World Relief’s Jennifer Foy talks about the transition from Trump to Biden
From Trump to Biden
The US Presidential race has now been called, and this means many policy changes given that ideological contrasts between Trump and Biden are deep and profound. This change in US administrations will touch most aspects of the humanitarian sector, from WHO membership, the Paris Agreements, and US support for humanitarian aid.
Since the passage of the Refugee Act in 1980 the United States has admitted more than 3 million refugees. The nine resettlement organizations are responsible for the hard work of processing, placement, and settlement of all refugees accepted into the US. These organizations include both seven faith based (FB) and two non-faith based INGOs (NFB), and each works with local NGOs, faith organizations, housing authorities, schools, and employers to help integrate refugees into their new communities.
Here are the resettlement organizations:
Church World Service (CWS)
Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC)
Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
International Rescue Committee (IRC)
US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI)
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
World Relief Corporation (WR)
Under the eight year Obama administration the numbers of refugees processed were fairly high, nearly 70,000 per year. The Trump administration dramatically slowed the process nearly to a halt, setting a yearly goal of less than 15,000. The Biden plan is to immediately set a goal of 125,000 accepted per year and to raise the number steadily, meaning that the nine resettlement organizations would have to gear up their own staffing, training, and overall capacity. This also means that they will have to reinvigorate weakened community partnerships with all of the entities with which they coordinate in placing refugees in homes, schools, and places of employment. This rapid, radical ramping up poses massive challenges.
Jennifer Foy, Would Relief Vice President for US Programs
When I first met Jennifer Foy she was the director of the High Point, North Carolina World Relief office and was tasked with organizing the placement of refugees in the area. [You can look here for my previous interviews with Jennifer.] Now she is based at the national in Baltimore office and is Executive Director for US operations for World Relief. In her current position she will be responsible for helping to ramp up her organization’s share of the waves of refugees needing to be placed during the Biden years.
As a point of reference, World Relief processed nearly 10,000 refugees in FY16, Obama era numbers. In FY20 under the Trump administration that number dropped to just over 2,000, a dramatic decrease. Using rough reckoning, under the Biden plan World Relief could be asked to handle as many as 15,000-20,000 refugees, as much as a 500% increase in cases handled. By any measure this is a massive task.
Jennifer was gracious in taking my call and agreeing to be interviewed about her thoughts on the tasks that her organization will be facing in the not too distance future.
Below are some questions I asked her a few days ago.
What do the next six months look like to you in terms of re-invigorating your capacity to absorb a dramatically increased number of refugees?
You work with many other organizations, including the IRC, in placing refugees around the United States. To what degree is there inter-agency coordination, cooperation, and communication?
I can imagine that gearing up in terms of office space, etc. will be fairly easy. Human resources will be the biggest area of concern I am assuming, but also having to re-invigorated community partnerships as well. Can you comment on that?
As you look at the Trump/Steven Miller years how would you characterize their philosophy on refugees? How would you describe the difference between their philosophy and what you imagined to be the Biden philosophy?
On a personal level, how are you handling this extra pressure? I know that this must be very exciting, but at the same time daunting. How are you coping?
Given that political polarization has seemed to get even more extreme in the last four years, do you think that refugees will face a difficult time, I should say or even a more difficult time, being excepted into the communities into which they are placed? How are the relief organizations preparing to respond to potential acts of xenophobia?
As an officering in a faith based organization, can you comment on the intersection between the religiously drivers of your organization’s actions and the more general ‘humanitarian imperative’?
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
Critically important for every 1 in 7 people on Earth
A very high percentage of refugees and immigrants now living in the minority world (aka ‘Global North’) regularly send money back ‘home’ to family and friends they left behind. These funds, typically in small amounts and sent every month, are mostly used for health care, living expenses, school fees, and other necessities. The term for this transfer of funds is ‘remittances’.
I make a point of defining this term because in conversations with both my students and with even generally well informed friends and colleagues I have found that they know little to nothing about the fact that remittances exist and, more importantly, how critical they are to the alleviation of poverty in the developing world.
Here are a few relevant data points about remittances.
According to the World Bank in 2019 over 200 million migrants transferred remittances totaling over $612 billion, with more than $440 billion being sent to developing nations. To put this in context, in 2019 the total amount of development aid being sent by ‘rich’ nations to the developing world was just over $150 billion. Remittances account for more than three time as much as traditional development aid funds sent by nations like the US and the UK.
