Religious Communities: Welcoming the “One-Percent”
The success of refugee resettlement undoubtedly has required a “whole of society collaboration,” and it is a woefully under-told good news story.
June 7, 2016
By Shaun Casey.
During the past few months, I’ve been privileged to have one-on-one conversations with some of the “1 percent” in the United States. To be clear, I’m not talking about the wealthiest of the approximately 318 million Americans in the United States. I’m referring to refugees resettled in cities like Des Moines, Dallas, Phoenix, Chicago, Jersey City, and Baltimore—refugees that are among the more than 3 million people that the United States government and its partners have resettled since 1975.
I met individuals like Nasser, a Burmese refugee who washes dishes at a local casino at night, but who by day is establishing a Rohingya cultural center to assist other refugee families. I spoke with Shakra, an Afghan woman who relays that she received death threats in her country of origin, and who now speaks in impassioned tones about her hopes that her eldest child can pursue dreams of becoming a doctor in the United States. I was privileged to talk with Youssef, an Iraqi refugee whose story is illustrative of the challenges and opportunities refugees face in creating a new life for themselves and their families in the United States. Youssef works 90 hours a week at two different jobs to provide a better life for his children. Recently he took the oath to become an American citizen, an experience he said was one of the most emotional and moving of his life. “I still believe in the American dream,” he said.
The refugee resettlement program in the U.S. is a unique public-private partnership that involves the U.S. Department of State, state governments, a network of nine contracted refugee resettlement agencies (six of which are religiously-affiliated), and the support of local communities. This includes civil society, municipal institutions, religious communities, and others that make resettlement processes possible. The success of refugee resettlement undoubtedly has required a “whole of society collaboration,” and it is a woefully under-told good news story.
Since Congress enacted its first refugee legislation in 1948 and admitted thousands of Europeans displaced from World War II, American religious communities, among others, have boldly been at the forefront of efforts to welcome refugees to the United States. When standardized federally-supported resettlement services were approved by Congress in 1980 and the United States faced the challenge of resettling hundreds of thousands of refugees, religious communities served as an example of the compassion, generosity, and leadership that are characteristic of American society.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionnow/2016/06/religious-communities-welcoming-the-one-percent/
