Why Orange County Has Launched A New Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs

Orange County wasn’t always a port of entry for immigrants and refugees. But it is today — and the launch this week of the county’s new Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs is an affirmation of that.

“It is a place that many families and people from across the globe come and find safety here, and belonging, and a new home,” said Jose Serrano, the director of the new county office.

Serrano said the goal is to make the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs a central hub that can connect the county’s immigrant and refugee populations with everything from county services, like health care and housing support, to immigration legal services and other support provided by community organizations.

“The goal is to connect and bridge with government, bridge with stakeholders, bridge with direct service providers,” Serrano said, “and be that connecting tissue that will bring resources, services, opportunities to everyone.”

The new office was green-lighted by county supervisors early last year, at the time in response to the recently arrived refugees from Afghanistan who had settled Orange County. The United States received more than 76,000 Afghan refugees airlifted from their country after the U.S.-backed government there was toppled by the Taliban in the summer of 2021.

Orange County received about 500 of these new refugees, said Supervisor Doug Chaffee; he said the county tried to provide them with assistance beyond the time-limited federal funding for resettlement, “but the resources were more scattered. It would have been easier to provide the resources had they been in one place. That includes food, job training, language assistance,” Chaffee said, along with critical services like education and health care.

The idea of setting up a county clearinghouse took root, said Serrano, who previously spent years resettling refugees with the Garden Grove office of World Relief.

“The direct services that are made available, or have been provided, to the refugee and immigrant population is not something that is new,” Serrano said. “It's just I think oftentimes we were working in silos.”

Chaffee allocated a half-million dollars in discretionary funds from his Fourth District budget to start up the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs. He said this should fund the office through at least its first year of operation; the goal is for the county to fund it long-term.

Serrano said one immediate goal is to hire two social workers who can provide in-language support.

Orange County’s population is 30% foreign-born, according to census data.

“The truth is, Orange County is diverse. We have Little Arabia, we have Little Saigon, we have Koreatown … Santa Ana, also being a very diverse community of people from Latin America,” Serrano said.

Los Angeles and San Diego counties have similar dedicated offices; Serrano said given Orange County’s demographics, it only makes sense to offer the same to immigrants and refugees here.