Posts Tagged ‘refugee crisis’
The Potential End to the U.S. Refugee Program Is More than a Political Crisis – It’s an Identity One
America is facing an identity crisis.
It’s a crisis that threatens to undermine an identity painstakingly forged over hundreds of years — years during which America became a haven of hope for those seeking a safer, more promising place to build a future.
The United States recently proposed a plan to effectively eliminate asylum opportunities for those arriving at the U.S. border. Likewise, talks of zeroing out the number of refugees admitted into the U.S. coupled with Ken Cuccinelli’s recent remarks that the Statue of Liberty’s welcoming inscription was directed solely towards “people coming from Europe” and those “who can stand on their own two feet,” mark a clear rejection of the compassionate identity that once distinguished the United States in the world.
A Symbol of Freedom
Few Americans recall the unifying details behind the Statue of Liberty’s creation in 1875. Though France financed the statue, the U.S. agreed to provide the site and build the pedestal. A lack of funds for the pedestal, however, put the project in jeopardy until Joseph Pulitzer started a fundraising campaign. Emma Lazarus’s famous poem welcoming “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” which Cuccinelli referenced, was penned as part of this fundraiser.
More than 120,000 people contributed to the pedestal project, most of them giving less than a dollar. Donors, many of them immigrants themselves, didn’t have much, but they gave what they had to the cause of liberty and inclusion. This legacy continued when President Reagan commissioned Lee Iacocca, then Chairman of Chrysler Corporation and himself a child of immigrants, to raise funds from the public for the restoration of the same statue. Again, the American people contributed hundreds of millions to repair the symbol of freedom.
A Place of Asylum
America has historically viewed itself as both a home for immigrants and a place of asylum. Many of the first American settlers came to escape religious persecution in Europe. In 1776 Thomas Paine argued that America should be a place that embraces the persecuted, explaining that “This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.”
We lived up to this calling during the Cold War, when we admitted over 3 million refugees impacted by Soviet repression, and during the 1960s, we admitted over 14,000 unaccompanied children from Cuba.
In contrast, the times in which our country has excluded immigrants and refugee seekers are among the most shameful in our history. When Nazi racial policies first began expelling non-ethnic Germans, U.S. immigration laws were restrictive, limited by a rigid quota system. As a result, the U.S. turned away the St. Louis, a ship carrying nearly one thousand German Jews, essentially sending them back to die. And when a bipartisan bill requested the admission of 20,000 Jewish child refugees, it didn’t even make it out of committee.
The remorse that ensued haunted our country and was largely responsible for what became the new, more open refugee policies that have rescued thousands from persecution and death around the world since World War II.
Today, we’re being called to defend the cause of liberty and sanctuary again. Refugees and asylum seekers from around the world have long looked to America as a place to raise their families in safety after enduring extreme violence and persecution.
Here’s the problem: As a nation, we’ve been comfortable for so long that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to struggle for necessities like food, clothing, shelter and life. We’ve forgotten that small acts of kindness aren’t small to those in desperate situations. And, most importantly, we’ve forgotten how these acts define us as a nation.
A Nation of Immigrants
We also seem to have forgotten America’s immigrant history. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services recently changed its mission statement to remove a phrase describing America as “a nation of immigrants.” And yet we can’t deny that immigration is woven into the very fabric of our nation. The diversity that has shaped our identity as a “melting pot” has enabled us to assume our place of leadership in the world. More than half of America’s billion-dollar startups, for example, have immigrant founders, and immigrants now create a quarter of new businesses in the U.S. One in eight members of our current Congress are immigrants or children of immigrants, and one in six U.S. health care workers are immigrants.
America has long set the standard of refugee resettlement for the rest of the world. We are not arguing in favor of open borders, but if we close our doors completely to immigrants and refugees, the rest of the world may well follow suit, exacerbating the global crisis and erasing the identity our country has worked so hard to build.
