Needed: Some 340,000 ‘Angels’ to Help Assimilate the Refugees

A Laotian mother and her two children had obtained clearance to emigrate to the United States, and they needed a sponsor before they could enter this country.

There were special problems, however. Laotian soldiers had fired upon the Vue family as they crossed the Mekong River into Thailand; awaiting resettlement in a Thailand refugee camp, the three were nursing serious wounds suffered in the attack. The five-year-old son had been shot in the spine and was paralyzed. The mother could walk only with a crutch. The father (and breadwinner) and three other children had died en route.

A sponsor in the United States first must guarantee the ability to provide enough financial and personal care for the family, said immigration officials. Considering the circumstances, these would be substantial. But the resettlement office of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, after being informed of the costs and care that would be involved, said, “Send them anyway.”

Such benevolence reflects “just plain, dam goodness,” said John McCarthy, the director of migration and refugee services for the United States Catholic Conference. In many respects, it characterizes the outpouring of response by religious groups to the human suffering in Southeast Asia. Religious groups have resettled over 75 percent of the Indochinese refugees entering the United States since May 1975, and various Christian relief agencies have sent food and medical supplies to the refugees, who last month numbered 340,000 in crowded temporary camps across Southeast Asia.

Refugee sponsors in the United States have included church groups, local ministerial associations, Christian student groups, and individual families. Appeals for sponsorships heightened last month since refugees—primarily from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam—continued to flee their homelands at the rate of 50,000 to 60,000 per month. Vietnam particularly was blamed for the exodus; it has expelled thousands of its ethnic Chinese, who at one time numbered 1.8 million, in racial persecution reminiscent of the Holocaust of World War II. An estimated 200,000 refugees have died, most of these being “boat people” who have drowned in the South China Sea. One reporter called the situation “a liquid Auschwitz.”

Many resettlement officials have waiting lists of sponsors, and said that government red tape and funding shortages have slowed the resettlement process. McCarthy, whose office has resettled over one million refugees during the past 30 years, expressed his anger and frustration at the delays.

“There’s a bumbling, bureaucratic failure happening out there,” he said in a telephone interview last month. He told of 80,000 refugees already cleared for immigration to the United States who were still in the refugee camps, where food, water, and medical supplies were lacking. Many of these will die or contract disease if not moved to temporary transit camps, he said.

McCarthy claimed the U.S. government has balked because of the costs—thinking that. “we can keep these people in filth [in the camps] for about $1.50 a day; if we put them on Guam, it would cost $10.” In effect, said McCarthy, “the government is evaluating life at about $8.50.”

At a New York press conference on June 28, several Jewish and Christian leaders made the same appeal for temporary transit centers, where refugees can be nursed to health and prepared for their initial exposure to North American life. (The press conference reflected the increased urgency of the situation. In late June, the Thai government forcibly repatriated over 40,000 Cambodian and Laotian refugees, and the Malaysian government threatened to expel its entire refugee population. In a joint statement, the ministers of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand had announced they would admit no more refugees unless those were assured of resettlement.)

Catholic Cardinal Terence Cooke convened the press conference, and he was joined by Paul McCleary of Church World Service (relief arm of the National Council of Churches), Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee, Grady Mangham of World Relief, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta, among others. The religious leaders also requested—in their appeal to President Carter, the United States Congress, and the United Nations—that resettlement be promoted in other countries and that American military transport be used to take the refugees to transit camps.

Evangelical relief agencies last month were attacking the refugee problem from several directions:

• Food for the Hungry, a Scottsdale, Arizona, group, was operating its rescue ship, the Akuna, in international waters off Malaysia. President Larry Ward requested a meeting with Malaysia Deputy Prime Minister Mohamad bin Mahathir, during a trip to Southeast Asia. Ward asserted, however, that the “ultimate solution” to the Indochinese refugee problem is in South America. For two years, Food for the Hungry has negotiated for permission to resettle refugees in Bolivia. A spokesman said the agency recently contacted officials in Paraguay and Surinam about refugee resettlement, and that they expressed “positive interest.”

• World Vision launched its rescue ship, Seasweep, on July 6. President Stanley Mooneyham accompanied the vessel on part of its initial 25-day relief operation, which involved giving food, water, and medical supplies to refugees escaping in boats, often overcrowded, unseaworthy, and low on supplies.

• World Concern sent two medical teams into refugee camps in Hong Kong. The Seattle, Washington, agency also promoted vocational training in refugee camps in Thailand and Malaysia, and sent food and medical supplies. The agency began a $1 million fund raising campaign last month through radio, television, and newspaper advertising in the Pacific Northwest, where most of its donors are located. World Concern also was named “western coordinating agency” for refugee resettlement for World Relief.

