World Relief Seattle receives refugees at the airport. RNS photo courtesy of Amanda Wingers, World Relief

World Relief lays off staff in wake of Trump’s executive order on refugees

By  Emily McFarlan Miller, Religion News Service
  • February 16, 2017

World Relief has announced it will lay off more than 140 staff members and close five local offices as a “direct result” of President Trump’s order to more than halve the number of refugees resettled this year in the United States.

The Christian nonprofit is one of nine private agencies contracted with the U.S. government to resettle refugees.

“Our staff at each of these locations have served diligently and sacrificially — some of them for many years — and we are deeply saddened to have to make this difficult decision,” World Relief President Scott Arbeiter said in a written statement released Wednesday (Feb. 15).

The layoffs are a loss of “decades of organizational expertise and invaluable capacity to serve the world’s most vulnerable people,” Arbeiter said.

The cuts affect most of the organization’s local offices, as well as its home office, according to Matthew Soerens, U.S. director of church mobilization at World Relief.

Some staff were laid off before the announcement was made, Soerens told RNS. The rest of the layoffs and closures will happen “gradually” as World Relief is able to fulfill responsibilities to its recently-resettled refugees and church partners.

The five local offices that will be closed are in Boise, Idaho; Columbus, Ohio; Miami; Nashville, Tenn.; and Glen Burnie, Md. Those offices had resettled more than 25,000 refugees total, according to the statement. They were chosen in part because other refugee resettlement agencies also are working nearby where the offices can refer people, Soerens said.

Last week, World Relief had brought together hundreds of prominent evangelicals from all 50 states to sign a letter to the president and vice president expressing their support for refugees.

Judges have blocked the administration from enforcing parts of Trump’s executive order, signed Jan. 27, which has been referred to as a “travel ban.”

One element of Trump’s ban that was blocked was the 120-day suspension of the refugee resettlement program, Soerens confirmed. Also blocked was the 90-day halt on anyone – including refugees – entering the country from seven predominantly Muslim countries and the indefinite ban on anyone entering the country from Syria.

But the order still effectively caps the number of refugees the U.S. will accept in 2017 at 50,000.

That number had varied between 70,000 and 85,000 under the Obama administration, and former President Obama had put the number for 2017 at 110,000. The New York Times has reported about 30,000 refugees already have been admitted to the U.S. since the fiscal year started in October.

That puts World Relief “over capacity” to serve the number of refugees who will be allowed into the country over the next year, Soerens said. It previously had anticipated it would resettle about 11,000 refugees this year. That number likely will be closer to 5,000 – most of whom it already has resettled, he said.

And the organization’s most significant source of funding comes in the form of one-time, $2,025 grants it receives for each refugee it resettles from the U.S. State Department, he said.

While World Relief anticipates an increase in donations from churches and individuals, he said, it also needs to cut expenses.

And it still is looking to the future, unsure where the Trump administration will set the refugee ceiling in 2018.

Trump has said the White House has options to get around judges’ partial block of his executive order, including “just filing a brand new order.”

Soerens said the organization “will always hold on to hope,” but it hasn’t seen any indication the president would raise the number of refugees accepted into the country in a new order.

And, he said, “The longer we hold off on it, the harsher the cuts would have to be.”

World Relief was established by the National Association of Evangelicals in 1944 in response to the humanitarian crisis in Europe after World War II, according to its website.

Tim Breene, CEO of World Relief, said in a statement that the organization plans “to continue the critical work of resettling refugees and serving other immigrants in the communities where we serve throughout the United States. … We urge the Trump Administration to renew and reinvigorate efforts to work together with the global humanitarian community to meet this urgent crisis head on.”

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