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June 20 was World Refugee Day. The United Nations reports that 20 people per minute “leave everything behind to escape war, persecution or terror.” That adds up to 10.5 million additional refugees per year. Before the war in Ukraine displaced millions of people, nearly 70% of displaced people came from five countries: Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar.
According to Voice of America, since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021, the United States has accepted some 90,000 Afghan refugees. Most all of these refugees worked with American entities in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover.
Being compelled to leave one’s homeland is an inherently traumatic and tragic experience. Yet, like many of our ancestors, the Afghan refugees are finding a new life and hope in the United States. Bohanon thinks of his French-Huguenot heritage, Horowitz his Hungarian-Jewish heritage. We see this new hope for the Afghans because Muncie, Indiana, is on the front lines of the resettlement efforts.
At latest count, some 38 households with 144 people from Afghanistan have settled in Muncie. This resettlement resulted from a concerted community-wide effort to host these refugees as Muncie’s “new neighbors.” These new neighbors are working, typically in manufacturing jobs, earning $17-$22 an hour (plus benefits) and taking as much overtime as possible. Most households have at least one member with an Indiana driver’s license. The new immigrants are or are well on their way to becoming self-sufficient community members. Many with families left behind in Afghanistan can send life-saving remittances to their relatives back home.
One local company owner confided to Bohanon that his new Afghan employees had “saved the company” from shutdown. The firm had difficulty attracting reliable workers at wage and benefit levels viable for continued operations. The new Afghan employees are reliable, hard-working and productive. Bohanon asked the owner if we could write an op-ed highlighting his firm’s experience. The owner declined: “I don’t want to lose them.” Far from being a “threat or drain” to the Muncie economy, the Afghan neighbors are helping sustain and revitalize our city.
Midwesterners are not prone to bragging. Yet Muncie has much to be proud of. In a city of around 65,000, we have resettled 22 Afghan refugees per 10,000 original residents. That compares with a national average of 2.7 Afghan refugees per 10,000 original residents. We are punching at over eight times our weight. You have to love win-wins!•
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Bohanon and Horowitz are professors of economics at Ball State University. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.
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