Resettling Refugees

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 12, 2000 | by Philip Peters

Thirteen million people all around the world seek asylum from war and tyranny.

The end of the Cold War was to have calmed the world's brush fires and eased the human toll, but this has not been the case for the Sudan and Linous Geri. A refugee now living in the United States, Geri recalls the toll of his country's internal conflict, where the National Islamic Front government is pressing a campaign of forced Islamization.

"Government troops in the area wanted us to report to them on our activities and to become Muslims;" says Geri, a Christian who was aiding fellow Sudanese uprooted by the fighting. "But when they tried to compel me to divert away from my faith, that was very difficult"

Geri fled to Egypt and found volunteer work in an Ethiopian refugee camp. Later, he registered with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, and was approved for resettlement in the United States. He now lives with his wife and two children in Arlington, Va.

Geri's odyssey from southern Sudan to suburban Virginia is not typical. Only a small portion of the world's refugees are resettled in third countries. The vast majority -- UNHCR counts a worldwide population of refugees and asylum seekers of 13 million people -- wait in limbo or are absorbed into the country where they first found refuge. Others return home.

Refugee populations cover a broad geographic and political spectrum, from victims of the Kosovo war to tens of thousands of North Koreans who have fled to China. And there are IDPs, bureaucratese for "internally displaced persons" such as the quarter-million Chechens living in makeshift camps in Chechnya and the Russian province of Ingushetia, or the million-plus Colombians uprooted within their own country as a result of insurgency and civil conflict.

Francis Deng, the U.N. special representative studying the problem, estimates that as many as 25 million IDPs live in 40 countries worldwide. Helping them is tricky, since international organizations respect the sovereignty of the countries in which they reside. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke -- a child of refugees and husband of one -- has suggested that bureaucratic euphemisms be discarded in favor of the term "internal refugee." He says, "States cannot be allowed to use sovereignty to justify abuse of their people." But the United States in its official policy is more cautious, and not just due to sovereignty. The addition of IDPs would double UNHCR's global caseload overnight.

The United States alone spends about $800 million annually to respond to refugee crises. (For every dollar spent to bring a refugee to the United States for resettlement, about six more are spent on refugees under the care of the United Nations and international relief agencies.) Congress has been conflicted in recent years about the number of refugees it wants to admit to the country. Republican Sens. Spencer Abraham of Michigan and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah support increased admissions, while Republican Reps. Lamar Smith of Texas and Henry J. Hyde of Illinois support the status quo. Between 1995 and 1999, average annual admissions have been about one-third lower than in the previous five years.

Compared with other immigrants, however, refugees have difficulty adjusting to life in America, and for a simple reason: They did not plan to emigrate and they departed with little or no preparation, under emergency circumstances. Most do not enter a large, thriving community of their own nationality such as Miami's Little Havana.

The Hmong refugees from Laos, for example, have had a particularly difficult time in the United States. Mountain people who were U.S. allies during the Vietnam War, they were scattered across the United States, breaking the family and clan ties that organized their society. Many now are rebuilding those ties by resettling in Minnesota.

More recent refugees seem to have had greater success adjusting to life in America. This may be due to increased effectiveness in education and training programs or to the limitations on public assistance contained in welfare-reform and immigration laws. According to research by Arrington Dixon and Associates, more recent arrivals are more adept at learning English, finding employment and leaving public-assistance rolls.

For Geri, an affable man with a command of English, the transition to American life was not intimidating. He settled in Arlington with the assistance of the Ethiopian Community Development Council, or ECDC, an organization that serves as a resettlement agency for a diverse group of refugee and immigrant populations. Geri's first job was as a car salesman. "When you work with the trust of God, there is no fear," he says, and he made sales.

But after six months Geri saw an opportunity to return to the kind of community-service work he performed in Sudan. ECDC was advertising for a caseworker, and he got the job. He has come full circle. After being forced to abandon his work assisting refugees in Sudan, he works as a job counselor at ECDC's Washington office, teaching newly arrived refugees one by one how to set goals, acquire skills, find jobs and become self-sufficient.