Nurses and assistants at a San Francisco Bay Area health clinic go out of their way to welcome Afghan refugees. Former refugees and immigrants themselves, they know the shock of starting over in a new country.
The operation has been hampered by the need to scale up quickly after steep cutbacks to refugee programs under President Donald Trump. But the community response has been overwhelming and enthusiastic, said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, one of nine national resettlement agencies.
The state of Oklahoma has received about half of the 1,800 people it was told to expect, said Carly Akard, spokeswoman for Catholic Charities of Oklahoma City. Akard said that in their rush to escape, many of the refugees arrived without identification.In San Jose, the clinic is scrambling to hire more people and reallocate staff for the more than 800 people expected in the county through September.
Most staff members are bilingual, and come from a number of countries, including China, Myanmar, Sierra Leone and Mexico, said Mylene Madrid, who coordinates the refugee health assessment program. But staff can help even without speaking the same language. By then, her pains had receded. Pham noticed that the woman’s daughter and son-in-law were upbeat and more comfortable speaking English. She pulled the daughter aside.Staff members have gone out of their way to connect patients to jobs, furnish empty apartments and tap the broader community for rent and other relief. They’ve stocked diapers for babies and handed out gift baskets at Thanksgiving. During a routine visit, a patient mentioned he needed car repairs for work.
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