Soccer brings refugee foster kids, South Bay students together
SAN JOSE >> In the almost five years since he came to America, fleeing Afghanistan by way of Turkey, Naeim Akrami has discovered his freedom — and his sense of self.
A busy psychology major at Cal State East Bay in Hayward, Akrami, 20, has learned English, made new friends and began embracing a new sexual identity that he’s still trying to figure out.
“I’m much more myself,” he said, wearing a high ponytail, several silver rings and nail polish. “I’m really happy being here. Although I was born in Afghanistan and was raised over there, I now feel more American.”
Akrami joined fellow refugee teens and local high school students Saturday for the annual “One World Cup,” a friendly soccer game benefiting Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County’s Refugee Foster Care program, which takes in unaccompanied foster children from all over the world. Not only does the program provide refugee youth a myriad of services as they start a new life in America, it places them with certified Bay Area foster families who take them in until they turn 18.
Staff at Catholic Charities said they chose soccer because it’s a universal sport played even in the most remote refugee camps.
“It’s one of the main activities that youth in refugee camps have access to,” said Angela Albright, director of the local refugee foster care program. “We’ve had some kids talk about how they pulled rags together to make balls, whatever they could do to play. There’s a lot of down time in refugee camps. A lot of times they don’t have education time or structured activities, so the kids play and they get really good. It’s something that when they get here, they could really relate to.”
This display of unity comes as
the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether President Trump’s third installment of the travel ban — which bans refugees from five Muslim-majority countries as well as North Korea and Venezuela — is unconstitutional. The high court heard oral arguments last week and is expected to rule on the case in June.
Meanwhile, the number of refugees settling in the U.S. has dropped significantly as a result of the legal hoopla surrounding Trump’s series of travel bans, according to agencies who monitor this.
The administration last year capped the annual number of refugees admitted to the U.S. at 45,000 — the lowest of any White House since the president began setting the ceiling on refugee admissions in 1980, according to news reports.
“It’s heavily impacted us,” said Albright. “Although right now there’s no ban that’s keeping kids from coming, there is nobody on the wait list. It’s been really difficult to see kids get approved for resettlement.”
The government has made it harder for children to get approved
for resettlement and kids that were previously in the pipeline for resettlement have undergone a setback under this stricter vetting criteria, Albright said.
“It’s really discouraging to see that we have families ready to accept kids and nobody coming
through the pipeline,” she said. “We’re checking the wait list everyday and it’s been empty for a very long time.”
This year’s game included student athletes from five Catholic high schools across the South Bay: Archbishop Mitty, Bellarmine, St. Francis, Notre Dame, and Presentation high schools.
Even though it was the first time most of the teens had met one another, Mitty senior Sophia Mendoza said everyone felt comfortable and energized by the crowd.
“It doesn’t even feel like we’re playing with or against foster youth,” she said. “It just feels like we’re playing with other kids.”
Attendees were asked to make $10 donations for Catholic Charities’ refugee foster care program, the only program in Northern California that assists orphaned refugee children by providing them legal, medical, emotional and educational help.
Among the crowd were two Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. Catholic Charities asked media not to identify the brothers because they are minors.
The Rohingya are a Muslim-majority ethnic group who have lived for centuries in Myanmar, a Southeast Asian country formally known as Burma.