Tag: Harriet Kuhr

Categories
News

Settling in

Since the beginning of October, over 200 Afghan refugees have resettled in Charolottesville. Photo: Andrew Oberstadt/IRC

Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August, more than 70,000 Afghans have fled to the United States. For weeks, many refugees stayed at temporary resettlement camps located on military bases across the country, as they waited for their immigration processing to be completed. But over the past two months, the federal government has allowed some to leave the camps and move to a variety of cities, where they can finally begin their new lives.

According to the local International Rescue Committee, 210 Afghan refugees—including 75 families—have arrived in Charlottesville since the beginning of October. Most came over the course of just two weeks, giving the IRC little time to make preparations.

“With a lot of these people, they arrive to us at very short notice. It’s very common to get a notice and people are coming the next day…We had multiple times where we had a couple of hours notice,” explains Charlottes­ville IRC Executive Director Harriet Kuhr. “It was very much an emergency response.”

The government is currently working to close all the military base refugee camps by February 15, says Kuhr. More than 80 percent of the refugees the IRC agreed to resettle in Charlottesville are here, but the organization expects a few more to arrive in the coming months.

“Now [the government] is having people come in an even flow each week, not just to Charlottesville but everywhere, so we can manage them more properly,” says Kuhr. “These people have been in those facilities since July and August, so they’re ready to move on.”

According to Charlottesville IRC Executive Director Harriet Kuhr, the organization had very little time to prepare for the Afghan refugees who arrived in the city. “It was very much an emergency response,” she says. Photo: Eze Amos

Because staff had no time to explore housing options, the IRC is temporarily housing the refugees in local hotels, where they are provided with food, clothes, and other necessities.

“It’s been very, very challenging with the amount of people arriving one after the other. We had all of our staff turn to just immediate reception needs,” says Kuhr. “Now we’re focusing on going back and catching up on all of the other services they need.”

Due to Charlottesville’s affordable housing crisis, finding permanent housing for the refugees in or near the city has been difficult. The IRC is currently working to form housing partnerships with area faith groups, neighborhood associations, and other community organizations, as well as in surrounding communities like Waynesboro and Lynchburg. After helping to find suitable housing for an individual family, partners will fundraise to help cover the family’s housing costs and assist with resettlement for six months.

Though the IRC does not permit homestays, residents who have a house or apartment they are not currently living in can contact the IRC to see if a refugee family could stay there. One Afghan family moved into a downtown Airbnb this week, after owner Debra Weiss volunteered to have refugees live there temporarily.

Around one-third of the refugees are school-aged children, says Kuhr. Since they have been living in hotels, the kids have not been enrolled in school yet.

“We were a little wary to enroll kids in school. If a month or two later they got an apartment that was in a different county or jurisdiction, we would have to pull them out and move them to other schools,” says Kuhr. “But at this point we’ve realized we can’t wait any longer, so we are just starting to enroll kids.”

As for the adults, most are still waiting to receive their social security cards, employment authorization, and other important documents they need to resettle.

“Things we would normally do locally were done for them at a national level, with 10,000 people applying all at once,” says Kuhr. “We’re hoping that kind of stuff is going to start coming in soon…but because of how they arrived, and the emergency nature of it, there’s just a lot of challenges.”

Until more refugees are moved into permanent housing, the IRC is no longer accepting in-kind donations. However, the agency is in huge need of financial donations to cover hotel bills, as well as gift cards to local stores—especially Walmart.

“[At Walmart], they can buy food, clothes for their kids, toiletries,” says Kuhr. “It allows the family the choice to get what they want and what is most important to them.”

To volunteer to help with Afghan resettlement efforts, email sponsor.va@rescue.org.

