| Migration and Refugee Services Help Families Find New Life in the U.S. |
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By D.F. Kratzer
WEST VIRGINIA—This year, the Office of Migration and Refugee Services, a facet of Catholic Charities West Virginia (CCWVa), is projected to resettle 21 refugees, most of whom will hail from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Based in Charleston, the office provides important services to help with refugee resettlement, naturalization and immigration issues, said Kim Keene, director. Last year, with a significant amount of help from Blessed Sacrament Parish in Charleston, the office resettled Ahmed Raoof, his wife, Tara, and their three children in Charleston. The family found a home in the community with the help of parishioners from Blessed Sacrament and that the family, in turn, “tries to help us any way they can,” Keene said.
Tara is currently helping teach English to another family, which came to Wheeling in late 2009.
Ahmed, who had lived in Iraq, was a contractor for the U.S. Army and heard about America’s refugee services. With his family’s lives in danger in their homeland, Ahmed left Iraq for Jordan to attempt to resettle in the U.S. and is thankful the Office of Migration and Refugee Services has “given me a chance to have a new life in the states.”
“It was a matter of life and death,” Ahmed said, for his family to resettle in the U.S. Upon his arrival, he continued, “a lot of people (were) waiting for me at the airport, for me and my family.”
The work of Keene’s office has been very helpful and the people of Blessed Sacrament have been welcoming and helpful, as well, he said. “It was a great help. I miss my family (in Iraq), but really I have a family here I know very well.”
Nationally, said Sister of Charity Mary Louise Lisowski, executive director of CCWVa, Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA) is one of the largest providers of immigration and refugee services in the country. The services are “a daunting task,” she continued, because a massive amount of paperwork and work to help migrants and refugees integrate into U.S. society are required.
As far as migration services are concerned, Keene said, the office receives “a lot of phone calls from people with many questions concerning information.” In many cases, Keene provides a consultation and determines what services her office may be able to provide, including status adjustment, naturalization and help with document preparation and submission, among other services.
“We are it” for migration services in West Virginia, Keene said, therefore, the office receives many calls concerning this issue, and “I help with a lot of cases. ... We are a good place for them to call to get more information.”
The office’s largest workload, Keene said, is in the area of refugee resettlement, which “resettles refugees coming from war-torn countries throughout the world.”
Each year, she continued, the president signs into law the number of refugees to be admitted to the U.S. This number is then divided among national agencies that provide refugee services. One such organization is CCUSA, which takes the number it is allotted and divides it among its agencies.
After her office is allotted a number of refugees to resettle and given a list of possible refugees, “our job is to turn around and contact the family (or acquaintance in West Virginia) and see if they are willing to settle the family. ... We, together with the family, sit down and talk about resettlement plans and then we put together a plan to receive the family,” which includes securing housing, furniture and other amenities, among other things, for the family, Keene said.
Upon a family’s arrival, the Office of Migration and Refugee Services provides orientation, assisting the family with obtaining government documents and benefits, placing children in schools, providing a health checkup, helping with work authorization and job hunting, teaching the family about American laws and customs, discussing financial issues, scheduling English as a second language lessons if necessary and “anything that is relevant to their resettlement.”
“This can be a long process,” Keene said, “it depends on how quickly a family can adapt to all the information that we provide to them. ... We help them until they are self-sufficient.”
For some families, she continued, this process can be as long as five years. Throughout a family’s resettlement, the office provides ongoing assistance and orientation to assure the process goes smoothly.
The services provided by the Office of Migration and Refugee Services, Keene said, “are so important because refugees are people who have been discriminated against, their life was in danger because of their beliefs, and also in war-torn countries, they have been displaced, they have no place to call home and if they go back to their original country, their life could be in danger.”
“It’s very critical that we keep the door open for these people,” she continued, “because without us their lives would be devastated ... they constantly live under discrimination, they do not have the freedoms we enjoy here. They live in fear all the time. The children cannot go to school and do not have a permanent place to call home”—all of which they can find in the U.S.
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