It’s the season of gathering and gratitude, and as many reunite with family and share plates of food, some new neighbors, specifically refugees, are grappling with starting a new life.
Since 1975, more than 60,000 refugees have made Oregon their new home.
When local lawyer and veteran Bryan Boender talked with his friend Yasin,a refugee from Afghanistan who recently settled in Eugene, about their upcoming multi-family Thanksgiving holiday, he couldn’t help but get emotional.
“It’s a gift,” Boender said. “You just can’t ask for anything like that.”
It’s been a long road, getting Yasin’s family of six safely out of Afghanistan to Eugene, where they’ve lived for a little longer than a month.
For refugees and asylum-seekers, it can be an arduous journey to settle in a new country. It’s an unlikely and difficult process, but many in Lane County, like Boender, volunteer to help with everything necessary to make the Willamette Valley home. It takes many hands to do many jobs — from translating documents to obtaining housing and filling their pantry.
Boender served in Afghanistan from 2007 to 2008, where he met Yasin, who can’t share his entire name. The Taliban has pursued Yasin for more than 10 years because of his years of work as an interpreter and cultural adviser for the U.S. Army — many of his family members back in Afghanistan remain in jeopardy. The interpreter job was always dangerous. Boender is eager to praise Yasin’s bravery, but Yasin shrugs.
“I was born in war,” Yasin said. “I’m very fit for this kind of job.”
But over the past three years in Afghanistan, the threats started increasing. Yasin said he stopped sleeping, guarding his wife and four kids in the night.
In August, days before Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, a huge blast hit right behind the wall where Yasin’s family was living in Kabul. He believes he was the target. More sleepless nights ensued. He reached out to his old commander and Boender — it was time to get out.
One day, when he was looking outside his office window, Yasin saw an Afghan police car flying the Taliban flag. It must be a joke, he thought. And then hundreds more vehicles waving the same flag came through the city. He watched as advertisements of women’s faces at a nearby beauty parlor got covered.
The three were on the phone day and night figuring out how to get Yasin and his family to safety. A car full of packed bags would be too suspicious now that the city was full of Taliban-controlled checkpoints, Yasin thought. On Facebook, he found an old taxi for sale, bartered it down to $1,000 and bought it. To get his family to the airport without getting stopped, he pretended to be a taxi driver. He was stopped several times.
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“I never was scared in all those military missions … but they stopped us, and I completely get scared,” Yasin said. “I tried my best to just be very calm.”
He said he had passengers in his car, gestured to his family in the back and they didn’t inspect further. But his hope began to wane as days ofattempts to get into airport through the dangerously crowded throng of people outside failed.
Back in Eugene, Boender was losing hope, too, as he monitored Yasin’s escape attempts. He worked through the nights to find them a way.
One of Yasin’s children said he didn’t want to get in the taxi again, he was scared to return to the chaotic airport.
But nine days into trying to flee, the family made it through the crowd and onto a plane with the help of Marines. The family’s first stop was in a refugee camp in Kuwait.
For the first time in a long time, Yasin could sleep.
Locals and area organizations offer help
Yasin’s journey did not stop there. Refugees and asylum-seekers have a long path to start making a new home in Lane County.
It’s an improbable and arduous road.
A key organization in the area helping people build a new life is the Refugee Resettlement Coalition of Lane County, made up of faith organizations, service groups and concerned community volunteers. The coalition partners with Catholic Community Services of Lane County to welcome and support refugees and asylum-seekers. Through its Refugee and Immigrant Services Program, known as RISP, CCS serves refugees, asylum-seekers, people who have gained asylum and other immigrants.
The local coalition formed in 2016, when some community members were particularly moved by the Syrian-European refugee crisis. At the time, photos of overcrowded boats were circulating widely. In searching for a way to get them here, people found that the best way to help resettle refugees was to get a contract and become a refugee resettlement agency. Catholic Community Services serves as that agency.
Under the Trump administration, the number of refugees accepted into the country was capped at an all-time low.
“We looked at who else is here,” said Christine Zeller-Powell, an immigration lawyer with RISP and one of the founders of the coalition. “We realized that asylum-seekers are here in the United States and there’s no publicly funded support system for them.”
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Through fundraising and grants, CCS has been able to support asylum-seekers as well as people who’ve been granted asylum. Asylum-seekers aren’t granted the same benefitsas refugees when they come into the country.
The partnership has worked because CCS is a long-standing nonprofit in the community, said Emily Heilbrun, one of the coalition’s founders.
“They can hire staff and supervise them and apply for and administer grants and accept donations and manage money and all of that, none of which the coalition can do,” Heilbrun said. “Our role is to provide many of the volunteers, help with training, do community outreach, we have a monthly newsletter, and a social media presence.”
The Refugee Resettlement Coalition of Lane County has more than 100 volunteers who do a variety of things for the organization. Some help in small, but significant ways by helping with transportation, translation or fundraising. The biggest need is people who can help find housing and employment for these new neighbors.
