BRATTLEBORO — The Community Asylum Seekers Project (CASP), a nonprofit organization based in town, will host an online workshop for Vermonters planning to support evacuees from Afghanistan who might arrive in the state later this month.
“The Experience of Afghan Resettlement in the United States,” on Sunday, Oct. 24, from 1 to 2:30 p.m., is cosponsored by the Vermont Humanities Council and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI). It will be facilitated by Noah Coburn Ph.D. and Ismaeil Hakimi L.L.M.
Coburn, an anthropologist at Bennington College, is one of only a few contemporary U.S. anthropologists with years of on-the-ground field research experience in Afghanistan. His work investigates the human cost of the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program.
He is the author of several books, most recently Under Contract: The Invisible Workers of America's Global War in 2018 and Losing Afghanistan: An Obituary for the Intervention in 2016.
Hakimi, originally from Afghanistan's Ghazni province, trained as an attorney in neighboring Iran. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, he returned to Afghanistan and worked with a U.S. contractor to rebuild the country's justice system.
He came to the United States with an SIV in 2014 and is now a U.S. citizen. He lives in Salt Lake City, where he works as an information and research specialist at the University of Utah.
Interested Vermonters can register for the free event at caspvt.org/refugees.
Afghan evacuees set to come to state
Vermont is slated to welcome at least 125 evacuees from Afghanistan in the coming months, supported by resettlement agencies and local residents.
As it works closely with the Ethiopian Community Development Council to resettle Afghans in southern Vermont, CASP will also coordinate a network of asylum support organizations across the state.
For more information, visit caspvt.org, or contact Kate Paarlberg-Kvam at kate@caspvt.org or 802-579-1509.