A change in plan
State officials say the delay in sending out the new round of immigrant relief money is largely because they needed to refocus last fall on resettling thousands of Afghan refugees.
Sarah Peterson, Washington state’s refugee coordinator, wrote in an email that between September and mid-February, the state welcomed nearly 3,000 evacuees from Afghanistan. That’s almost three times the total number of refugees the state resettled during the previous year, but crammed into only six months, she wrote.
“The pace and volume of Afghan arrivals into the state created more of an emergency situation than traditional refugee settlement,” Peterson wrote.
Peterson’s office, the Office of Refugee and
→ Continue reading at Crosscut