The coalition and CCS have helped more than 40 people from other countries settle in Lane County over the past five years. The program welcomed 10 Afghan refugees to Lane County in the past month.
Others in the community work independently to do what they can to help people rebuild their life. Patricia Cortez has worked in the area with other groups and by herself to support those looking for asylum for over two decades. She estimates that she’s helped more than 20 families through the process of seeking asylum.
“I have gained this acknowledgement from the community as a safe person,” Cortez said. “So constantly I get calls from people telling me of a new family that is in need.”
As someone who came to the U.S. seeking asylum herself, Cortez knows first-hand how tedious and traumatic the process can be and wants to pay it forward. She left El Salvador in 1985 when she was 21 and moved to Eugene in 1998. Since, she’s dedicated herself to helping Latino youth and families. She currently works for local organization The Trauma Healing Project as an administrative coordinator.
Getting to America
According to U.S. law, a refugee is someone who is: located outside of the U.S., not firmly resettled in another country, of “special humanitarian concern” to the U.S. and able to prove they were persecuted or fear persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
Around the world, there were 20.7 million refugees of concern for the United Nations Refugee Agency at the end of 2020. However, less than 1% of refugees are resettled each year. So far this year, more than 40,000 people have been submitted to different countries for resettlement by the UN and only 29,033 have departed to be resettled.
“It is not easy and there’s no kind of guarantee,” immigration lawyer Zeller-Powell said. “I could never advise somebody to leave their home country and try to immigrate through this system because the odds are just too bad.”
It’s not a simple path to U.S. citizenship, she said.
“Nobody wants to leave their home and go into a third country where they have no status, they don’t speak the language, they have very few rights,” Zeller-Powell said. “It is really not a choice. It’s a circumstance people find themselves in.”
A person seeking refuge in the U.S. needs to be located outside of the country they’re fleeing and get a referral to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. If approved, they’ll get help filling out their application and be interviewed by a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officer who will determine whether they are eligible for refugee resettlement.
“Those refugees go through a pretty extreme vetting process overseas,” Zeller-Powell said. “They’re vetted and background checked by every intelligence agency we (the U.S.) have.”
If approved, the refugees will have a medical exam, a cultural orientation, help with travel plans and a loan for travel to the U.S. They’re eligible for medical, food and cash assistance once they arrive.
After Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in the summer, the U.S. provided a pathway for Afghans with Special Immigrant Visas, or SIVs, to seek refuge in the country. The U.S. authorized 8,000 SIVs for Afghans. SIVs are given the same support as refugees.
Afghans who got SIVs were evacuated first to other U.S. military bases overseas and then to bases in the U.S.
Asylum-seekers have more complicated path
Those seeking political asylum have a more complicated route to relief. The rate of denial by immigration judges climbed to a record high of 71.6% in FY 2020, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan, nonprofit data research center at Syracuse University.
To apply for asylum, a person has to first get into the U.S. and file an application within one year of arriving. Additionally, they aren’t offered the same government supports refugees are. It sometimes takes years to get through the process.
These people are expected not to be a burden to society, but sometimes don’t have a way to work legally, said Cortez, who gained asylum and later citizenship after escaping El Salvador.
As of August 2020, asylum-seekers needed to wait until 365 calendar days after they filed for asylum to apply for employment authorization, which is needed to legally work in the U.S.
This rule was put on hold on Sept. 11, 2020, when the court issued a preliminary injunction. Under the court’s order, Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and CASA de Maryland members can generally apply for work permits 150 days after applying for asylum. ASAP membership is free.
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“I think it’s really a tragedy that these folks are left to try to navigate the system on their own,” Zeller-Powell said. “With just a little bit of support, they could really thrive much sooner in the process.”
After initially working as a volunteer, compelled by her faith, Zeller-Powell was motivated to pursue a new area of law and became an immigration attorney.
Cortez’ first big hurdle when she entered the U.S. was filling out her application, which required her to write a description of what she was running from.
“That took months and months and months because the moment that I would sit down and start writing, all that emotion would overflow to the point that I couldn’t write or think,” Cortez said.
Eventually, an attorney helped her sift through her emotions and write out her case, but not all can get an attorney.
Once a person is eligible for a work permit it can cost nearly $500 and needs to be renewed every two years. It took Cortez 13 years to become a citizen.
“The general public thinks that this process is quick, and it is not,” Cortez said.
Challenges immigrants face
While there are many supports available to them, refugees have to get on their feet pretty quickly. Refugee resettlement agencies, which are contracted by the Department of State to do the initial resettlement, help with picking up the refugees at the airport, finding them a place to live and furnishing their homes with basic necessities and a week’s worth of food.
They also help refugees apply for food and cash assistance, medical coverage, Supplemental Security Income if they’re eligible and cultural orientations. Most of these services need to be provided within 30 days and all of them have to be given within 90 days.
“So it’s a very fast, self-sufficiency-based model, where the goal is to get people on their feet very quickly and employed very quickly,” Zeller-Powell said.