(See illustration above.)
According to the UN, over 1 billion people on the planet -one in every seven people in the global population- are either sending (200 million) or receiving (800 million) remittances, and over half of the funs that are sent go directly to rural areas of the world. Recognized as contributing to several of the goals set in the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, June 16 has been set by the UN as International Day of Family Remittances.
For the most part, the aid we and other nations send to the developing world is a humanitarian act, meant to confront both the consequences and the causes of poverty, but research makes clear that remittances have a much higher positive impact than direct aid on poverty in the developing world.
Making remittances is the ultimate fulfilling of the humanitarian imperative
This flow of remittances around the world represents the best of humanity, families broken apart continuing to help those left behind. The act of sending $50 or $100 a month from an already anemic budget to assist mothers, brothers, cousins, and family friends is the marginalized helping the marginalized, a clear expression of the humanitarian imperative. In the Code of Conduct for the ICRC (International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement), the humanitarian imperative is defined as a fundamental humanitarian principle, “the right to receive humanitarian assistance, and to offer it”. Though not organized or coordinated on any significant level, those giving and receiving remittances can be viewed as part of the humanitarian/development ecosystem.
Here is what Jennifer Foy, Vice President for World Relief, a US based international humanitarian INGO, had to say about remittances,
“The vast majority of refugees send back remittances. I would estimate 80 to 90 percent that have family overseas that they’re close to especially those with family in camps or displaced in cities send money back home. It’s [sending remittances] a big part of their life and a big motivator for them to work. They come hereand are are continuing to sustain friends and family back in their communities of origin.
I asked Jennifer what the refugees got from making these sacrifices. She said,
“It’s peace of mind; it’s knowing that their family is taken care of. In some cases helping their family survive long enough to join them here. Immigrants and refugees sending back remittances embody the humanitarian imperative.”
Indeed, relocated refugees are both ‘recipients and givers of humanitarian assistance.’
Coronavirus pandemic impact on on remittances According to the Pew Research Center analysis of World Bank data, the coronavirus pandemic is beginning to cause massive long-term economic upheaval, constituting a major humanitarian crisis. Nations, already suffering from both natural and human made disasters are made even more precarious by this sudden and catastrophic economic disaster.
Here’s how Jennifer from World Relief described the impact on the immigrant population here in the US,
“Immigrants tend to be the first ones laid off in many cases because they are in the entry level jobs. So when the factory shuts down, the restaurant shuts down, the people who tend to be affected at such a high rate will be the immigrant population.
But I have no doubt they can survive. They do amazing things and still send money overseas. But it’s going to be hard in that are going to have to make choices between ‘do we have 3 meals a day here or do we have one or 2 meals a day in our house but still send money so Gramma can eat back home’. They’re going to put pressure on themselves to continue to support and make the sacrifices to be able to continue that support.”
The coronavirus pandemic will have many negative and long-lasting impacts, and the significant decline in remittance flow will put many already on the margins at further risk. Given that donor flow is connected to overall global economic health, this recession slows this essential failsafe for many. The humanitarian ecosystem is responding aggressively and proactively to this pandemic, and the best new can hope is that the aphorism ‘necessity of the mother of invention’ will make the sector smarter.
Added note: See here for a quick look at the impact of coronavirus on remittances.
As always, please email any comments or feedback to arcaro@elon.edu. Go here for more views from Jennifer Foy.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
One basic sociological truism is that everything is connected to everything else, and, increasingly, what happens in one part of the world has ripple effects around the globe. The bigger the stone, the more far reaching the ripples. Impact meant for a contained target almost certainly has ramifications far beyond the prime intent.
And then came President Trump adding a whole new dimension of volatility.
Any social change engineered by politicians or activists alike has many consequences. The manifest or intended purposes may seem straightforward (“make our nation safer”), but much more important perhaps are all of the unintended and/or indirect impacts, some positive and some very, very negative. Executive Orders, especially those signed without proper vetting, are a case in point. The many repercussions of the EOOM are being illuminated every day in the news, and none appear to be positive and provide material for future post. The present task is to take a local, domestic look and to perhaps provide more context around the refugee situation in the United States.
She and her staff watched the breaking news at 4:45 Friday afternoon and immediately began planning next steps. Though rumored for days that this EO would come out, the reality that late afternoon was still jolting.
Later that evening Jennifer sent messages to both staff and clients that an information session would be held at their offices Saturday morning. At that meeting she and her staff did their best to explain the implications, outline positive steps people could take, and steps they should not take (e.g., travel outside the US).
