The Biden administration announced it will allow private citizens to sponsor Afghan refugees. Under the Sponsor Circle Program, people can pool together funds to help an Afghan family. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 left many vulnerable Afghans behind. The Sponsor Circle program involves bringing together five adults in your area and raising $2,275 for each Afghan individual you want to help resettle in your community. Sponsors commit to assisting the refugees through their first three months in the community through helping locate housing, job searching, and registering children for school.
Importantly, by forming a Sponsor Circle, you are not directly enabling Afghans to enter the U.S. who otherwise wouldn’t be able to do so. Instead, you are speeding up the process of resettling Afghans who have already entered the US through what is known as humanitarian parole but who are stuck on military bases because the official resettlement infrastructure cannot get everyone settled right away.
The Biden administration is also planning in the first half of this year to launch a fuller private sponsorship program — one that would allow Americans to sponsor an Afghan family to enter the US who otherwise would not be able to.