New London resettlement group to host Sudanese family

Start Fresh was thinking about its future before mobilizing

New London — The New London Area Refugee Settlement Team, also known as Start Fresh, has awakened from dormancy and is mobilizing in preparation for a Sudanese family of three.

Start Fresh Board President Vivian Samos said the family, a married couple in their 40s with a 6-year-old daughter, will arrive Thursday on a flight from Lebanon.

The family comes to New London during a time when Start Fresh was

rethinking its future in light of the dwindling numbers of refugees being accepted into the U.S. these days.

The family is fully vetted and narrowly will miss President Donald Trump’s expansion of a travel ban, which goes into effect Feb. 22.

Samos said the new stricter policies regarding immigration, especially from Muslim-majority countries, already have slowed the flow of refugees to the U.S. Citizens from Sudan, under the new U.S. policy, no longer will be eligible to enter a diversity lottery to apply for immigrant visas.

“This last year we’ve seen fewer and fewer refugees. With the new ban, this family probably could not have come here,” she said.

Start Fresh has been working with New Haven-based IRIS, or Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, to co-sponsor refugee families since 2016. They’ve already resettled four families in New London — three from Syria and one from Sudan — and briefly aided an Afghani family.

The group was without a family to sponsor for about a year and thought about pivoting to help asylum-seekers.

“But settling refugees, that’s really our primary mission and something we have lots of experience doing,” Samos said.

Greg Marino, community co-sponsorship program manager for IRIS, said only a handful of families fleeing conflicts from places like Syria, Somalia and Sudan have found their way to Connecticut over the past two years but they still are coming at a slow trickle.

“They’re subject to a more stringent and arduous vetting process,” Marino said, but not completely banned from entering the U.S.

IRIS worked with a group in Willimantic to resettle a Syrian family in March 2019.

“Honestly, these kinds of cases just appear and we were very pleasantly surprised to get this arrival notice,” Marino

said of the Sudanese family.

“I’ve been working with (Start Fresh) for a really long time and they happen to have the only Sudanese family we’ve ever co-sponsored in Connecticut. I knew they had the resources and could deploy quickly,” Marino said.

Flurry of activity

The call from IRIS sparked a flurry of activity among Start Fresh’s broad base of volunteers — representatives from faith and civic groups and organizations jumped into action, Samos said.

An apartment was located, a lease secured and volunteers helped complete the furnishing prior to the family’s expected arrival. They also collected enough culturally appropriate food for a month and enlisted the settled Sudanese family for help in the preparations and even meeting the family at the airport.

The school district is aware of the incoming student. Adult Education, as the program has in the past, is expected to provide the resources to teach the family English. Students from Connecticut College have volunteered in the past as tutors and translators.

“There’s lots of community participation,” Samos said. “We couldn’t do it without them.”

Samos said the families settled in the area have done exceptionally well and “graduated” from the support of Start Fresh, with jobs, green cards, vehicles, driver’s licenses and most with a firm grasp of the English language. Two of the immigrant children are attending college.

“They’re hard workers and contribute to our community. It’s gratifying to see,” Samos said. “They’re giving back.”

Marino said the largest proportion of refugees coming to IRIS continue to be families of men who worked with the U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan, families that have become targets in their own countries.