On Wednesday (the morning of our meeting) she found on her desk a plate of food. Here’s the story.
“One of our client’s didn’t speak English very well, but she literally knew that this was going to hurt our office, so she brought in a plate of food at every desk at our office. So I have a nice plate of Afghan food to eat this afternoon at my desk.”
Gulzari is an Afghan woman, a single mom with children, and a recent refugee who does not speak English. She does not have a lot of money but found the resources to cook a meal for 24 people, individualize the plates with names and deliver them – using public transportation. The gift of food did not mean she was giving from abundance, it likely cost her a meal or two, according to Jennifer. Among the refugee families Jennifer knows there is a ethos of hospitality that is common to all, regardless of culture.
“The difference in what hospitality means, it is much more that just a clean house and a cup of coffee…it goes well beyond that in so many ways and we see that here in ways that most Americans have never experienced.”
This gesture is an indication of a universal empathy and response that transcends cultures. Jennifer points out that this is a characteristic response in the refugee community. They feel so deeply appreciative and they want to honor the gift of being accepted into a new home in any way they can. This one example is not an exception, but rather just one among countless others to which Jennifer and her staff could point.
Understanding this fully one must keep in mind that the ‘refugee community’ is and is not a monolithic whole. Yes, refugees all share a common experience once they come to the United States and are seen -and to an extent see themselves- bound together, but the fact is they come from dozens of different cultures and cultural traditions. Generalizations made about ‘refugees’ no not deny their cultural and linguistic diversity but rather celebrates their common humanity, a sentiment aid workers around the world know very well.
No, neither Jennifer nor I are trying to sanitize or romanticize the refugee population; they are human and occasionally make human mistakes. That said, both anecdotal and hard evidence indicates that, as a whole, their crime rates are much lower, their level of community involvement much higher, and the high value and respect they place on their new homeland is amazing. Read here my interview with Marlene Myers, NC State Refugee Coordinator for more examples.
Here is Jenn describing the gift of food. It was not the only one her staff has received from clients in the last week.
“You are fracturing the foundation” Doing a thorough social impact assessment means comprehensively examining the immediate impacts of, in this case, the EOOM, and certainly that is where most of the news stories are focusing: people stuck in airports, protests, students and faculty not able to come back to (our leave) campus, and so on. But beyond the now there is the near and not-so-near future, and that is where our conversation leads us.
In short, though the restrictions on immigrants and refugees are as we understand now limited to 120 days, the impacts of this 4 month hiatus will last far beyond those years. Jennifer puts it this way,
“Nationally what we fear is that this can and will shut down a lot of small offices [handling refugee’s nationally], or offices that weren’t as financially well supported…. What’s going to happen is that all of these agencies are going to close…. this is 35 years of history of building this network…you are essentially fracturing the foundation of the refugee network.”
Jennifer seems confident that the longer term impact of the EOOM will yield a more robust system, a bit more able to anticipate and respond to existential challenges. I hope she is right, though as a sociologist I know that once broken systems tend to struggle recovering. In the short term it appears certain that if aid organizations serving refugees have to close or severely cut staff there will be at minimum tension and uncertainty among this population.
The emotional toll and compartmentalization As the executive director Jennifer knows that her staff and clients take cues from her behavior and general reactions, and that even in -or especially because of- the unique and confusing circumstances surrounding EOOM she must maintain an outwardly calm and assuring demeanor. Her staff must be exactly the same way whenever they interact with clients, holding back more negative comments and emotions that would be counterproductive.
“I thinkmost staff are asking the question everyday of how to balance the responsibility they have to help the people and serving [being mindful about] with their own emotions. I think they have not fully figured out how to juggle both of those opposing obligations. They can’t show panic, they can’t show fear because there are dozens of very vulnerable people who have had enough of that.”
In other words, the aid workers are required to compartmentalize their personal response from their professional response all week hile maintaining an aura of humanity, compassion and understanding.
When Jenn came in Monday morning she gave her usual round of hugs, but the toll was beginning to become real. Monday mornings there is regular a meeting among the managers. Jenn knew that if the EOOM was real, there would be impacts both on the staff and the clients. She said, “I was sitting in a circle with 25 people, knowing that some may not be with us in coming weeks.”
This very scene, one has to assume, is being repeated in similar offices throughout the US.