While we cannot take on the responsibility of solving all the world’s problems, we owe it to ourselves, and to all who came before us, to embrace our identity as a nation of immigrants — a nation of hope, safety and refuge. If we don’t, we will lose something inherently American. We will become smaller, not just to those outside our borders but to those inside as well.
We must decide, once again, what kind of people we want to be, and who we will become.
Tim Breene served on the World Relief Board from 2010 to 2015 before assuming the role of CEO from 2016-2020. Tim’s business career has spanned nearly 40 years with organizations like McKinsey, and Accenture where he was the Corporate Development Officer and Founder and Chief Executive of Accenture Interactive. Tim is the co-author of Jumping the S-Curve, published by Harvard Publishing. Tim and his wife Michele, a longtime supporter of World Relief, have a wealth of experience working with Christian leaders in the United States and around the world.
When a Story Becomes a Person
[this blog post was written by Kelly Dolan, World Relief’s Content Strategy Manager.]
If you can’t remember anything about World Refugee Day 2015, you’re not alone. If you’re like me, you didn’t even know such a day existed. I mean, we knew (roughly) what a refugee was because we’d occasionally hear a story in the news about those who had been displaced. But that’s all the refugee crisis was for a while—a distant story.
But then one morning last September, our computer and TV screens were filled with the now tragically iconic picture of the lifeless body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, his body washed up on a Turkish beach. As we learned more about one refugee child, a story in the news suddenly became a person.
This happened before I came to work for World Relief, before I was learning and telling the stories of refugees on an almost daily basis. I’m honestly embarrassed I didn’t know more about the refugee crisis before the photo surfaced.
After all that’s happened this year, more of us are aware of World Refugee Day 2016. And many of us care about refugees in a new way. But now there’s a different kind of story that’s filling our computer and TV screens. It goes like this…
“Refugees are dangerous. They’re violent people. They’re a threat to whatever country takes them in. The only way we can truly protect our country from terrorism is to keep refugees out.”
I’m guessing you’ve heard that story at least once already today. But without being rooted in any facts or personal narrative, that’s all it is—another story. It’s a story based on fear. There are some who want to use recent tragic events to tell us a story that creates fear. It may be a convenient story for their agenda. But it doesn’t make it true.
So today, on World Refugee Day, we want to not only tell you a different story, but to introduce you to a person. Meet Samir, a young man from Syria who has experienced much pain and much suffering, but has also found much hope.
If you’ve been afraid of refugees resettling in your town, our hope is that by meeting Samir, you’ll see your new refugee neighbors a bit differently. We hope it inspires you to meet more refugees. Because when you meet a refugee, a story becomes a person. And it’s much harder to be afraid—and so much easier to extend a loving welcome—when it’s a real person, not just a story in the news.
Also, let’s use today as a reminder to do everything we can to make sure that our new refugee neighbors like Samir don’t see us as just a story. Today, let’s commit to extending ourselves to our refugee neighbors so that as they are in the process of adjusting to a new country, new culture, potentially a new language, and discovering their best contribution to a society far from the place they once called home, we become real people to them as well.
As a story becomes a person for each of us, may God bring hope, healing, and peace to us all.
Want to know exactly how you can help refugees? Here are 6 ways.
Want to support World Relief as we serve refugees? Commit $15/month through Unlock Hope.
Who is a refugee and what do they go through to get to the U.S.?
A refugee is someone who has fled one’s home country and cannot return because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
Check out this infographic to learn the steps refugees must go through when immigrating to the United States. Then, learn more about the ways we currently serve refugees in the U.S.
U.S REFUGEE SCREENING PROCESS INFOGRAPHIC
World Relief provides initial resettlement and placement as well as employment, education and legal services for refugees arriving in the United States. Collaborating with local churches and volunteers, World Relief comes alongside vulnerable families as they begin their lives in the U.S. Since 1979, World Relief has helped resettle more than 260,000 refugees from over 80 nations.
