separated in the chaos of our exit and we had to leave behind loved ones, many of whom remained in Afghanistan for years, waiting for a way out that never came. When we finally made it to this country, our first home was a small apartment in New York City that another Afghan family offered to share with us as we got on our feet. My parents, neither of whom spoke English, needed that time to learn enough of the language to find work.

My family’s path to America was long and perilous.

My father had studied economics and spoke Farsi, Pashto, French, and German. He ran a family business in Afghanistan before his escape. In New York, he sold newspapers out of a kiosk in midtown Manhattan. My mother, who had been a teacher in Kabul, found work sweeping up hair at a beauty salon across town.

The mid-1980s in New York City were not an easy time for immigrants like us. Racist and anti-immigrant behavior was socially acceptable, and children were not spared from it. On many occasions, we were made to feel as if we had been transplanted into a body that was meant to always reject us. For most of my childhood, American life seemed off-limits and out of reach.

Fast-forward almost 40 years, and much has changed for my family. My parents are nearing retirement, having built a comfortable life. They’ve watched their three children launch careers that wouldn’t have been accessible to the children of immigrants at a different point in our country’s history. And they have grandchildren whose paths will not have to cross peril to reach possibility.

For all we’ve been through, somewhere along the way, my family became as much a part of the fabric of America as anyone who was born here.

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The United States has changed a lot as well. That’s become obvious to me in the last year, as I’ve joined countless other Americans helping Afghans who escaped the Taliban transition to their new lives here. The generosity and compassion that I have seen from my fellow Americans have been remarkable. People of faith, veterans, and other ordinary Americans across the country — from downtown Los Angeles to Center City Philadelphia — have taken on the mantles of ambassadors, welcomers, helpers, and healers.

They’ve stepped in to evacuate at-risk Afghans when our government was not moving with enough urgency. They’ve locked arms with one another to sponsor entire families in hopes of helping them restart their lives here with dignity and in community. And they’ve taken it upon themselves to embody the values that have long made America a shining city on a hill for people seeking refuge and searching for peace.

More recently, ordinary Americans have also undertaken a herculean effort to ensure that the Afghans whose lives they are helping rebuild have lasting safety in the United States by way of an Afghan Adjustment Act, a piece of bipartisan legislation that was recently introduced in both houses of Congress.

Born of many months of grassroots advocacy, heavily negotiated between Republicans and Democrats, the Afghan Adjustment Act recognizes that newly arrived Afghans are already a part of our American family. It would provide a streamlined path to permanent status for the more than 76,000 Afghans who have resettled in the United States in the last year.

For all the cynicism that I amassed growing up the way I did, the people who have worked alongside me to welcome and resettle Afghans over the last 12 months and have helped get this legislation introduced have buoyed my faith in America — a country that I have loved since I was a kid but that I have only recently come to believe has the capacity to love me back.

Members of Congress must follow their constituents’ lead by passing the bipartisan Afghan Adjustment Act without delay, and taking this final step in welcoming new Afghan Americans home.

America today isn’t the America that my family had to navigate almost 40 years ago. It’s bigger, and it’s better. It’s more up to the task of ensuring that no kid feels small in a country where he is meant to dream big.

Joseph M. Azam is a lawyer, writer, and policy adviser currently serving as the board chair of the Afghan-American Foundation.