By pushing the task of carrying the conversation on to others Jenn was able to protect herself and compartmentalize in order to hold everything together for her team members. There were tears, but not then, not around the manager’s table meeting or in from of clients.
Adam Clark, WR-Durham Photo Credit: Amelia Cassar Photography
To keep positive and strong she knew that for her and her staff members all they would have to do would be to spend time with the clients, walk into their houses as a reminder to keep going, and that’s enough.
Near the end of our interview Adam Clark, the Office Director from World Relief in Durham, joined us and we expanded the conversation to include discussion of the many volunteers and college interns both offices have. Both Adam and Jennifer agreed that in the coming weeks non-paid staff will have to take more tasks. Jennifer was optimistic about this and said, “They’re ready to pick up and ready to serve.”
I asked what kind of messaging were they encouraging them to pass on and what do you think they’re picking up?
Adam offered, “We see every member of our team as an ambassador to their own circles. Many team members have a foot in very different political worlds. They may face a lot of opposition at home, at church, and there are a lot of questions. We encourage them to listen, so they can engage in conversations, because we believe that we have more in common.”
Regarding the ongoing educational role of all the staff including interns he went on, “People who are reacting in a different way than they [those who would support the EOOM] are doing so because they have valid concerns. Whether those concerns are well informed is a different matter.”
Aid workers are a bridge between worlds and world views more so than perhaps any profession, and serving this function may not show up prominently in any job description, but remains critically important.
Photo from https://www.facebook.com/WorldReliefHighPoint/
Getting people woke, one by one Earlier this week Jennifer spent a few hours at a local TV news station and after being on a small ‘expert’ panel about the impact of EOOM she and her counterparts answered phone calls from the public. The vast majority were supportive of Trump’s EOOM and railed against ‘immigrants and refugees’ citing a variety of reasons. One of the frustrations felt by Jenn and many of her staff is that they know from countless experiences that if most of these people would only have the opportunity to simply share a meal with a refugee family they would have their eyes and hearts opened.
One story is that of an older man, maybe late 50s or early 60s, who was well-known in the bar scene around the small town of High Point. A family of Syrian refugees was placed by Jennifer’s organization into the vacant house right next door to where he lived. His initial reactions were predictable and negative, but now, one year later, the little Syrian children next-door run in and out of his house as if he were their uncle, the family share meals together, and his opinion about these Syrian refugees has been altered 180°. They are no longer abstract threats but real people with faces, emotions, sharing with him the simple desire for a life of safety, dignity, and marked by the compassionate fellowship of close friends and family.
Where to from here?
This story continues to unfold, and as I write this word of a Seattle judge halting Trump’s immigration order is on my news feed. As the situation alternately becomes more and less clear aid workers like Jennifer remain focused. She and her staff -and their countless counterparts across the United States- read, respond and keep moving forward with their mission of serving refugees in the best way possible.
For comic relief we can watch as the European Union trolls Trump with a friendly competition to be “second”, but breaks like these seem a guilty pleasure when there are so many immediate needs.
Some bullet points to share
Finally, here are some facts that Jennifer and other staffers share as part of their ongoing social media push to educate:
• The EO refers to 9/11 three different times as a reason for new “extreme vetting” for the refugee program. ZERO of the 19 hijackers were refugees. 15 of the 19 were from Saudi Arabia, which is not on the list of suspended countries.
• ZERO Americans have been killed in a terrorist attack by a refugee. About 3 million refugees have entered the US since 1980.
• Refugees are highly screened immigrants. Much more vetted than other visa carrying immigrants.
• The current vetting process for a refugee takes, on average, 1.5-2 years.
• Syrian refugees are victims and are fleeing from real and incredibly dangerous persecution.
• The situation in Europe is COMPLETELY different than in the US. Refugees do not walk across (or swim to) our borders. To arrive in the US, refugees go through an organized, thorough, complex vetting process.
• Resettlement to another country is the LAST resort for these individuals. They are identified as refugees because they canNOT return to their home country.
• The United States was founded by a group of people fleeing religious persecution.
There will be edits and additions to this post, but in the meantime contact me if you have comments. If you feel moved to help the refugee program in the United States directly read this and then donate.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
The toll of dealing with an impending existential crisis
Today I had the pleasure of spending a couple precious hours with Jennifer Foy, the executive director of World Relief for the Winston-Salem/High Point offices in North Carolina. The job of her staff is to facilitate the processing and support of refugees coming into the state from placed like Cuba, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and elsewhere.
