The Welcome Corps: A ‘Private’ Sponsorship Program for Refugees
By Nayla Rush on March 16, 2023
Summary: The Welcome Corps initiative, billed as a private sponsorship program for refugees, hands over the control of most of the resettlement process to refugee advocates in the United States and allows them to select their own refugees, who are future American citizens. Far from being purely privately funded, U.S. taxpayer funds will be used to resettle refugees through this program.
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Two years into the Biden presidency, the State Department announced the launch of a private sponsorship program for refugees within the U.S. resettlement program, the Welcome Corps, which “empowers everyday Americans to play a leading role in welcoming refugees arriving through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) and supporting their resettlement and integration as they build new lives in the United States.”
Under this new program, refugees will be selected for resettlement into the United States and then assisted during their first few months here by private individuals. These prerogatives were, until now, those of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and nine religious or community-based organizations called “resettlement agencies”. UNHCR was entrusted with the selection and referral of refugees for resettlement into the United States, while resettlement agencies were funded by the Department of State to assist refugees upon arrival.
This will no longer exclusively be the case with the launching of the Welcome Corps. This doesn’t mean that refugees will stop being selected for resettlement by UNHCR and assisted upon arrival by resettlement agencies. The U.S. resettlement program is just expanding by allowing private individuals (backed by various humanitarian organizations) to take on the primary responsibility of selecting, welcoming, and providing initial support to refugees. It will not replace, but is complementary to, the traditional resettlement process led by UNHCR and resettlement agencies.
https://cis.org/Report/Welcome-Corps-Private-Sponsorship-Program-Refugees
