Refugees find unity in soccer
Mitty teens, charity welcome immigrants into the community
SAN JOSE — Ask Naeim Akrami what he likes most about the United States and he’ll likely answer with only one word: freedom. It’s something the 19-year-old didn’t have growing up in a war-torn Afghanistan.
Akrami and his younger brother arrived in the U.S. in 2013 as refugees from Turkey, where they had fled with their mother and another sibling. The rest of the family immigrated to Germany, but Akrami and his brother had dreams of heading west. That wish came to fruition when the brothers were brought to San Jose as part of the Refugee Foster Care Program at Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County.
“I feel myself more American than Afghani or Turkish,” said Akrami, a student at CSU East Bay in Hayward. “The freedom, everything . ... I appreciate it. You can be whoever you want to be.”
Akrami, easy to spot with his thick, shoulder-length hair, laced up his cleats and put on a white jersey Saturday for a soccer match at Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose to celebrate the young people who, like him, have started new lives in the Bay Area. Students at Mitty partnered with the Catholic Charities program for
the “One World Cup” event as a way to welcome refugees into the community. About 50 young adults participated, including refugee foster children living in Gilroy, Santa Clara, San Jose, Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco.
The idea for a soccer match started a few months ago when Mitty students penned more than 100 letters of support to refugees at Catholic Charities. Staff at the agency later proposed a soccer match.
“We really hope that this positive energy is a symbol but also a motivating factor for others to welcome refugees,” said Tim Wesmiller, director of campus ministry at the school. “When you get to know people and you get to know their lives, it’s hard to demonize them.”
Many advocates say resistance against refugees has intensified following President Donald Trump’s executive orders banning travel from several Muslim-majority countries and temporarily banning all refugee migration to the U.S. Both of Trump’s orders have been held up in the courts.
Students and refugees walked onto the soccer field hand-in-hand as more than 100 community members looked on. Some refugees — all of whom were resettled in the Bay Area as part of Catholic Charities’ foster care program — shared their stories before the game.
Among them was Cheol Ryu, a North Korean refugee who had been imprisoned in a labor camp for nine months after being deported back to his home country from China, where he had fled. Ryu said he was eventually released from the camp because he was too malnourished and weak to work. He arrived to the U.S. in 2012 after escaping North Korea a second time.
“For me, resettlement was the only hope,” he said. “I had nowhere to go.”
Ryu, now 22, is a software engineering student at Coding Dojo Silicon Valley, a coding “boot camp” in San Jose. He has dreams of working for Google.
“Helping one refugee and giving them hope and a future will make the world a better place to live,” he said. “If it weren’t for Catholic Charities, I wouldn’t be here today.”
The Refugee Foster Care program is the only program in Northern California that serves unaccompanied refugee children who are fleeing oppression. For 38 years, Catholic Charities has resettled refugees from across the world in the South Bay. The agency typically serves about 100 foster youth each year across seven counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Monterey, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz.
An estimated 3,200 refugees were resettled in California between October 2016 and January, according to the latest data from the state’s Department of Social Services, Refugee Programs Bureau. That includes 70 refugees in Alameda County; nine in Contra Costa County; three in San Francisco; five in San Mateo County; and 61 in Santa Clara County.
Trump signed a second travel ban March 6 after the suspension of his original executive order was upheld by a San Francisco-based federal appeals court. While the new version bars citizens from six-Muslim majority countries — Iraq was removed from the original executive order’s list — it does not apply to visa-holders. Citizens of Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and Iran will face a 90-day suspension of visa processing and the indefinite ban on Syrian immigration was changed to 120 days, a period that could later be extended.
U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson put a freeze on the ban nationwide in March after hearing arguments on Hawaii’s request for a temporary restraining order involving the ban.
A Maryland judge followed suit specifically blocking the ban’s 90-day suspension of citizens of six Muslim-majority countries. A hearing is set for next week.
“People are afraid of what they don’t understand. All refugees aren’t terrorists,” Ryu said. “It’s not right.”