It will take a while to put together my notes and do a follow up with her, so the full report of our discussion will come in several days.
We began the chat in her office commiserating about the news of the day, shared stories of how the last couple weeks were utterly exhausting and Trump-news dominated. She observed that she and her staff were having a hard time focusing and were spending more time on social media and news outlets, waiting for the next news bomb to drop.
Words of wisdom
My next post will detail the many topics Jennifer and covered, but more immediately I wanted to share some very wise thoughts from my friend and colleague. Evil Genius put this post on Facebook last night, and I believe that it is good advice. He counters the facist Nequiquam est refragatere withthis:
Illegitimi non carborundum*
To my aid worker colleagues around the world. Especially, in some ways those of you who are American, like I am, or maybe British; but at the same time not at all to exclude anyone. Whether you’re out on the front lines in South Sudan, Afghanistan, Haiti, or innumerable other places where connectivity is sketchy and lattes are made with Nescafe; whether you’re buried in a maze of cubicles in one of the humanitarian capitals; in a UN agency or governmental donor like USAID or BPRM, this is for you:
Hang. In. There.
If you feel like the floor is shaking, you can’t concentrate, can’t tear yourself away from the horrific freakshow that is the first 100 days, take a mental health day. Or five. Or ten. Because this is not normal.
Take a week of sick leave (the world won’t end). Have the flu. Have your period. Have a toothache. Cash in some comp days. Call in a few favors. Threaten to post those R&R pictures on Facebook, if you have to.
Take a week. Hell, take two if you can. Because we’re in for the long haul. We won’t survive if we all flame out in the first few days.
The activists in America are all, “DON’T NORMALIZE THIS!!”, and I agree. The current state of affairs is neither normal nor okay. But we’ve seen this kind of thing go down before, in lots of places. A despotic leader takes control and things turn to shit in short order. We have to normalize it at the individual level. We have to get to the point that we can get through the day without our amygdalae popping like little balloons every time The Guardian or NPR or Jezebel posts another article. No, this is not normal, and things will almost certainly get worse before they get better. But we do have to get through it.
Let’s not self-aggrandize, but at the same time let’s not understate the situation either: the world needs us to keep doing what we’re doing. Which we can’t do if we’re unable to roll out of bed in the morning.
Take the time. Take the meds. Get the counseling. Drink the extra beer. Do what you have to do to get over the emotional hump of accepting this new (NOT NORMAL) reality, because it’s going to be a long, bumpy ride.
And while we’re at it, let’s hug each other. If your context approves, hug your local colleagues, too. Or at least buy them chocolate, or whatever. This is do-able. We can get through it, but it will have to be together.
Illegitimus non carborundum
[*I added the image and will expand on its relevance in a future post. It does not appear in the Facebook post.]
Thanks for the solid, EG.
More to come soon. Contact me if you are an aid worker -local or otherwise- and would like your voice heard.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
Embracing a development worker
On this New Years Day I got up early before the family. After making my coffee I immediately settled into reading a book recommended by my wife and 12 year old daughter, a book that came as a Christmas present just a week ago.
My wife is an amazing mother and constantly challenges our children to read and explore the world, and the choice of Linda Sue Park’s A Long Walk to Water was made easy because it had been both on the New York Times best seller list and honored by the Newberry Award committee.
The book tells two stories that connect for the reader as they read the final pages. One story is of a young girl -just as countless other young girls around the world- who grew up taking long walks to fetch water, the other about a “Lost Boy” who comes of age in refugee camps and ultimately gets official refugee status, comes to the United States, and starts a new life in upstate New York.
The story comes full circle when the young boy -now an accomplished and educated young man- starts his own ngo Water for South Sudan and is responsible for bringing a bore-hole well to the village of the young girl.
Yeah, I know the opinion many aid workers have about MONGO’s (MyOwnNGO) and general ‘do-goodery’, but the story of Salva Dut, an aid and development worker by my measure, seems positive and appropriate as we begin a new year. I say this despite a chronically deteriorating situation in South Sudan, and one does wonder how many of his wells will survive. Not unlike many development efforts, Dut’s work has a Sisphian quality, indeed.
In my last post I described a discussion with the North Carolina State Refugee Coordinator. One story she told was of four young single men from Sudan who had been placed together here in North Carolina. Now, having just read A Long Walk for Water, I know a bit more clearly the back story likely behind their lives. I will have to follow up with the NC State Refugee Coordinator Marlene Myers and see if she can recall if these young men were also part of the “lost boys” chapter in refugee history.
