Filling the Gaps: Inequitable Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Relief Policies Serving Immigrant and Refugee Communities

For 8 weeks over the summer of 2016, I had the opportunity to travel to Seattle, Washington and intern at OneAmerica, Washington State’s largest immigrant and refugee advocacy organization.
As the policy intern, I was charged with researching how natural disasters had been impacting low-English proficient (LEP) immigrants and refugees in rural Eastern and Central Washington.
I researched how previous natural disasters had impacted diverse communities across the United States, finding several trends of discrimination against immigrants before natural disasters that
led to worse outcomes for their communities, as well as consistent discrimination and human rights abuses during the recovery process. I obtained anecdotes of individuals’ experiences with
natural disasters through informal phone interviews, all either direct or secondhand accounts. I then wrote a policy recommendation to help guide OneAmerica’s advocacy efforts. The following paper outlines the problems that I identified and offers practical suggestions for policy changes that can occur at the local, state and federal levels
to build community resilience against natural disasters and help all residents recover.