Acceptance. Friendship. Hope: Good Neighbor Teams go beyond supplying material needs to refugees
World Relief currently provides refugees with resettlement assistance that includes housing, employment services, micro-enterprise loans and immigration services. But we cannot do it alone. We depend heavily on volunteer and church support, both financially and in practical ways. Churches and small groups around the country are mobilizing into Good Neighbor Teams to serve newly arriving refugee families for a period of six to 12 months—supplying material needs like food, clothing, and transportation, and tangible services like school registration, community orientation, job preparation and English tutoring.
Good Neighbor Teams also recognize the importance of offering even greater gifts to refugee families. By valuing the stories, dreams and contributions of the newcomers, churches and small groups are extending the gifts of friendship, belonging, and acceptance to those who are entering an unfamiliar world.
Life Center North Church in Spokane recognized its vision and mission fit seamlessly into World Relief’s mission to empower the local Church to serve the most vulnerable. The church’s leadership trusted God to catalyze missionally-minded people from among its 1,100-member congregation to form an initial World Relief Good Neighbor Team.
The team, comprised of people of different ages and stages of life, came alongside recent refugees to Spokane, including the 11-member Muslim family from Somalia. Lead Pastor Mark Mead, who led the initial team, said, “We are connected to a mission beyond ourselves as we obey the Great Commission.” He expected the team would be a blessing to refugee families, but he wasn’t expecting the blessings that came to him and his church as a result of serving. In the next year, the church hopes to form six to ten more Good Neighbor Teams.
“We share the mission of Jesus and that is what attracts people to our group,” says Pastor Mead. “Thank you, World Relief for helping mobilize the local church to what moves the heart of God.”
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Webinar on The Church and the Refugee | Refugee Crisis
Learn from Gabe Lyons (Q Ideas) as he speaks with Rich Stearns (World Vision U.S., CEO), and Stephan Bauman (World Relief, CEO) about how the church must play a key role in engaging in the current Middle East refugee crisis. This webinar explores core issues behind the headlines surrounding the U.S. refugee program and potential security concerns, and provides perspectives on and presents a clear call to the Church to raise its voice as one this Christmas.
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The hallmark of our country is to welcome the persecuted
Jenny Yang, Vice President of Advocacy and Policy at World Relief, joined Suzanne Meridien of Syrian American Council on Hashtag VOA (Voice of America) earlier today to bring clarity on how the Paris Attacks have created an uncertain future for Syrian Refugees in the United States and what we, as Americans and Christians, can do to welcome refugees.“One of the hallmarks of our country is actually to welcome the persecuted.” – Jenny Yang
View the full interview below:
A Christian Conversation about Refugees | Refugee Crisis
Like a tsunami, waves of terror from the Paris attacks are crashing upon American shores. Valid questions pour in about the U.S. refugee resettlement screening process. Securing personal safety – in the face of sometimes overwhelming fear – drives these understandable questions. Answers are not difficult to come by; but not every answer is actually grounded in the facts. Ideological agendas have seeded an answer-seeking rumor mill that spreads myths-as-fact via social media. As Charles Spurgeon quipped, “A lie can travel halfway around the world, while the truth is still putting on its boots.”
Church leaders like Leith Anderson, President of the National Association of Evangelicals, have called for reasonable security combined with Christian compassion, “Of course we want to keep terrorists out of our country, but let’s not punish the victims of ISIS for the sins of ISIS.” “It is completely right to ensure that the United States have a strong process to discern who are truly refugees and who are trying to take advantage of refugees,” says Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, but “we cannot love our neighbors at the same we’re standing aside and watching them be slaughtered.”
Screening out terrorists is imperative and is the responsibility of our country’s national security agencies. That said…as Christians, what is our unique responsibility as followers of Jesus in all of this? What should we be most concerned about – should it be our safety?