Categories
News

Civics minded: Local groups help citizenship applicants prepare for tougher test

Literacy Volunteers’ Catherine McCall says the Trump administration’s new, more difficult citizenship test requires a higher level of English proficiency. Photo: Zack Wajsgras

U.S. immigrants have faced an amazing array of challenges during the last four years, but as of December 1, 2020, the outgoing administration left them one last present: a significantly more difficult citizenship exam. The exam, something immigrants must pass in order to become citizens, has an English language and civics portion, and the civics element has recently been expanded and revised in a way that immigration advocates say is unfair.

Harriet Kuhr, executive director of the International Rescue Committee’s Charlottesville/Richmond office, which assists refugees and other immigrants with the citizenship application process, is blunt: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services “made changes [to the citizenship exam] without input from stakeholders, and without justification for making it harder,” she says.

Applicants now must answer 20 questions instead of 10, and while the passing score is still 60 percent (12 correct out of 20, instead of six out of 10), applicants will have to answer all 20 questions instead of passing as soon as they have given 12 correct answers. The new test also covers much more material. The number of civics study questions has increased from 100 to 128. There are more questions about the government (up from 57 to 72), and more about the Founders and America’s wars. Applicants must now correctly name five (rather than three) of the original 13 states, and all three (rather than one) of the branches of government.

“Many of these new questions require a higher proficiency in English,” says Catherine McCall, citizenship coordinator with Literacy Volunteers of Charlottesville-Albemarle, which offers preparation classes and individual tutoring for those applying for citizenship. Additionally, some of the new questions seem ideologically motivated, say advocates. For example, the correct answer to a question about who members of Congress represent is now “citizens” (rather than “all the people”) of their state or district, a distinction that aligns with the Trump administration’s efforts to exclude non-citizens from the national census.

The revision process itself has been cause for concern, too. The previous exam, which went into effect in October 2008, took six years to review and revise, including extensive input from educators and immigration organizations, test piloting, and public comment. This time, the entire process took 18 months, and outside review and piloting efforts were minimal. Especially problematic: The new exam took effect less than three weeks after the finalized version was released, “leaving very little time for public comment or outreach to potential applicants,” notes Kuhr.

Given the rushed timeline, LVCA, Sin Barreras, and other local nonprofit organizations offering exam preparation for applicants have scrambled to make extensive revisions to their classes—already upended by the pandemic—when offices were closed for months and all interactions had to move online.

In July, LVCA was able to start offering Zoom citizenship classes (one in civics, one on the English-skills portion of the exam). Enrollment has been increasing, according to McCall—the July-August session had 25 students; the November-December session had 43 students, requiring two sections of each class; and for the upcoming cycle starting January 15, she’s already planning on three sections. To make things harder, LVCA now has to offer preparation for both versions of the civics test, since those who applied by December 1 are still taking the old exam. IRC’s Kuhr says her organization, which usually assists on about 125 citizenship applications annually, urged clients to get their applications filed before the changeover.

Complicating matters, the backlog on processing applications was severe even pre-pandemic. Applicants from our area, whose tests are administered by USCIS’ Washington, D.C., office, now face a waiting period of 11.5 to 15 months before taking their exam, according to the agency’s website. Kuhr says under the former administration, the waiting period was more like three to six months. (For context, the Atlanta office’s current wait time is 12 to 32 months.)

Last year USCIS attempted to increase the citizenship application fee from $640 to $1,170 to decrease the availability of income-based fee waivers or reductions, though the changes were challenged in court by immigration advocacy groups and have not yet gone into effect.

Immigrant advocates are hoping these changes will be rolled back by the incoming administration. But in the meantime, those seeking to become U.S. citizens are faced with doing a whole lot more studying.

“I’m on board with revising the citizenship test to better prepare people to become Americans,” says McCall, who is also a high school civics educator. “But this new test is not going to make them more effective citizens.”

Could you pass?

The following are among the new questions on the citizenship exam.

