The mood at this week’s staff meeting at Building Community in New Hampshire is somber. Better known by its initials BCNH, the agency was started by Bhutanese refugees to help others resettle in the U.S. over a decade ago.
People from all over the world are in the room, but what’s notable is who isn’t in the room — a staff member who could not get his employment authorization documents renewed. And even among those still present, the future is uncertain.
“It pretty much feels like a sort of dystopian society,” one staff member said. “There's a sort of contradiction. It's a place of opportunity, but we are not welcomed.”
The rules for refugee resettlement agencies like BCNH are changing rapidly. Agencies face cuts to federal funding, a cap on refugee resettlement, additional scrutiny of refugees admitted under the Biden administration, and general uncertainty around immigration enforcement. And now, additional restrictions from the Trump administration are making it harder for new Americans to keep their legal status or bring in family from abroad.
BCNH Executive Director Rick Minard said this shift is un-American and goes against the country’s values. He said New Hampshire is home to a diverse number of refugees from all over the world and has been very welcoming to refugees in the past.
BCNH has helped resettle Bhutanese and Bosnian communities, and in recent years they’ve focused on people from Afghanistan, Ukraine, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“Most of America wants this country to be a humane, welcoming place, and I think it will be again,” he said. “But for now, it's a nightmare.”
So far, there are full restrictions on people from 20 countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Burkina Faso, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, as well as anyone holding travel documents issued by the Palestinian Authority.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said it will review all pending applications for green cards, citizenship, or asylum from immigrants already in the country and stop travel from these countries.
There are also partial restrictions on people from Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burundi, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Dominica, Gabon, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, The Gambia, Togo, Tonga, Venezuela, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Minard said these bans will make it harder for all Afghans in New Hampshire to stay in the country, earn a living here, or bring in their family members who are struggling to survive under Taliban rule — even if they helped U.S. troops during the war there.
“We know of people who were scheduled to be on flights to the United States. They'd been approved, they'd been vetted, they'd been cleared,” he said. “They were coming to New Hampshire to be with family in New Hampshire and so, despite past service for the United States government, they're screwed.”
The changes came after police said an Afghan national shot a National Guard member in Washington, D.C. in late November. The White House said these restrictions are necessary for national security and safety, but Minard is not convinced.
“This has nothing to do with public safety,” he said. “It was a pretext. And the impact is essentially to stop all refugee resettlement in the United States, to make life extremely difficult for any immigrant — legal or not or undocumented.”
Despite the headwinds, these local organizations said they aren’t giving up. At refugee resettlement agency Ascentria, these shifts have also created fear and uncertainty for clients. But the agency said it’s still helping on a case-by-case basis.
“As we receive updates or guidance related to these policy changes, we proactively contact impacted clients to share information, answer questions, and provide support. While many are understandably anxious given the current state of affairs, we work closely with them to offer reassurance, clarity where possible, and continued advocacy,” the agency said in a statement to NHPR.
The International Institute of New England is another one of the region’s major refugee resettlement agencies. They also said they will continue their mission.
“We're going to keep filing,” said President and CEO Jeff Thielman. “The people that are here in this country; we're going to keep teaching them English. We're going to keep helping them to find jobs. We're going to keep doing our work in spite of an obstacle like this.”
Work permits are some of the few documents still going through, although they are harder to get now. Changes from the Trump administration mean applications for an Employment Authorization Document, or EAD, have to be re-filed every year and a half — down from five years. The application costs about $600 and can take a long time to go through.
These agencies focus mainly on helping clients learn English and find jobs. They mostly work in high-need industries like child care, elder care, healthcare, manufacturing and auto mechanics.
BCNH Vice director Veejay Bhujel said this means an additional challenge for New Hampshire’s aging workforce.
“The workforce is getting downsized because people are losing their status, meaning they can't work,” he said. “We have so many employers who love the immigrant workforce. They're hardworking.”
In this uncertain environment, one option is to resettle in another country, but most of the families facing expired work authorizations have children.
A staff member who works with the local Ukrainian community and, who asked us not to use her name fearing retribution, said her community is particularly hard hit by the changes to work authorizations. She said most of the families facing these permit changes are parents who are living on savings while they wait for USCIS to let them go back to work.
“The kids were so traumatized when they came here, so parents [are] trying to wait patiently to get the documents because there is no other way where they can go currently,” she said. “They can go somewhere to Europe, but it's going to be hard for the kids to make that adjustment.”
While the documents go through, she said employers have been supportive — waiting for their employees to return and writing letters to ask the government to expedite the process.
