On the one-year anniversary, State Department thanks Philly for welcoming Afghan evacuees

It was a quiet entrance on a momentous day, up the elevator and through the main lobby to where the staff of Nationalities Service Center had assembled.

There, smiles and handshakes, but no applause.

The anniversary stood too somber for celebration, a year to the day since the fall of Kabul touched off a massive evacuation that brought thousands of Afghan war allies to the United States — and hundreds to live permanently in Philadelphia.

On Monday, recognizing the day and its ongoing impact, a top State Department official, Julieta Valls Noyes, chose to spend time with the staff of one of the lead resettlement agencies in Philadelphia. Her message:

Thank you. Great job. And keep going.

Her words, said Noyes, assistant secretary for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, applied not just to one agency but to all of Philadelphia, which in the midst of crisis proved itself again to be the City of Brotherly Love.

“Philadelphia has been amazing, just amazing,” she said.

In many ways, the Philadelphia region stood at the center of what was the largest evacuation since the Vietnam War.

Philadelphia International Airport served as the nation’s main arrival point, welcoming more than 30,000 Afghans to this country. Some 11,000 newcomers lived for months in South Jersey, on the grounds of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, as they underwent processing and awaited resettlement.

So many people arrived so quickly — in the middle of a housing crisis — that many ended up living months in a Center City hotel.

Today, the hotel is empty of newcomers, and evacuees have found permanent housing across Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

But the resettlement goes on, and many newly arrived Afghans face enormous challenges. The difficulty of finding affordable housing has flung some families to distant locales, where they are largely alone and isolated. For many, language remains a barrier, complicating efforts to find decent-paying jobs that can support families.

“It’s not over,” said Lucy Rabbaa, director of social services at HIAS Pennsylvania, another leader in the resettlement. “We still have people who a year later still don’t have a job.”

Some Afghan evacuees are battling illness. Many are traumatized. The cultural adjustment is hard. Nearly everyone has left family members behind, and that absence and uncertainty weighs every day.

Noyes’ arrival marked the start of a two-day visit to Philadelphia, to learn more about local refugee resettlement and to commend the city’s efforts in Operation Allies Welcome, which brought about 76,000 Afghans to the U.S. amid the chaotic U.S. military withdrawal.

“It’s an incredible honor for us to have the assistant secretary come to NSC,” said Margaret O’Sullivan, the agency’s executive director. “We were part of something extraordinary.”

Last year, she and others were glued to television screens and cell phones, watching the unfolding chaos. Soon, thousands of people pressed outside Hamid Karzai International Airport, desperate to escape the Taliban as the central government collapsed.

“We knew what it would mean for NSC,” O’Sullivan said. “To see the actual evacuation, see people clinging to planes for their dear lives, those images horrified us — and inspired us to ready ourselves for what was coming.”

Evacuees first went to what were called “lily pad” sites, the emergency centers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and began arriving in the United States in large numbers in fall.

At the time, the most people that NSC had resettled in a year was 500.

Then, in November, it received 79 Afghan newcomers in one day. And 200 by the end of the week.

HIAS Pennsylvania, Bethany Christian Services, and Catholic Social Services likewise had to form plans on the fly. And each said they got plenty of help, that people in the Philadelphia region stepped up.

» READ MORE: How the Afghan Adjustment Act would help U.S. allies who were evacuated to Philadelphia and elsewhere.

More than 140 businesses called NSC to ask how they could assist. So many people volunteered that NSC had to cap its orientation sessions. People here donated household goods to newcomer families at the speed of a computer click — at one point, NSC counted 25,000 recycled Amazon delivery boxes.

“Looking at the images in the news the past few days has been emotional,” said Danielle Dembrosky Bossert, state resettlement director for Bethany Christian Services, “because the clients we are serving, it happened to them.”

Almost all the Afghans were admitted to the U.S. under what is called humanitarian parole, not as official refugees. That’s left them with no automatic means of attaining permanent residency or citizenship, though hopes have raised recently amid introduction of the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would offer a path forward.

The Biden administration intends to continue helping Afghans in Afghanistan through humanitarian aid, and to assist others in coming to the United States, said Noyes, a former ambassador to Croatia.

“We have a continuing commitment to the people who stood by U.S. forces for 20 years,” she said.

More than 123,000 people were flown out, including foreign diplomats, military personnel, civilians, war allies, journalists and human-rights activists. The evacuation more than doubled the size of Philadelphia’s Afghan community, as at least 800 settled here amid the American military withdrawal, raising the total to 1,500.

Later on Monday, Noyes was to join Mayor Kenney, a host of federal officials, Afghan newcomer Saleh Mohammad Samit, and Afghans of Philadelphia director Farwa Ahmadi at a City Hall reception.

» READ MORE: The U.S. marks World Refugee Day, even as it accepts fewer refugees

During her visit she was also to meet with community sponsors, employers, and health-care providers amid the Biden administration attempts to rebuild the nation’s diminished refugee-admissions system.

Noyes is a first-generation American whose parents were refugees from Cuba. Her father was studying at Villanova University when Fidel Castro took over the country in 1959.

NSC staffers showed Noyes what’s called the “second lobby,” an area that’s been transformed into a colorful play space where children can be comfortable. Clocks on the wall tell the current time in major cities, in Philadelphia, Beijing, Mexico City, and Kabul.

Everyone there seemed to reflect on where they were and what they were doing a year ago.

“It was really humbling to stand beside people at their time of incredible trauma and turmoil,” said Gretchen Shanfeld, NSC’s senior director of program operations. “I’m proud of NSC.”