A net positive?
We all strive to move the needle incrementally in a positive direction. Salva Dut is doing it in his way, and with this post, in this moment at the beginning of a new year, I chose to let myself be inspired by his strength and feel good about my twelve year old learning about worlds far removed -but at the same time intersecting- from her’s.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
Perpetuation of stereotypes and misinformation fuels much of this sentiment. What most people don’t know -some inside but mostly outside the aid sector, especially here in the United States- is that refugees almost immediately give back both internationally and in their local communities. Most become tax paying, fully functional contributors to their new home communities in an astoundingly short number of months, giving back in large measure.
Refugees overcome seemingly endless obstacles to establish a meaningful new life in their host nations and, typically, are amazingly resilient and resourceful people who, arguably, represent the best of humanity.
Listen here for Marlene’s voice describing refugee contributions.
One way they give back is by sending money back to their country of origin. According to various sources total remittances from relocated refugees and immigrants are now well over US$500 billion per year, and is now more than three times larger than total global aid budgets.
This recent article about remittances to Somalia gives some great detail. Marlene pointed out that nearly 100% of refugees begin making remittances back to their home nation, oftentimes at great personal sacrifice.
Local aid workers, indeed.
Now for some background
I am working on documentary film project with my Elon University colleague Dr. Ahmed Fadaam on the topic of how refugees adjust to life in North Carolina.
Last week we met with Marlene Myers who has worked for the last 25 years as the State Refugee Coordinator for North Carolina. She is employed by the Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Social Services and works with the United States Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. Her job is to oversee the placement of refugees in locations around North Carolina.
In fiscal year 2017 she will help direct the placement of 3,845 refugees through 13 affiliate organizations around the state under the auspices of the Department of State’s Reception and Placement Program. These refugees come from 40 different countries around the globe, nearly all of whom would have had contact with aid workers as part of their journey.
Dr. Fadaam with Marlene Myers.
As part of her job Marlene vets and meets regularly with senior staff members for global aid organizations such as World Relief, Church World Services, Episcopal Migration Ministries and others.
Most of these organizations rotate aid workers deployed outside the US back to duty stations all over the US where refugees are being resettled. One example is the World Relief office in High Point, North Carolina.
We talked about many topics, and Dr. Fadaam and I learned a great deal. By my definition Marlene is an aid worker. Her voice needs to be among those to which we listen closely.
History lesson The US war in Vietnam (referred to as the “American War” by the Vietnamese) had many legacies. Wars are like that, changing history. One positive impact of this war, in my humble opinion, was the establishment in 1980 of the Bureau of Refugee Programs, the name of which changed in 1993 to its current title, the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), the initial purpose of which was to organize the intake of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laosian social casualties of that prolonged conflict.
This chart shows the final refugee placement numbers for North Carolina for FY 2017.
In the early years the refugees processed by the PRM were from from a small number of nations, primarily in Southeast Asia. Over the next two decades the changes in the nationalities of those processed by the PRM have mirrored global conflicts. In the last five years both the numbers processed and the range of nationalities have increased significantly, and in 2016 there are more than 40 different nationalities represented. In FY 2016 the United Stated welcomed 84,995 refugees to 49 of our states, with the most welcomed by California, Florida, Texas, and New York. In FY 2015 refugees represented only about 10% of all immigrants to the United States. The US takes in more refugees per year than any other nation, though when looked at per capita the US lags far behind most nations. Other nations accepting fewer refugees have programs that support these individuals and families for a long period time where the US allows for minimal support and expects the refugees to be mostly self sufficient in just over three months.
Though there are domestic vetting processes, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) does the all the major vetting (security, health, etc.) and makes country by country allocations and it is the job of the US PRM to place the yearly allocation.
North Carolina, as a state having many military bases that were the training grounds for soldiers who fought in Vietnam, has always had a welcoming tradition perhaps because so many had connections with the people of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. North Carolina in fact has the second highest population of Montagnards outside of Vietnam.
Marlene Myers Marlene is a dedicated civil servant who has devoted her career to assisting refugees from all over the world and often tells people that she “…has the best job in North Carolina.” She is the Past-President and current Vice-President of the national organization of State Refugee Coordinators, and has networked extensively both with her domestic counterparts and with those in other nations. She is open, passionate, tireless and unabashedly devoted to her life of service. The stories she told of specific situations and refugees spoke volumes as to her humanitarian commitment. I feel honored to have met and learned from her.
