New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Meet the resettlers
These are the people helping place refugees in area
NEW HAVEN — Hey, Connecticut: Please show up.
That is the message from Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services, whose gentle inquiries this spring as to the interest of community groups to sponsor a family are now urgent.
Ann O’Brien, IRIS’ director of community engagement, said all of Connecticut is
a target to find places and volunteers to welcome, house and help settle refugees, the greatest influx expected to come from Afghanistan.
The latest estimate has IRIS welcoming 700 refugees between now and September 2022, according to O’Brien, with at least
300 Afghans, likely more, in the next three months.
She assumes some of the 700 will be Syrian and some from other countries, but nothing is confirmed.
The Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants in Bridgeport is committed to 100 Afghans in the next 60 days, and another 200 refugees from all countries over the next 12 months.
That will bring more than 1,000 refugees to Connecticut in one year.
The United States’ chaotic exit from Afghanistan threw off any normal schedule, with IRIS on 24-hour notice to receive individuals and families.
‘Spread the word’
The close to 50 co-sponsors who have participated in resettlements in the past five years have come not only from Greater New Haven and Greater Hartford, but also parts of Fairfield and Litchfield counties, with a group set up in New London and another in Norwich.
But O’Brien said IRIS fears they are not even close to that number agreeing to participate and then coming up to speed in the next two months, while the agency needs to attract additional community co-sponsors to the operation.
The co-sponsors, who are often connected to churches and synagogues, but not always, are trained by IRIS and given support by its staff. They are responsible for raising money, locating and furnishing an apartment, making contacts with school systems and health providers and generally helping the refugees acculturate.
O’Brien said they have enough temporary housing offers, but they are desperate for permanent, affordable housing options that meet specific criteria.
The criteria include rents at $1,300 to $1,400 a month for three- or twobedroom apartments near a bus line. She asked that anything outside those perimeters not be sent to IRIS, as it slows down their networking.
“When we get families, we want to pretty quickly get them into something where they can stay. That is our hope,” she said.
“People, spread the word,” O’Brien said, to all friends who are inclined to help in any capacity.
She said they are taking names and email addresses of everyone who wants to volunteer, as well as more groups interested in becoming co-sponsors.
“We are going to take those names and send them to the groups that we are rapidly standing up,” O’Brien said. “Everyone has a role to play. We will make it so everyone can.”
She said they need tutors or help with gathering household furnishings and winter clothes or bringing families to appointments, among myriad tasks.
Barbara Davis is with Danbury Area Refugee Assistance, which covers Danbury, Bethel and Ridgefield. They were planning to do it in early 2022, but since the Afghan crisis they are moving more quickly by organizing their teams and raising the money.
Housing again is a main concern and they need to raise funds to subsidize that housing, potentially for a year. “You really have to be ready,” Davis said.
Volunteers
Laura Noe is the cocoordinator with the Rev. Joe Perdue at the First Congregational Church in Branford, both new to leading this group, although she volunteered when they helped settle a Syrian family in 2016 by working in the trenches, unpacking boxes, “kind of making a nest.”
Calling themselves “Helping Families Settle,” they are raising between $8,000 and $12,000, have a fiduciary in place and have identified furniture and other donations to set up a household — actually, multiple households, they have so much.
“What we are in desperate need of is people to raise their hand to take on a subcommittee,” she said, particularly leadership in health care and education, while unlike other groups, they have identified an apartment. A communitywide meeting on the effort is scheduled for
Sept. 30 at 6:30 p.m. at the James Blackstone Memorial Library in Branford.
“We want to do a lot of work ahead of time so it doesn’t feel like a fire hose in the face when the people are here,” Noe said.
She said there are no end to good causes to join, but said there are deeper reasons she was pulled towards this one.
Noe said she has a brother who has a medical condition, was homeless for 25 years and out of touch with his family for nine years. She eventually found him in New Milford where everyone knew him as the person who loved and talked to trees.
She got to know the town, but especially Angel Salinas, an Ecuadorian immigrant who had opened a restaurant, Johanas, on the Green, and fed her brother daily, while in the winter Salinas let him get out of the elements in the back of Salinas’ shop.
“If you ever doubt there are good people in this world, this man, Angel Salinas, will redeem your faith in humanity forever,” she said.
Noe said her brother eventually accepted help and now is living independently. Salinas, when contacted at his restaurant, said “sometimes you do something simple, you can help a person. We became friends.”
She hopes the alliance with IRIS will inspire a “culture that celebrates family and community.”