1. What is the purpose of the 10th Amendment?

2. Who appoints federal judges?

3. Name one leader of the women’s rights movement in the 1800s.

Answers:

1. The powers not given to the federal government belong to the states or to the people.

2. The president

3. Examples: Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Categories
Living

Refugee crisis hits home: Local agency braces for more cuts to U.S. resettlement programs

Harriet Kuhr is the executive director of the Charlottesville International Rescue Committee. Photo: Nick Strocchia

The 2020 federal fiscal year begins October 1, marking the deadline for Donald Trump’s presidential determination on the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States for resettlement. Virginia has already taken a hit from previous reductions by Trump, with Richmond’s Church World Service—one of nine State Department-designated resettlement agencies in the U.S.—announcing that it will close even before Trump makes his determination public.

“We’re turning our backs on a core American value,” says Harriet Kuhr, executive director of the Charlottesville International Rescue Committee. She cites the precipitous drop since Trump took office in the number of people allowed to enter the U.S. after fleeing violence, persecution, and famine in their home countries.

By the end of September each year, the president is required to announce the limit for refugee admissions to the U.S. The determination process is mandated by the Refugee Act of 1980, and requires that the president consult with Congress to reach a decision that is “justified by humanitarian concern.”

In September 2016, President Barack Obama significantly increased that limit to 110,000 for fiscal year 2017, responding to the Syrian refugee crisis. But shortly after taking office, President Trump lowered the refugee ceiling to 50,000 by executive order. In September 2017 and 2018, respectively, Trump cut the maximum number to 45,000 and 30,000.

In recent weeks, rumors have swirled around reports that the Trump administration is considering one of two options for fiscal year 2020: reducing the cap to 10,000 to 15,000 refugees, or dismantling the U.S. refugee resettlement program entirely. Prominent voices have risen in opposition to the anticipated cuts, including high-ranking former military leaders, who argue that failing to accommodate asylum-seekers who have helped our defense, diplomatic, and intelligence efforts could erode national security.

Here in Charlottesville, Kuhr says our local IRC office is not threatened with closing, but she still worries as this year’s deadline draws near. “We don’t know yet what the numbers will be,” she says. “But what we do know is that it seems there is this intention to again significantly reduce the number of refugee admissions at a time when more people are in need than at any other time in history.”

Numbers from the U.N. Refugee Agency back her up. By the end of 2018, the agency reports, 70.8 million individuals worldwide had been forcibly displaced. These included 25.9 million refugees, less than 1 percent of whom have the opportunity to resettle in another country.

“Even before any of this started with Trump, the number of refugees who ever get resettled in a third country—that’s including the U.S. and Canada, all of Europe, and any other country—was already a tiny, tiny number,” says Kuhr. “But now that solution for some of the most vulnerable people in the world is under threat for no apparent reason.”

“We have people who have already been vetted,” she continues. “They have already gone through a stringent security process. They have been found to be in dire need of a new start and a new life—and we’re basically turning our backs on them.”

In 2018, the IRC resettled 154 people here, far below its capacity of 250. “Charlottesville has been a wonderful place for refugee families,” she says. “They feel safe here. They feel welcome. The kids are thriving in school. The parents are working. We know there are people in need of what we have to offer. Yet we’re not being allowed to [offer it].”

Kuhr hasn’t given up hope, but neither is she optimistic. “My expectation is that no matter what happens, the IRC is not going away. We will still be here. We are still resettling a significant number of people, but a lot less than we were two or three years ago.”

Categories
News

‘Capital of the resistance’ supports its immigrants

Ahmad Alboni, Ola Mansour and their three children came to Charlottesville through the International Rescue Committee last summer. After fleeing from Syria, they lived as refugees in Jordan. Family members who were supposed to join them in America this week have been affected by President Trump’s travel ban. Photo by Eze Amos

Since 1998, the International Rescue Committee has welcomed nearly 4,000 refugees to Charlottesville from more than 32 countries. Ola Mansour is one of them.

