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

As the policy intern at OneAmerica, Washington State’s largest immigrant and refugee advocacy organization, the author was charged with researching how natural disasters had been impacting low-English proficient (LEP) immigrants and refugees in rural Eastern and Central Washington. She 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. The author obtained anecdotes of individuals’ experiences with natural disasters through informal phone interviews, all either direct or secondhand accounts. She then wrote a policy recommendation to help guide OneAmerica’s advocacy efforts. The following paper outlines the problems that the author 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.