Help a family get settled in Syracuse

My friend Somayeh introduced me to an asylum-seeking Afghan family that recently arrived in Syracuse. I have known Somayeh for eight years, and it has been great to help and watch her family get established in the community. She hasn’t asked me before to get involved with other new families, but this is a desperate situation. I’m hoping many of you will help me raise just enough money to cover this new family's rent and utilities for 6 months, to give them a chance to get started. Below is their story, as told by one of its members.

‏Hi, my name is Arifa, I’m living with my family, we are 6 people, it’s me, my mom, my brother his wife and their two kids, we are from Afghanistan. We were all studying there, my brother computers, his wife economics and I was studying law. We studied with many difficulties because we are Hazara and Shia and weren’t treated properly in schools, universities and society in general. They attacked and harassed us in schools, universities and educational centers, we continued to study and live with all these problems, but when the Taliban took over schools, universities and job opportunities were closed for girls. The Taliban checked our house several times because my brother’s wife worked for a news website. We didn’t feel safe and decided to immigrate so we could be safe and continue our studies. We traveled to Iran and got a Brazilian humanitarian visa. We stayed at a refugee camp in Brazil for about two weeks, we were not taken care of there, due to the increase in the number of refugees, so we decided to travel to America.

We traveled through nine countries to reach America: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico. We traveled much of the way by bus, only we crossed the ocean from Colombia to Panama by boat. This was very scary because it was the middle of the night and all of us specifically the kids were scared, there were about 40-50 or more people in a small boat and we were afraid of drowning. After the ocean we walked three days in the jungle of Panama, we crossed about five mountains and lots of valleys in Panama. One of the worst nights of our trip was crossing the border between Mexico and America, the kids were sick and we walked about eleven hours at night in the mountains between Mexico and America to cross the border.

We endured all the difficulties of the trip to reach America to have a good and prosperous life and to study, but when we crossed the border and entered America, police officers took us to prison for two days and they gave us parole papers for two months and transferred us to a hotel in San Diego. We stayed in the hotel for 21 days, we were not allowed to go out or even leave our rooms, every day they gave us the same meal, which was very little. We were waiting for a shelter or organizations to help us and get us out, then we found an organization, that said they will help us go to New York. They rented us a house and paid for two months and now say we can’t pay the rent anymore. When they helped us apply for food stamps and other services the government didn’t accept us, they said we are not eligible because we crossed the border.

Now because we don’t have social security and job permits we are not able to pay rent, food and other facilities, and we can't find a lawyer to apply for our asylum. If you could help us we will be very happy.