“Charlottesville is safe,” says Mansour, who in June 2016 relocated to Charlottesville from Jordan with her husband and three children. Three years prior, they had fled to the Middle Eastern country bordering Syria from Damascus, its capital and their home. “[There is] no life in Syria because there is war,” she says. “Every day is scary. People die, children die. Everything is difficult.”

Mansour and her husband, Ahmad Alboni, were expecting Alboni’s parents to join them in Charlottesville this week, but those plans were halted with President Donald Trump’s January 27 executive order barring refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries—“Now everything is stopped and they can’t come,” Mansour says. “We are very sad.”

Though the ban was temporarily lifted February 3, at press time Mansour said she was unsure if her in-laws would be permitted to travel to America.

In Syria, Mansour was an engineer and her husband was an accountant. Now they study at Piedmont Virginia Community College and continue to work steady jobs, Mansour at UVA Medical Center. About their local support system, she says, “We love everyone in Charlottesville and they love us.”

Since the travel ban was initiated, IRC volunteer coordinator Diana Cole Connolly says she has received more than 50 volunteer applications and nearly 200 since the presidential election.

“We typically get about two dozen applications in a given month,” she says, adding that, at press time, the IRC had also raised $6,490 from 71 donors since January 27. For people who want to support the IRC and refugees in the community, she suggests calling local and state representatives to say they support the committee’s work and giving cash donations to the IRC.

“We’re going to continue accepting volunteer applications, but, realistically, it may be several months before we’re able to process them,” she says, especially if the IRC won’t be receiving any refugee families for a prolonged period.

Executive Director Harriet Kuhr says the ban is “sort of like slamming the door on refugees. This is a betrayal of who we are as a nation. America has a history of welcoming immigrants who are escaping war and crisis and need a safe place to resettle and rebuild their lives.”

Kuhr was one of many speakers, including Gold Star father Khizr Khan and Pam Northam, wife of Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam, at Mayor Mike Signer’s heavily attended January 31 rally to declare Charlottesville a “capital of the resistance.” The mayor said he’d met with a dozen local refugees the previous weekend and listened to “the fear, the confusion, the anxiety” caused by Trump’s order. “They are hearing the message America doesn’t want them,” said Signer.

Several groups have stepped up in an effort to negate that feeling.

Legal Aid Justice Center, which is based in Charlottesville, led the charge against the president’s executive order on immigration that stranded many arriving into the United States. It represented two Yemeni brothers, Tareq and Ammar Aziz, who arrived at Dulles International Airport early January 28 with immigration visas, only to be handcuffed and, according to a suit, coerced into signing documents waiving their rights to permanent resident status.

The 21- and 19-year-old brothers were shipped back to Ethiopia, where their flight originated, while Legal Aid obtained a temporary restraining order barring such actions. Virginia joined the suit January 31, and the Azizes were reunited with their U.S. citizen father February 6.

Legal Aid raised more than $36,000 in a week using CrowdJustice, a new website that allows donations to specific cases, such as this one.

“This is our American launch,” says Kip Wainscott, who is helping bring the British-based platform to the U.S. “It’s our first case. We moved up our launch.”

The platform, he says, “is a new approach to accessing justice.”

And while a spokesperson for the University of Virginia has announced that more than 60 students and faculty could be affected by the travel ban, President Teresa Sullivan, Executive Vice President and Provost Tom Katsouleas and several student groups have joined forces to protect them.

University police may ask students for their immigration status during the course of an investigation when that information is relevant, says UVA spokesperson Anthony de Bruyn, but “such a request is very rare at UVA, where the vast majority of identification requests are addressed by an individual providing to the officer his or her university-issued ID or driver’s license.”

Attiya Latif, a third-year student and chair of the Minority Rights Coalition, says her group helped organize the January 28 protest against Trump’s executive order at UVA that drew hundreds of students and community members.

“We are not going to be deterred from our work that we do on a daily basis,” she says. “And we are not going to let fear or despair stop us. …To anyone who’s feeling afraid or isolated, there’s always a way to keep fighting and to keep making a difference.”