Help an Afghan SIV Family Keep Their Home

A family of U.S. Afghan allies who recently arrived in North Texas urgently need your help!

As you know, refugee support services in the U.S. have been slashed, cut, and/or frozen since January— with devastating effects for many recently-arrived Afghan families. The Halimi family arrived here one month before these cuts, and have struggled to survive without the cash assistance that they were depending on for rent. They depend on food banks, food stamps, and the goodwill of their neighbors to live.

Mr. Halimi previously worked as a security guard at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan. A few months ago, he arrived in Fort Worth, Texas on a Special Immigrant Visa with his teenaged son. Because he was not able to afford the fees for his wife and other children to get passports, the rest of his family remains stranded in Afghanistan, and he and his son do not know when they will see them again.

Mr. Halimi is an older man who speaks no English and has limited education. It has been incredibly difficult for him to find any employment in Fort Worth. Through his hard work and the support of the community, he has managed to get a job at DFW Airport starting in May, but he currently has no income and faces overdue rent bills that he cannot pay. (For an account of similar challenges faced by Afghan refugees in Houston, see this story). He is desperate to provide a stable home for himself and for his son, who attends a nearby school.

I met Mr. Halimi through a friend in the local Afghan community, and I know him to be a kind, gracious, dignified man. He reminds me strongly of other Afghan fathers I have known— fathers who quietly and unquestioningly worked all their lives to provide a better future for their children.

Mr. Halimi risked his life to provide a better future for his children— literally: the SIV application requires a written statement that the applicant's life is at risk in Afghanistan. Yet now he and his son are facing unimaginable hardship at the hands of an America that seems indifferent to them.

I would really like to demonstrate that America does care about them. I believe that it's possible for us to raise the money to pay their rent (including back rent) so that they will not lose their apartment before Mr. Halimi starts his job. That would require at least $3000.

Please give whatever you can to be a part of a better American story for them!