Davis said the Danbury group successfully resettled a family from Colombia and one from Syria. She said this time around everything is a bigger challenge because of COVID-19, but like everyone else she said they are adapting and trying to work as fast as they can.
John McGeehan is continuing to head a coalition of five groups: First
Church Congregational in Fairfield, Temple Israel, the conservative synagogue in Westport, St. Luke’s Catholic Church in Westport and a group that self identifies as the Muslim community which has 15 families.
“The model exists. This is not hard. You just have to populate it. In my case it is just getting the band back together with a few different members,” McGeehan said. As organized as they are, he does not expect to be up and running until the end of October.
This is not to minimize the difficulty of finding housing, not only because of the increased costs in the wake of COVID-19, but because former rental properties are evaporating.
Life changing
McGeehan said he came to the project five years ago “from the perspective of wanting to change the life of another, but it also changed my life in profound ways. It opened my eyes to things I was just not aware of before.”
“There is a lot of responsibility, but there is an opportunity to build a relationship with somebody very different from yourself which you would not experience in Fairfield County,” McGeehan said of the Syrian family they helped settle.
He worked in investment banking for 25 years and now has his own consulting firm and experience organizing large groups, which the volunteer component represents. There is a memorandum of understanding among the five organizations that splits the cost and 40 hours of volunteer work per week.
McGeehan feels the community co-sponsorships are the best way to resettle refugees because they have “broader shoulders and deeper pockets and they can stay with them longer” than the resettlement agencies themselves.
He worries that the infrastructure at the State Department and the nine national refugee agencies with its hundreds of affiliates has atrophied over the last five years, resettling 12,000 refugees last year down from 80,000. He said he is exploring towns and the state getting involved.
“I think there is a potential role for the public sector to play, whether it is a catalyst for convening coalitions or helping with housing,” McGeegan said.
Robin Baslaw of Shoreline Interfaith Refugee Resettlement, which consists of Temple Beth Tikvah and the First Congregational Church of Guilford, said there is a “strong interest” to get involved again in sponsoring a family, such as it did in 2018.
In the last few weeks, however, they have been involved in working with U.S. Marines and others trying to get the five brothers of the husband of the Afghan family they cosponsored last time out of the country, along with their families.
She said it has been heartbreaking for the family not knowing what might happen to them, as communication has stopped.
Baslaw, who is with Temple Beth Tikvah, said they will work on getting organized again for another family after the Jewish holidays.
Davis said every group is different. The first family the Danbury group helped had medical needs, while the second with three children under age 6 had babysitting requests that would allow them to work and attend English classes, which greatly increased the number of volunteers needed.
Davis said they have a core group of 10, but can use up to 40 volunteers ideally or at least 25. She said she got involved after watching the image of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian, who drowned in the Mediterranean after trying to escape Syria with his family.
Resources
Jean Silk, who organizes Jewish Alliance for Refugee Resettlement a coalition of six New Haven-area synagogues and the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, said it currently is hosting three people from Syria, the mother, sister and brother of the husband of the family they had previously settled in 2016.
It is the sixth family they have resettled since beginning their relationship with IRIS.
Silk said it is likely they will co-sponsor an Afghan family in a year, maybe sooner if they have the resources, particularly the human resources to carry it out. She said participating in this family’s reunification has been very special as they are now doing it as partners with the original family.
Kathleen Cooney, who is with St. Thomas More Chapel at Yale University, said they helped a Syrian family in 2016 and are now planning for another family this year.
She said their committees are looking into education, housing and employment, but again housing tops the list. Because of its Yale connection they have students who can interpret Farsi. She said the St. Thomas community “is incredibly generous with their time, their treasures and their talent.”
“We ask and people just sign up and they deliver,” Cooney said. “You can’t even think what has happened in Afghanistan, the trauma these poor folks have experienced. We are hoping to get the call soon and we will put everything in motion.”
She said they expect it will be an Afghan family under Special Immigrant Visas connected to their work with the U.S. in Afghanistan, but also potentially those coming under Humanitarian Parole, which is available for people involved in humanitarian work, education or journalists who are in personal danger.
They have 10 committees with students, faculty, but mainly community members, working the issue. “We are in good shape with volunteers, but anyone who wants to come and join us they are welcome,” Cooney said.
Like the other groups, there is a humanitarian and/or spiritual reason motivating people to get involved.
“This is the mission of the Gospel to welcome the stranger and care for those in need. That basically is what we are trying to do,” Cooney said.