At the national level, the State Coordinators of Refugee Resettlement (SCORR) meets face to face yearly and has monthly virtual meetings via email and phone conferences, etc. SCORR is broken down into committees working on various issues.
Marlene also frequently meets with her international counterparts, most typically as a host to international teams looking at how North Carolina manages their refugee resettlements.
Challenges During our interview she outlined many challenges. Here are just a few.
An increasing number are “urban refugees” who have taken temporary refuge in places like Jordan and Lebanon. Those escaping conflict situations carry psychological burdens.
In the last ten years there are more people from many more countries. This growth has not been matched by more Congressional funding, meaning far fewer resources for more people.
Getting translators for the many languages and dialects is difficult, as is dealing with the many cultural and religious differences.
Single individuals typically get placed together with others so as to ease financial burden. Even when they are from the same country they frequently have language difficulties. Marlene tells of four Sudanese men who were placed together. They told her they could only communicate after they all learned English because they all four had very different dialects.
Many come from ‘high functioning’ nations like Syria or Iraq where they are likely to have skill sets that can be useful when finding employment and in general when navigating a new life in a foreign nation.
The down side of coming to the US with high qualifications is that in a majority of cases employment options tend to be limited to very low level positions.
On the other end of the spectrum are some coming from refugee camps where they have lived, in some cases, for nearly two decades (think Dadaab in Kenya). These refugees face tremendous challenges dealing with the most basic day to day activities.
Long term follow through is difficult. Long term assessment of the adaptation of refugees is done mostly by academics doing research, though she also meets with the various local ethnic social/religious groups and do ad hoc focus groups and learn what challenges they face.
Author interviewing Marlene Myers
The humanitarian imperative
One final question I asked Marlene was how she would describe the value of what she does. Why does the United States take in refugees and why does she do her job facilitating this process?
She said she gets that question frequently when she talks with outsiders about what she does. She asks them what they would do if they were in the same situation as these refugees, ‘how would you cope?’ she asks. She basically responds with one articulation of the humanitarian imperative, that we need to respond to others as we would want them to respond to us were we to be in that same plight.
Grounded thoughts from a local aid worker dedicated to serving.
Drop me a message if you have questions or thoughts you’d like to share.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
Aid Worker Voices, the book, coming VERY soon Proof copies coming tomorrow, then -hopefully- the public release of Aid Worker Voices! I will put ordering information here on the blog in the next day or so. In the meantime….
Another side of aid work
Last Friday I spent the day helping a colleague work on a documentary about refugee families who are being assisted by a big box NGO here in central North Carolina. We visited a community garden in its first year of being planted and tended by locally settled refugees from DRC, Burma, Cambodia and beyond. The vegetables, being cultivated in a field once dominated by kudzu, included corn, peppers, egg plant, okra, beans and other staple foods enough to sustain many families. The land is owned by the NGO and will soon have a proper fence, access to water, power, a tool storage facility, and cleared space for community gatherings. That is to say, this appears to be a sustainable enterprise with deep, long lasting impact potential.
We also visited a small apartment complex where we interviewed a refugee from Burma. Through an interpreter he told the story of his family and their desire to live free of violence and fear. Their move to the US was not quick or smooth, but now they are in a setting “with human rights” and “democracy.” There were tears during the interview born of bad memories and new hope. My colleague, a refugee himself from Iraq, handled the interview with deep sensitivity. He had been there himself.
I talked with the aid worker in charge of helping to resettle the constant influx of refugees to this area of central North Carolina and told her about Aid Worker Voices -both the blog and the book.
We had a quick, spirited discussion about the aid world, reviewing current events in South Sudan, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. The chance to talk with a someone who shared a common knowledge of the humanitarian aid and development industry was great for both of us. In the end we repeated the truism that ‘it is all interconnected’, that her work in this small town in North Carolina was just one part of the global efforts of her NGO to deliver aid and assistance to beneficiaries.
Her voice as a local aid worker is important and hers -and others like hers- need to be heard more broadly.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
tasked with organizing the placement of refugees in the area. [You can look here for my previous interviews with Jennifer.] Now she is based at the national in Baltimore office and is Executive Director for US operations for World Relief. In her current position she will be responsible for helping to ramp up her organization’s share of the waves of refugees needing to be placed during the Biden years.
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