Mohammad Sultani in his Columbia home on Oct. 7, 2024. (Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — When Mohammad Sultani got on the plane from Qatar a year ago, he didn’t know anything about South Carolina, the place that would come to be his new home.
Sultani, who was fleeing his home country of Afghanistan, was one of a growing number of refugees that Lutheran Services Carolinas has helped place in the state in the past few years, fueled by crises overseas and more friendly federal immigration policies, said Columbia refugee resettlement director Seth Hershberger.
In 2020, the nonprofit organization helped 40 people settle in Columbia. In 2024, it helped around 450, Hershberger said.
Including the nonprofit’s offices in Greenville, Charleston and Myrtle Beach, the group has resettled 1,335 people in South Carolina so far this year.
“It’s just grown exponentially,” Hershberger recently told the SC Daily Gazette. “If there are people to help, we always want to help them.”
With the possibility of the Trump administration reinstating lower refugee admission ceilings, though, the number of refugees the group might be able to help in the coming years is unclear.
Lutheran Services has the capacity to help as many as 500 refugees in the Midlands alone in the coming year. The question will be whether the federal government will allow enough people into the country to hit that number, Hershberger said.
Everyone the agency helps is entering the country legally, meaning they wouldn’t be subject to President-elect Donald Trump’s promised deportations of illegal immigrants.
Other policies, though, could strip funding from programs such as Lutheran Services Carolinas. The nonprofit, which works with one of the 10 agencies nationwide cleared to resettle refugees, runs primarily on federal grants, with donations supplementing some needs, Hershberger said.
Until any new rules are in place, the group will stay the course. The goal always has been and always will be helping as many of the thousands of people who need to leave their countries as possible, Hershberger said.
“We’re just here to help people,” Hershberger said. “We’re not here to play the politics game or anything.”
Getting to the U.S.
When the Taliban re-took control of Afghanistan in 2021, following the U.S. troop withdrawal, Sultani knew to be afraid. As a Hazara, a persecuted ethnic minority, the now-31-year-old feared for his life and the lives of his wife and children, he said.
The university where Sultani taught English and information technology suggested applying to flee to the United States, so in 2021, that was what Sultani did.
Like others Lutheran Services helps resettle in the United States, Sultani and his family underwent intensive background checks, multiple rounds of interviews and health screenings.
Unlike asylum seekers, who request access at the U.S. border or after already entering, refugees apply for help often years in advance. They are not admitted into the country until their application is accepted, while asylum seekers can enter the country while waiting for a final decision, which can take years. Refugee programs also differ from special immigrant visas offered to noncitizens who helped the U.S. government overseas.
Refugees are “the most vetted people that come into the United States, quite literally,” Hershberger said.
To qualify for resettlement as a refugee, a person must face persecution in their home country because of their race, nationality, political opinion or participation in a social group. That includes people fleeing the war in Ukraine, which has sent at least 500 people to Upstate South Carolina in the past year, and Afghans like Sultani.
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Lutheran Services Carolinas placed more than 400 Afghan refugees in South Carolina in 2021, most of whom have stayed in the state since then, Hershberger said.
Once refugees get the OK from the federal government, they are referred to one of 10 resettlement agencies. That includes Global Refuge, under which Lutheran Services Carolinas operates.
Before selecting a local nonprofit, each agency considers sites across the country, evaluating factors such as the job market, existing communities of refugees and whether anyone on that office’s staff speaks their language.
For instance, a lot of refugees from Myanmar and Ukraine end up in Columbia because the area has large Burmese and Ukrainian populations, both through refugee resettlements and people moving to the area, Hershberger said.
South Carolina is also a popular choice because the cities, which offer access to medical services and jobs, are relatively affordable, Hershberger said.
Sultani knew nothing about these conversations. When he, his wife, and their two young children got on a plane from Qatar in November 2023, he knew nothing about where they were headed.
Settling in
When the Sultanis arrived, a representative from Lutheran Services Carolinas picked them up from the airport and took them to a hotel. The family spent about a month there before the nonprofit found them an apartment near Lake Wylie in York County, Sultani said.
The nonprofit covered the rent and utilities at the new apartment, where the Sultanis lived with another refugee family. Groceries, clothes and other necessities were covered by the group as well. When the Sultanis decided they wanted to move to Columbia, to be closer to the help Lutheran Services provides, the nonprofit paid all the bills at the new place.
