Afghanistan

The International Institute’s Afghan Community Support Program is going across the country to tout local employment opportunities, business grants, education, housing and other resources in hopes of beckoning newly arrived Afghans to St. Louis.

The International Institute of St. Louis opened the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Community Center on Friday to help promote entrepreneurship among Afghan refugees in the region.

Newly arriving Afghans, who came to St. Louis after fleeing Afghanistan in August 2021 are settling into the city and creating businesses to build the economy. The International Institute of St. Louis has programs to help get Afghan businesses started.

In the coming months, the International Institute of St. Louis plans to welcome Afghan refugees from Albania, where they have been for months. Institute officials say they will be more prepared for the latest arrivals.

This month, the Biden Administration hopes to expedite the process by eliminating temporary humanitarian parole and concentrating resources instead on permanent visas.

The International Institute of St. Louis is ready to welcome more Afghan families and refugees from other countries. Officials with the U.S. State and Health and Human Services departments and the International Nonprofit Immigrant Organization met with International Institute officials Monday.

Business leaders, immigration activists and Missouri politicians are urging the federal government to issue visas to 380 more refugees who fled Afghanistan in 2021 and are now stranded in Albania, a small country on the Balkan Peninsula. The first members of the group arrived in St. Louis on Monday, but hundreds more are waiting on the U.S. government to issue them visas.

Dozens of young refugees from Afghanistan gather on Saturday afternoons for something that’s crucial to their successful resettlement in a new land: getting to just be a kid.

In the past year, St. Louis has resettled 538 Afghans who arrived in the U.S. as refugees of their war-torn country.

Zamzama “ZZ” Safi discusses her life in St. Louis, where she settled after fleeing Afghanistan five months ago.