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Iraqi refugees find home in Baltimore
Refugees struggle to acclimate to life in Baltimore
Issue date: 11/20/08
It was standing room only last Thursday night at the Interfaith Center, as members of the Hopkins community gathered for a panel discussion on the world refugee crisis hosted by the Hopkins chapter of the Refugee Youth Project (RYP).
A series of interviews conducted over the course of the last week with individuals involved on many levels of the refugee and asylee resettlement process have revealed a complex picture in which both adults and children face a series of challenges in acclimating to life in Baltimore.
Additionally teachers and service providers who assist refugees and asylees in this process must do so within tight budgetary constraints and limited resources, according to Worku Fikremariam, resettlement program manager for the International Rescue Committee in Baltimore.
In 2008 approximately 50,000 refugees will be resettled in the United States. In addition to this, around 20,000 individuals will be granted asylum and allowed to stay in the U.S. Martin Ford of the Associate Director of the Maryland Office for New Americans in Maryland, with the majority of these in Baltimore and the suburban Montgomery and Price George Counties.
Presenters spoke of the global situation, in which thousands of refugees have fled their home country to escape death or persecution, which was given a human face by two speakers who shared their stories of flight from their homelands and of difficulties they have faced since arriving in the United States.
Roots in Baltimore
Baltimore has a long history of welcoming refugees. Between 1933 and 1939 3,000 German Jews who fled persecution by the Nazis resettled in Baltimore. In the late 1970s and early 1980s tens of thousands of Vietnamese who fled South Vietnam as the U.S. withdrew from that country made their homes here. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of Jews fled Russia and the former Soviet Republics, tens of thousands of these resettled in the Baltimore area.
A series of interviews conducted over the course of the last week with individuals involved on many levels of the refugee and asylee resettlement process have revealed a complex picture in which both adults and children face a series of challenges in acclimating to life in Baltimore.
Additionally teachers and service providers who assist refugees and asylees in this process must do so within tight budgetary constraints and limited resources, according to Worku Fikremariam, resettlement program manager for the International Rescue Committee in Baltimore.
In 2008 approximately 50,000 refugees will be resettled in the United States. In addition to this, around 20,000 individuals will be granted asylum and allowed to stay in the U.S. Martin Ford of the Associate Director of the Maryland Office for New Americans in Maryland, with the majority of these in Baltimore and the suburban Montgomery and Price George Counties.
Presenters spoke of the global situation, in which thousands of refugees have fled their home country to escape death or persecution, which was given a human face by two speakers who shared their stories of flight from their homelands and of difficulties they have faced since arriving in the United States.
Roots in Baltimore
Baltimore has a long history of welcoming refugees. Between 1933 and 1939 3,000 German Jews who fled persecution by the Nazis resettled in Baltimore. In the late 1970s and early 1980s tens of thousands of Vietnamese who fled South Vietnam as the U.S. withdrew from that country made their homes here. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of Jews fled Russia and the former Soviet Republics, tens of thousands of these resettled in the Baltimore area.
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Christopher Coen
posted 11/21/08 @ 11:07 AM EST
Government grants do not total only $850 per refugee. That is the amount from the State Department per refugee for resettling refugees in the first month or so. (Continued…)
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