The 90-day window set by the government for refugees to get established is “a very unrealistic period of time,” according toHeilbrun, with the coalition. The coalition works to support people beyond their first three months.
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement provides up to eight months of cash and medical assistance to newly arriving refugees. One year after arrival, a refugee can apply for permanent resident status, commonly called a green card. Five years later, they can apply for citizenship.
“It is a struggle,” Zeller-Powell said. “We often don’t utilize refugees at their full skill level because they have to take the jobs that are available.”
Yusif has been a professional interpreter for decades, but he doesn’t have access to his documents to show that. He recently took the Test of English as a Foreign Language in hopes of demonstrating his skills and finding work that matches his experience.
“Reestablishing yourself in a new country is extremely challenging. Adults who come with professional qualifications and experiences may have to start all over,” Heilbrun said.
This year, the state of Oregon passed some legislation meant to help overcome these challenges refugees and asylum-seekers face.
Oregon has two state legislators with strong ties to refugee communities. Sen. Kayse Jama, D-SE Portland/North Clackamas, is a former refugee himself, and Rep. Khanh Pham, D-East Portland, is the daughter of Vietnamese refugees.
The Refugee and Immigrant Services Program at CCS got funding from the Oregon Department of Human Services to fill two full-time positions: an employment support specialist and an extended case manager for refugees.
“They were instrumental in helping get the money for the extended case management,” Zeller-Powell said.
The Oregon Legislature also approved SB 778 during its 2021 legislative session, which established the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Advancement. The office will partner with statewide immigrant and refugee programs that coordinate with long-term support services to meet the needs of immigrant and refugee populations in the state, according to the bill.
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Many ways to lend a hand
Volunteers with the county’s Refugee Resettlement Coalition may help advocate for a newly resettled refugee, be a language tutor, a language interpreter, join the fundraising team or do anything else on a long list of other tasks related to welcoming and supporting refugees and immigrants in the community.
“I just find it very rewarding to be part of welcoming people and understanding, to the extent we can, what they’re going through and trying to alleviate some of that stress,” Heilbrun, with the coalition, said.
Another way is to help the coalition with its two major costs: start-up living expenses for the family, including rent, utilities and groceries, and staffing costs to operate the refugee and asylum-seeker program.
The coalition also accepts material donations as many arrive with very little. The group collects a variety of household items such as furniture, kitchen items and bedding.
Lately, finding housing in the area can be hard for anyone.
“You might imagine, it’s our biggest challenge in the current market,” Heilbrun said.
An added challenge is that many immigrants will come without rental history or employment. The coalition welcomes information on a relatively low-cost place for refugees, those granted asylum and asylum-seekers. People with leads on a job that a refugee may be able to do are also asked to reach out.
Some volunteers feel interested in people’s stories and often ask people what they’ve been through, but those with experience working with these groups know that can be intrusive and traumatic, even if the intent is to show compassion.
The best bet?
“Getting to know them as people,” Heilbrun said. “We don’t ask a lot of personal questions when we first meet somebody … It’s more approaching people as a person and not as a refugee.”
Giving people room is another big recommendation, Cortez said. It may take people who have survived war and violence a moment to figure out who to trust.
“The most trauma-informed care that anyone can give to these groups is give them space to figure it out,” Cortez said.
About a month in, Yasin said he and his family are enjoying their new home. Yasin has a good feeling about living in America, he was actually born on July 4. His family is adjusting well, too.
“This is completely a new place, completely a new culture. Completely. My kids are loving it,” he said.
He never expected to leave Afghanistan. His family recently visited the Oregon Coast and saw the ocean for the first time.
“A few nights back, it’s 4 a.m. in the morning, my eldest son, he’s 8, is waking me up, ‘Is it school time?,’ ” Yasin said, with a laugh.
The only overwhelming pieces so far has been the size of the grocery stores, he jokes.
“I’ve never felt like a refugee,” he added. “I feel like I’m home.”
Donate your …
Time: Volunteer with the Refugee Resettlement Coalition of Lane County for a variety of ways by applying at https://bit.ly/3xebBk6 and get more information at rrclc.org.
Money: Donate online at rrclc.org or mail a check made payable to “Catholic Community Services,” indicate “Refugee and Immigrant Services Program” or “RISP” in the memo section of the check and mail to: Catholic Community Services of Lane County, Inc., 1025 G St., Springfield, OR 97477
Items: Material donations of household items such as furniture, kitchen items and bedding can be offered by filling out the coalition’s form at rrclc.org/contact to be contacted.
Housing and employment Ideas, leads: People with information on a relatively low-cost housing or leads on jobs for refugees, those granted asylum and asylum seekers, share it at rrclc.org/contact.
Contact reporter Tatiana Parafiniuk-Talesnick at Tatiana@registerguard.com or 541-521-7512, and follow her on Twitter @TatianaSophiaPT. Want more stories like this? Subscribe to get unlimited access and support local journalism.
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