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Refugees to Call Rockford Home
By Amanda Hudson, News editor

“The Church is ever mindful that Jesus Christ was himself a refugee, that as a child he had to flee with his parents from his native land in order to escape persecution. In every age, therefore, the Church feels herself called to help refugees.” – Pope John Paul II

ROCKFORD—Try to wrap your mind around the concept of being in a refugee camp for 20 or 30-some years.

What would the picture of your life look like if you had spent that much time in a fenced-in camp in a country not your own?

Can you even picture it?

Two families that know such a situation all-too-well have recently arrived in Rockford thanks to the Rockford Catholic Charities Immigration and Refugee Program.

Instead of a stereotypical image of a hollow-eyed beaten down refugee, these families are the picture of dignity and perseverance.

Charles Gahungu is a tall, stately gray-haired dignified gentleman 59 years of age. He and his wife Marie-Gorette Nizigiyimana are from Burundi, a small country in the Great Lakes region of Africa. The couple got caught up in the 1972 widespread violence and ethnic cleansing between the Hutu-Tutsi peoples and landed in a refugee camp. He is Hutu, and she is Tutsi.

The first of their nine children was born in 1987 in Rwanda; the youngest six were born in a refugee camp in Tanzania. Their faith is Catholic. They speak three languages: Kiswahili, Kirundi and French; the last two are the official languages of Burundi, and they learned Kiswahili in Tanzania.

Charles graduated from the Geometre Topography College in Burundi, and worked in surveying/cartographic occupations before the conflict. While at the refugee camp in Tanzania, he studied with Norwegian People’s Aid and Medical Doctors Tanzania, worked as a laboratory technician and also learned nursing. According to a report from the UN Refugee Agency, people like Charles and his family need to be resettled away from the Tanzanian camps because their rights and freedoms in Tanzania have been increasingly restricted which makes local integration “virtually impossible.”

Another family full of determination and talent despite their weariness is Kwin Kyon Khin, 41, his wife Aye Po Khin, 33,  and their six children all from Burma. And the determination was audible in the fact that although they arrived only a few days before this interview, Kwin was able to explain in English that his wife and one of the children had “gone shopping.”

The designation of “refugee” applies strictly to people who meet the U.S. Refugee Act requirement of having a “well-founded fear” of persecution or death in their native countries because of political or religious beliefs. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees determines who qualifies for refugee status. The U.S. State Department carefully screens all those refugees who request to migrate to the United States.

Those coming to Rockford with the help of Catholic Charities also have been approved to come by the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services.

According to Jeanne Lindberg, program director for the Rockford Catholic Charities Immigration and Refugee Office, the diocese will receive a handful of the 70,000 refugees that the U.S. government will take in this year. Most are Burundi people from Tanzanian refugee camps established in the early 1970s and Burmese from camps in Thailand.

According to the UNHCR report, “The 1972 Burundian refugees (like Charles and his family) have survived and persevered through one of the most protracted refugee situations globally.”

The UNHCR report on the Burmese resettlement from Thailand describes a different situation and people.

“There has been a 50-year on-going armed conflict between the (Burmese) government and ethnic-based groups seeking greater autonomy …,” it says. “The majority of Burmese refugees now in camps in Thailand fled between 1995 and 1997 following a series of military offensives … not all refugees in these ethnically controlled areas directly participated in opposition movements or military action. Government actions were often based on imputed support for the opposition based solely on the individuals’ ethnicity … Others in the camp include ethnic Burmans who have been forced to flee due to their association with pro-democratic movements,” it says.

The Texas-sized country of Myanmar (Burma) has at least 15 major ethnic groups in its seven states and seven divisions. Those coming to Rockford are of ethnic Karen and Chin heritage, says Lindberg.

The UNHCR reports that about 52 percent of the camps’ population is Christian, 30 percent is Buddhist, 11 percent are Muslim and 7 percent are Animists. Education in the camps is generally limited to grades 1-10. Most of the adults have engaged in some sort of farming, although others have been teachers, weavers, vendors, medical professionals and religious professionals. Some adults arrived in the camps as children and have had limited opportunities to develop skills or legally work.

The others scheduled to come to Rockford this summer are six Cuban refugees, five Russian refugees and two Iraqi refugees (a single mother with an eight-month-old baby).

The Iraqi mother was wounded by insurgents and will need medical attention for shrapnel wounds as soon as she arrives, says Lindberg.

She went on to explain that the Iraqis coming to the U.S. are refugees because of their ties to the U.S. government. They are people who have already been forced to flee to Syria, Jordan and Turkey.

Friends wanted: The Office of Immigration and Refugee Services in Rockford receives notice one week before a refugee family arrives. Armed with basic information, the office provides a case manager who meets the refugees when they arrive and takes them to an apartment that has been stocked with a week’s supply of food and items such as soap as well as some furnishings.

The next day, the case manager begins transporting them to a litany of places like the Social Security Office, Department of Human Services, and the Winnebago County Health Department for the required Refugee Health Screening and physical exams. The managers also do an intake and orientation to determine the refugees’ language skills and employment backgrounds, and they enroll the kids in school and in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes.

The office serves refugee clients for 180 days, after which time case managers want them to be working and self-sufficient. To that end, they teach them how to fill out work applications, take them for interviews, provide bus schedules, and are available to help employers with translations.

“It seems like, magically, someone shows up” whenever a refugee speaks an uncommon language, says Lindberg. A handy example is former-torture victim and refugee, now-case manager Ngeu Kot who came in to introduce himself five years ago when the office was seeking someone to translate for Sudanese refugees.

But the refugee office needs other help this summer, says Lindberg. The office has been operating with a very small staff since the attacks of 9/11 greatly diminished the numbers of refugees accepted by the United States. This year the refugee office was expecting very few refugees. Instead, they now are expecting 31 families.

 How to help: Volunteers and parishes willing to befriend a refugee family this summer would be a huge help, Lindberg says.

She is hoping some parishes will volunteer to sponsor a family, collecting new and gently-used furniture and items and preparing an apartment for them.

We are looking for safe, affordable and decent apartments to rent, she says, and sometimes need temporary housing for a family for a week or two until we can find suitable housing for them.

We’re also seeking entry level jobs for them, she adds.

Lindberg agrees that ‘befriend’ is a good word to describe what hoped-for volunteers can do.

Volunteers could take a family, for example, to a grocery store, she says, “which is quite an event at first. Most refugees are astounded” by seeing so much food available.

Or volunteers could take a family out for ice cream, or to a dental appointment. They could take Catholic refugees to Mass or help with any of the myriad other tasks that need to be done by and for these new arrivals.

Parishes, service groups and individuals who can help in any way are encouraged to call the Office of Immigration and Refugee Services at 815/399-1709 to discuss the possibilities of helping these survivors of extraordinary challenges.