Let’s take a step back. What if we moved from a security-centered refugee conversation to a Jesus-centered refugee conversation? It might look like exploring the Scriptures surfaced in Relevant Magazine’s article, “What the Bible Says about How to Treat Refugees.” It might also look like Christians in the West learning from Christians in the majority world who face terror and persecution daily as explained in the Christianity Today article, “Terrorists are Now the Persecuted Church’s Greatest Threat.” It might look like Christians asking the question, “What is God up to?” like the Desiring God blog that sees a sovereign God purposefully bringing the nations (rather than fear) to our shores.
A Jesus-centered refugee conversation might cause us to remember that we are in fact following a Middle Eastern Refugee Savior whose family fled a genocide to Egypt. We might remember that our biblical identity as “strangers and aliens” because our identity is first found as citizens of the Kingdom of God.
And as we move from conversation to action, how might we respond? Welcome a vulnerable refugee family into your community by exploring how to become a Good Neighbor Team.
A Jesus-centered refugee conversation might look like learning how to follow a God who “did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). This same sacrificial God commands us to “welcome the stranger” and “love him [the immigrant] as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34).
By Damon Schroeder II World Relief Director for US Integral Mission
Who is our neighbor?
Meet, Johnny, one of thousands of our volunteers across the globe choosing courage and generosity by welcoming new families to the U.S. Hear Johnny’s story and why he is committed to serving refugee families. “It is incumbent on Christians to love God and love others.” – Johnny
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The Global Refugee Crisis
The Global Refugee Crisis: A Unique Moment for the Church
By Stephan Bauman, President, World Relief
In 1944, in response to the devastation and displacement of millions of refugees caused by World War II, the people of Park Street Church in Boston resolved to forego meals and send the money they would have spent on food to what they called the “War Relief Fund.” With other churches linked through the National Association of Evangelicals joined in the effort, they collectively raised $600,000—in today’s dollars nearly $8 million—to help rebuild Europe. Over time, as that sacrificial compassion extended to serve other regions plagued by poverty and conflict, the War Relief Fund became known as the War Relief Commission and, later, World Relief.
World Relief’s roots in the local church have remained central to our mission: throughout the world, we empower the local church to serve the most vulnerable. Today, as the world faces the most significant refugee crisis since World War II, with more than 50 million refugees and other forcibly displaced people worldwide, we are challenging, mobilizing, and equipping the Church to rise up in new ways to respond to this profound crisis.
Standing with the Persecuted Church
Today, in various locations throughout the world, followers of Jesus are facing persecution because of their faith in Christ. In Syria and Iraq, historic Christian communities have been decimated by ISIS and other extremist groups, threatening the existence of Christianity in regions where it has been present since the days of the first apostles: many have been killed, others kidnapped, and many have fled. When one part of Christ’s global body suffers, we all suffer (1 Cor. 12:26).
Many of our brothers and sisters who have been forced to flee their homes have found temporary safety in neighboring countries such as Jordan, which now hosts over a million refugees from Syria alone, half of them children. In many cases, these refugees are ineligible to work and struggle to meet basic human needs. The Christian community in Jordan is not large, but local churches there are standing with persecuted brothers and sisters, partnering with World Relief to provide basic necessities and to establish “child friendly spaces” to holistically meet the trauma support needs of hundreds of refugee mothers and their children.
We also stand with the Persecuted Church through the U.S. refugee resettlement program. Over the past three decades, World Relief has partnered with the U.S. State Department and thousands of local churches throughout the United States to welcome more than 250,000 individuals identified by the U.S. government as refugees—those who have fled a credible fear of persecution on account of their race, religion, political opinion, national origin, or social group—and to help them to integrate into American life.
Many of those we welcome are persecuted Christians: in the past five years, for example, around 40% of the approximately 320,000 refugees admitted by the U.S. government to the United States have identified with a Christian tradition (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, etc.), more than of any other single religion. Many of those have been individuals who were particularly targeted because of their Christian faith: of 125,000 Iraqi refugees admitted since 2007, for example, more than 35% have been Christians, even though only about 5% to 6% of the total Iraqi population were Christians as of 2003.
