Can San Diego Remain a Hub for Refugees?

Walking down East Main Street in El Cajon is like getting a daily snapshot of life in Baghdad.  

The Albaraka Halal Market bustles with families buying groceries. Barber shops and jewelry stores along the avenue advertise their services in Arabic.  

A short trip to Syria is also a couple feet away. A restaurant called Taste of Damascus serves freshly baked bread and the traditional dish kibbeh – a mix of bulgur wheat, minced meat, and spices shaped into balls or patties.  

And if you drive down Avocado Avenue into the neighboring area of Spring Valley, you’ll come by Al Hamdani Sweets, a shop owned by an Iraqi-Chaldean couple crafting traditional Turkish and Iraqi desserts. 

These businesses are a representation of San Diego’s thriving refugee community. 

From Chaldeans in El Cajon to the thousands of Somalis in City Heights, San Diego has historically been a home to refugees like few other cities in America. But given federal restrictions and a rising cost of living across the county, it’s unclear if it can stay that way. 

The county has welcomed refugees for the past several decades. One of the first influxes of refugees were Vietnamese people after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Over 50,000 refugees were set up in temporary refugee camps in Camp Pendleton. Here, they connected with resettlement agencies like the International Rescue Committee, or IRC, to help them find jobs, learn English, and get permanent housing.  

In addition to the IRC, San Diego County is home to three other resettlement agencies – Alliance for African Assistance, Jewish Family Service of San Diego, and Catholic Charities. The agencies have created one of the most robust infrastructures in the state for refugee assistance. The possibility of qualifying for health insurance under Medi-Cal and other public programs makes California appealing for refugees. The region is also home to the world’s busiest migration corridor, making San Diego County one of the most immediate places for refugees to settle. 

Family ties also play a big role.   

Over time, more Vietnamese refugees arrived and settled in City Heights establishing “Little Saigon,” creating a cultural, social and economic hub. By the time the IRC was up and running in 1975, they had the infrastructure to receive thousands of Somalis who were fleeing the Civil War in the early 1980s and 1990s. They’ve also set up their own hub known as “Little Mogadishu,” where other folks from East African countries like Ethiopia and Sudan have settled as well. 

The same can be said for another massive hub of Chaldeans in East County. The persecuted Christian minority group from Northern Iraq first arrived in El Cajon as early as the 1950s. They set up Chaldean churches and businesses – community spaces that attracted more refugees to arrive. Today, El Cajon is home to more than 15,000 Chaldeans.  

The nationalities of refugees arriving have diversified exponentially in the last two decades.  

According to San Diego County data, over 9,600 refugees resettled in the county between 2020 and 2023. Many have come from countries like Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, South Sudan, and Ukraine fleeing political persecution. In City Heights alone around 2,700 refugees from 45 different countries settled in the neighborhood between 2010 and 2015. The state and county both adopted a sanctuary law in 2014, limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities. While refugees can legally live and work here, they feel safer in immigrant friendly cities like San Diego. 

Even though refugees have support from resettlement agencies and nonprofits, adjusting to life in the United States is challenging. Some may not have conversational English to land them a good paying job, while others have degrees from back home that don’t count in the United States.  

A report by the San Diego Refugee Communities Coalition found that the top issues among refugee youth are access to jobs, housing and transportation, and educational opportunities. For families across the county, water bills, rent, and grocery prices are soaring across the board. 

In 2023, PANA, Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, surveyed over 600 community members with a large portion of them being Afghans who arrived as recently as 2021. The report found 61 percent of them are making under San Diego County’s living wage of $20 an hour.  

Ramah Awad, executive director of the Arab Community Center, Majdal, noted the cost of living has become a top concern. “I think there’s more of a question of what San Diego is doing to respond to the growing income gap,” she said. 

Today, over 50 percent of refugees reported living in East County, specifically El Cajon, said they are living in severely overcrowded conditions. These residents also had 2.6 times higher odds of spending the majority of their paycheck on rent than other participants according to PANA’s community survey.   

The federal administration has also created a climate of uncertainty.  

During his first week in office, President Donald Trump suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) and halted federal funding to resettlement agencies. Across San Diego, resettlement programs have had to scale down their operations and try to fundraise money for the few recent arrivals. Anti-immigrant policies and a growing number of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids have made refugees increasingly fearful about what’s ahead.  

“While I see the established refugee communities really coming into their own and being an important part of San Diego, I see what’s happening at the federal level and I think it really does have a chilling effect,” said Diana Ross, executive director of nonprofit Mid-City CAN. For years, Ross has worked closely with refugees in City Heights. 

It’s clear with established family and social networks, refugees will continue to have a stronghold across the County. However, some will have to reconsider whether the cost of living is worth it in California.  

Afghans allies, who supported or worked for the U.S. military, are one of the few populations who can still arrive in the United States with a special immigrant visa. Afghan Allies Safe Arrival Initiative, a coalition of privately funded resettlement organizations, said they’ve worked to relocate families to more affordable locations like Arizona or Ohio. Yet since the beginning of this year, they have sponsored the arrival of 126 Afghans to California – their top destination for new arrivals so far. 

For the refugees that have called San Diego home for decades, there is an opportunity to embrace resistance and build a political voice. Fewer people may be coming because of the new federal restrictions, but it gives the communities incentive to make their voices heard. 

Nowhere is this clearer than in El Cajon. Residents rallied in defense of refugees and immigrants at the City Council this month. Dozens of folks showed up to defend the state’s sanctuary law, as Republican Mayor Bill Wells pushed a controversial resolution to assist federal immigration agencies. While the city’s politics lean conservative, pushback from community members indicates the city wants to move in another direction. 

“They [refugees] are stakeholders in our local community,” said Awad. “How do we restore their political agency and not just look at them as beneficiaries of services or aid?” 

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