World Relief, a Christian organization which has partended with churches and communities in over 80 countries, has raised $3 million in the past 2 weeks in order to pay rent for legal refugees.
“It said, stop all work,” Matthew Soerens, the vice president of advocacy and policy for World Relief, said. “But we were not going to not show up at the airport. We were not going to not make sure that they had a place to sleep that night and a warm meal.” It’s not a heavy lift to meet people at an airport and buy them a meal. What worries the folks at World Relief more is who was going to pay their rent for the next 90 days? Usually, that time period is covered by federal money distributed through various partners so that refugees have time to get on their feet and find a job, but now the State Department has ordered World Relief and other charities to immediately cease doing that. And who was going to pay rent for the thousands of other families World Relief was supporting, both in the U.S. and overseas?
Soerens also referenced a recent survey by LifeWay Research, which found that 70% of American evangelicals say they believe the country has a moral responsibility to receive refugees.
“There’s about 4,000 people, who the government invited to come to the United States, and arranged plane travel for,“ he says. “It’s very different from some of the other immigration debates.“
The organization estimated that the U.S. government’s failure to pay rent for legal refugees would leave them with an $8 million funding hole in their budget.
Late last month, World Relief urged the Trump administration to reconsider its decision after suspending the United States Refugee Admission Program (USRAP).
Photo Credit: ©Facebook/World Relief