• MAP International, based in Carol Stream, Illinois, sent $35,000 in medical supplies last spring to refugee camps in Thailand. Those supplies were distributed by staff members of the International Rescue Committee, a group that also is involved in refugee resettlement.

• World Relief, the relief and development arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, developed a “survival kit” for Cambodian refugees being sent back across the border from Thailand. The kit included cooking utensils, food, blankets, and other supplies. Its refugee services office opened earlier this year under the direction of T. Grady Mangham, and has found sponsors for 1,300 refugees. (For information about sponsoring refugees, write World Relief Refugee Services, Box WRC, Nyack, NY 10960.)

One sponsor working through World Relief was a Lisle, Illinois, Bible Church layman, Herbert Oldham. He says he spent $200 to $300 of his own money over the course of sponsorship of a Vietnamese family. The retired father of eight, Oldham said the sponsorship was rewarding and a learning experience. Because of the cultural barriers separating the Vietnamese and himself, Oldham commented, “I can sort of understand what a missionary must be up against.”

For the most part, relief agencies discourage single families from sponsoring refugees. Leon Marion, executive director of the American Council for Voluntary Agencies—umbrella agency for nine religious and humanitarian resettlement groups—advocates that a group of people sponsor a refugee, rather than an individual or family, because of the amount of personal attention and costs involved.

The nine groups under the umbrella of the American Council for Voluntary Agency have resettled over 245,000 Indochinese refugees since May 1975, said Marion (Feb. 16 issue, p. 43). McCarthy’s Catholic agency has resettled nearly half of those refugees. The council’s various agencies, which include World Relief and Church World Service, receive $350 in federal money for each refugee they resettle. Marion estimates that the entire resettlement process—from the initial contact overseas to the time the refugee is met by his sponsor—costs from $1,200 to $1,500.

Other costs are incurred, Marion noted, while the refugee is being settled into the community. On occasion, he said, these costs can be high. “All you need is one sickness or illness requiring medical care, which the resettling agency is responsible for, and the cost could run into thousands of dollars.”

However, Mangham of World Relief hoped that potential sponsors wouldn’t be frightened off by cost. Various governmental assistance programs are available, he said. “Really, if people avail themselves of the assistance that’s provided, they can sponsor a refugee with very little financial obligation on their part.”

What is most required of sponsors is time spent in attending to the refugee’s needs, Mangham indicated. Most refugees need housing, employment, and training in English. He says that resettlement provides a “tremendous opportunity for Christian witness” since Christian sponsors can share “their reason for doing this” with the refugee family.

A good refugee resettlement program will take about three months, said Matthew Giuffrida, director of resettlement programs for the American Baptist Churches. This is the amount of time needed by a local group to “take a refugee to the point where he is able to control his own life and make his own decisions,” he said. “At that point, the refugee stops being a refugee.”

Sometimes, refugees’ decisions displease their sponsors. A Florida church was disgruntled, Giuffrida said, when its refugee family, on a $1,000 monthly income, began shopping for a new sports car. Other sponsors, particularly from the north, have experienced a sense of loss when their refugee family moved away after several months to relocate in areas with a warmer winter climate.

“But to me, that’s the meaning of freedom,” he said. “They [the refugees] do place great importance on their own convictions, and they’re not here in this country to be dominated but to express themselves, and I can go along with that.”

Giuffrida’s office has settled more Indochinese refugees than any of the other 15 denominations working under Church World Service—over 700 during the first six months of this year. American Baptists first began refugee-related work in 1919, when it established “Christian centers” in major urban areas. At these centers, new immigrants were helped through the difficult first days of acculturation. Presently, the denomination budgets $18,000 per year for refugee programs as part of a permanent program base. “We recognize that while the faces of refugees change, new refugee crises are always with us,” he said.

Considering the urgency of the present refugee crisis, now more than ever a “sponsorship is a way of saving a person’s life,” said Giuffrida.

President Jimmy Carter in June raised the U.S. refugee quota from 7,000 to 14,000 per month. Several relief officials praised Carter’s action, but noted that the government had not been meeting the previous quota because of transportation problems, such as the grounding of the DC 10 jets, and depleted government funds for refugee problems. John Tenhula, an information officer with Church World Service, said his organization, like many others, has a “backlog” of sponsors and that there is a lag of three to six months between the time when a refugee obtains a sponsor and when he arrives in the United States. Like many other relief agency officials, he hoped the resettlement process would be speeded up.

In a July 4 newsletter appeal for refugee sponsorships, Church World Service asked, “PLEASE! Have you stopped to think how many boat refugees from Indochina could drown while the world talks about helping them?”

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