As persecuted Christians seek refuge in our nation, how could we not welcome them in? Jesus Himself was a refugee, escaping Herod’s genocidal tyranny and fleeing to Egypt (Matt. 2:13-15). He tells us later, in one of the most explicit discussions of divine judgement in the gospels, that when we welcome a stranger who is among “the least of these my brothers and sisters,” we welcome Christ himself. When we close our hearts against them, we do so to our Lord (Matt. 25:31-46).
While we serve the Persecuted Church in the Middle East, World Relief is also urging the United States government to increase the number of refugees admitted in the upcoming year. At this unique moment in history when so many refugees globally have been forced to flee, and as U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East have committed to taking in unprecedented numbers of those seeking refuge, we have challenged the U.S. government to accept 200,000 refugees in the coming year, returning to the approximate number of refugees that the U.S. accepted in 1980. By doing so, the U.S. government through partnership with World Relief and other resettlement agencies, along with local churches, will have the opportunity to welcome many more of our persecuted brothers and sisters.
Serving All in Christ’s Name
As Christians, we have a particular concern for the Persecuted Church, but our faith also compels us to respond with compassion to all those fleeing violence and persecution, regardless of their faith. In our programs in Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere in the Middle East, where the majority of the population are Muslims, World Relief and the local churches that we empower provide the same care and support to Muslims, Yazidis and other non-Christian religious minorities as we do to fellow Christians. As hundreds of thousands seek refuge in Europe, we are equipping local churches to respond with compassion and without discrimination. Likewise, our refugee resettlement programs throughout the United States provide services to refugees of all religious backgrounds.
We do so precisely because we are followers of Jesus, and we believe in the biblical teaching that each person is made in the Image of God and has inherent dignity and worth (Gen. 1:27). The Apostle Peter commands us to “show proper respect to everyone,” not just to fellow Christians, and we can practice Jesus’ “Golden Rule” by treating others as we would want to be treated if we were forced to flee our country, with compassion and respect (Matt. 7:12).
We are driven by Jesus’ Great Commandment, to love God and to love our neighbor; Jesus’ response to a legal scholar’s question—what we know of as the Parable of the Good Samaritan—makes explicitly clear that our “neighbor” cannot be narrowly defined to include only those of our own religious or ethnic group (Luke 10:21-37). When anyone is in need—which includes a great number of both Muslims and religious minorities right now in the Middle East—our response must be to love them as our neighbors, with compassion and mercy.
That is why we serve those of non-Christian religious traditions—whether abroad or within the United States—as an opportunity to live out the Great Commission, extending the love of Christ in tangible ways and sharing the hope of the gospel. We never do so in a coercive way, but as “an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have,” always shared “with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15).
The reality is that, particularly in the U.S., where Christianity is the majority religion, the response of the Church to the arrival of Muslim refugees and other religious minorities will have an enormous impact on how they perceive Jesus. As Christ followers, we want to welcome and befriend refugees so that we can be “the pleasing aroma of Christ” to all (2 Cor. 2:15). We have witnessed God working in this way through decades of resettling refugees from diverse religious traditions.
To the contrary, if the response of the American church to non-Christian refugees is one of fear, misplaced suspicion, and hostility, we will effectively reinforce their negative understanding of Christianity, while being unfaithful to the biblical commands to love our neighbor, to which we are bound regardless of their faith.
While I do not understand why God allows the horrific human suffering that has forced so many to flee—and I pray that he will restrain evil and bring peace—I also trust that God has a purpose in the movement of people. We read in the book of Job that “He makes nations great, and destroys them; he enlarges nations, and disperses them” (Job 12:23) and Paul teaches in Acts that God does this “so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him” (Acts 17:27 NIV 1984). God has sovereign purposes in the migration of people, and he invites his Church—here in the U.S. and throughout the world—to join him in that mission.
Perfect Love Casts Out Fear
As passionate as we are at World Relief about the missional opportunity raised by the arrival of refugees to the United States, I am not naĂŻve to the reality that this topic provokes fear in many Americans, including many Christians.