That’s the case for every family resettled in the state. Lutheran Services Carolinas covers every expense families need for their first eight months in the country as the adults get used to their new home, learn English and find a new job, Hershberger said.
Few people end up needing help for the entire eight months. Hershberger estimated that about 70% of people are fully independent before the support expires.
“They want to work. They want to be able to give back and contribute and pay taxes and have a job and speak English,” Hershberger said. “Our goal is to help make that happen and help them become self-sufficient and independent as soon as possible.”
Manufacturing is a popular job choice for refugees because of the sheer number of open positions. Some people have become plumbers or phlebotomists, learning how to draw blood. Others work in fast food, most often at Chick-fil-A, which offers a program to teach employees English, Hershberger said.
The first job a person gets in the U.S. typically doesn’t match the career path they were on before.
That was the case for Sultani, who has been searching for a job in information technology since he arrived. Without an equivalent certification to what many companies require, though, he has struggled to find anything, he said.
Instead, he found a job working overnight in a Sleep Number warehouse, he said.
“The most important thing is that I’m very new here,” Sultani said. “I don’t have credit here.”
Despite concerns about immigrants taking jobs away from other workers, employers in fields such as manufacturing often partner with the nonprofit because they can’t find people to fill positions, Hershberger said.
“There are a lot of misconceptions about how they’re affecting the economy and whether or not they’re safe or here legally, whatever that means,” Hershberger said.
New refugees also get a cultural orientation to help them settle in and explain the fact that some people are opposed to immigration. Part of that involves informing refugees of their rights, including making sure they know they are in the country legally, Hershberger said.
That’s especially important as the federal administration cracks down on immigration, he added. After Trump took office in 2016, some immigrants said they stopped using public assistance programs out of fear that they might lose their legal status, according to a study by health research nonprofit KFF.
So, Lutheran Services Carolinas ensures refugees know they are entitled to public assistance programs. The nonprofit helps sign refugees up for programs such as Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to help pay for groceries. Other bureaucracy, such as helping people get state identification cards, also often falls to the nonprofit, Hershberger said.
“It’s hard to navigate those systems when, you know, you haven’t had those systems, when you’ve been living in a refugee camp,” Hershberger said.
After the end of the eight months, the nonprofit continues following up with refugees, often to connect them with resources. For instance, refugees who eventually decide to buy a house might turn to the group for help finding a bank to do the mortgage loan. Or, they might reach out for help finding another job that pays more once they have some experience under their belts.
How much the group helps depends on the person. Some get settled in right away and want to handle everything themselves. Others ask for more help, Hershberger said.
“I love working with the clients, but if I don’t hear from a client for a long time, that’s actually a lot of times a good thing for me because it means that they’re becoming self-sufficient,” Hershberger said.
‘I prefer to be here’
Only a few days after moving in, Sultani was at a grocery store with his family when a woman approached. This was already odd to Sultani, who wasn’t used to people in Afghanistan talking to strangers.
The woman introduced herself and asked if the family needed anything. They exchanged phone numbers, and she started coming over to check on the children. When Sultani and his family moved to their new apartment, she helped them pack and move everything, he said.
That sort of kindness has been more common than the occasional rude comments Sultani hears about immigrants. Generally, he has found South Carolina to be a nice place to live, he said.
“The very most important thing is that I have been treated as a human here,” Sultani said. “There are bad people, but most of the people here, when I talk, they are very kind. They are really accepting.”
The Sultanis miss their family back in Afghanistan. Both Sultani and his wife left behind parents and siblings, and they’re not sure when they might be able to return to see them.
Their 5-year-old son, Siawash, and 4-year-old daughter, Aelena, are learning English quickly, even just through watching TV, Sultani said. But he and his wife fear they will forget their native country and the language their grandparents speak, he said.
In the U.S., though, Aelena can go to school, which wouldn’t have been possible under Taliban rule. If Sultani’s wife wants to pursue a college degree, she can do that. The family doesn’t have to live in fear of being killed for their ethnicity, which was the reason Sultani and his wife wanted to leave, he said.
“I wish I could go back to my country,” Sultani said. While he technically could return, “I cannot because I have no option to live there.”
The way things are now, “I prefer to be here,” Sultani said.