It is important to know that—despite some myths that have circulated quickly on the Internet—each refugee admitted to the United States undergoes a thorough vetting process to ensure both that each case meets the legal definition of a refugee (fleeing persecution for particular reasons, not those driven only by economic interests) and that they in no way present a national security or public safety threat to the United States. This thorough review—which can take many months and sometimes years—includes checks from the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, and State, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Refugees undergo a more thorough security check than any other category of immigrant or visitor who comes to the United States, and, having admitted more than 3 million refugees in the past several decades, there has never been a terrorist attack successfully perpetrated on U.S. soil by an individual who was admitted to the U.S. as a refugee.
In our experience, having resettled tens of thousands of Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and other non-Christian refugees in partnership with local churches since the late 1970s, the vast majority of refugees are people of peace who are incredibly grateful to the United States for having received them when no other country would do so. They are, in most cases, the victims of terrorism and tyrannical governments: having lost their homes and, in many cases, friends and family members, they are the strongest opponents of extremism. While we have important theological differences with people of other religions, it is simply false, and slanderous, to imply that most people from other religious traditions are violent or intent on doing harm to the U.S. or to Christians.
As Christians, we must put into practice one of the most frequent commands of the Bible: “be not afraid.” Scripture tells us that “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18), and that must be our motivation. Those who give into fear—often based on rumors and false stereotypes—will miss an opportunity to reflect Christ’s love to individuals whom God loves, for whom he sent his Son to die. By calling for limitations on the U.S. refugee resettlement program, they may also unintentionally be turning away persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ.
It is wrong to consider refugees of other religious traditions to be enemies. The vast majority are people who love their families and are simply seeking safety. But as we empower local churches to serve refugees in the Middle East, in Europe, and in the U.S., if we end up serving and showing kindness to someone who subscribes to an ideology that guides them to want to harm us, then we will be doing exactly as our Lord instructs and modeled: He commands us to love, pray, and provide food and drink to our enemies (Matt. 5:44, Rom. 12:20), just as we were welcomed in by Christ when we were his enemies (Rom. 5:10).
Now is a unique moment for the Church. Faced with the greatest refugee crisis in seventy years, the Church—the greatest social network on the planet—has the opportunity to rise up to stand with our persecuted brothers and sisters and to extend Christ’s love and compassion to those who might otherwise never encounter him. Guided by the love of Christ, not fear, I pray we will rise during this historic moment to create a legacy marked with faith, love and humility. When generations of Syrians and Iraqis and so many others look to us, may they experience the embrace of Jesus, the comfort of his Spirit and the relentless love of God.
Helping Refugees in the U.S. – A Story from Columbus
Imagine fleeing your home only to find yourself being resettled in a new country with a new language, a new home, new schools, and practically new everything. On top of such an overwhelming transition, now picture being faced with yet another devastation that would change things yet again.
One quiet morning in Columbus, Ohio, a Nepalese refugee family recently resettled by World Relief woke early for their children’s doctor appointments. While eating breakfast, they looked out the window and saw smoke billowing from their building. Hearing no alarms, they rushed to the door to see if there was a way out, but with thick smoke filling the hallways, the only other option was to jump out the third-story window.
Sending the children first, then his wife, the father left no man behind and was the last to jump. Miraculously, everyone was okay.
But the neighbors below were trapped in their apartment, so the Nepalese family, after reaching safety themselves, put themselves in harm’s way and rescued their three small neighbors and their mother.
World Relief staff was then able to help this refugee family find a new apartment, purchase meals during their time of transition and donated furniture to help them get back on their feet.
Deeply moved by all of the support, the father of the family soon after got baptized and got involved in a local church.
Simple acts of kindness can make all the difference in the world. World Relief staff and volunteers help refugees like this family settle in the US throughout the year – bringing hope and reassurance in times of uncertainty.
To learn more about how you can be a part of what is happening at World Relief, contact a World Relief office near you.