When I was seven, my family moved to China, but this of course was a voluntary decision we were making because my dad got a job offer and my parents felt called to live there, not because we were fleeing any sort of persecution or violence.
This past week, I visited World Relief Western Washington’s “From Home to Home” exhibit with my Management of the Nonprofit Sector class. World Relief is a nonprofit organization that provides services for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. They “envision every refugee and immigrant welcomed by community, rooted in community, and empowered for community” (WRWW).
Before you enter the exhibit, they have you write down five things that are important to you on little scraps of paper. These could be anything from family heirlooms to belief systems, to friends and family. You carry these with you as you enter into a corridor filled with anecdotes of refugees’ descriptions of their homes. People describe their favorite foods, the sounds and smells of their neighborhoods, and the beauty of their homeland. Then you turn a corner and are positioned in front of a TV playing a video from the UNHCR ( the UN’s refugee agency). The video, linked here, has a group of Hollywood actors reading a script with footage of refugees intermixed. The video walks the viewer through what it would be like to flee.
I stood there watching in silence as I wondered what I would take with me. I held my little scraps of paper in my hand slowly understanding their significance to this experience.
I look down and see that I am standing on pieces of paper with statistics about various countries such as Myanmar, South Sudan, and Nigeria and the violence and persecution people face there.
Once the video is done playing I turn the next corner only to be stopped by an employee who roughly asks me for my papers with no other explanation. Here I am forced to give up four of the five things I find most important to me. I lost all my papers with my family and friends. Now I was alone moving through the asylum-seeking process.
The next room was filled with photos and anecdotes from refugees who were in camps waiting years for their paperwork to be processed. The average time spent in a camp is 17 years. 17 years. I am 20 years old so that’s basically my whole life or at least the entirety of my life that I can remember.
One quotation on the wall particularly struck me. The person described how tired they were of just surviving. They said they felt they hadn’t done anything of value in years because they were forced to focus solely on survival. The person shared stories of depression and suicidal thoughts. At this point, the exhibit had a table with candles you could light in honor of those asylum seekers waiting to be processed. There was a sign that said one refugee without hope is too many.
The next room described the many screening processes refugees have to undergo even to be considered to be allowed into the United States. If you were fleeing your home because of violence, you probably wouldn’t be thinking through what essentials you need to take with you. If you don’t have a proper ID, you can’t be screened. If you have certain illnesses, you fail the health screening. Your screening is completely independent from your family’s. If you make it to the U.S. with your family for instance but have not yet been granted asylum or refugee status, then you can be detained. Detention centers are notorious for splitting up families. Kids are separated from their parents and detention centers can also be split by gender further separating families.
The last room was adorned with American flags and ‘Welcome to the U.S.” signs. This room filled me with mixed emotions because at this point you want to be happy for those who have miraculously made it to the U.S. to start over, but at the same time, you realize how much they’ve left behind. They quite literally are starting over. They may have started with their family but now are by themselves. The option of ever going home for asylum seekers and some refugees is slim to none.
One of the infographics at the very end of the exhibit has a chart with refugees’ jobs in their home country compared to the jobs they now have in the U.S. People went from being professors, doctors, engineers, nurses, and lawyers to low-skill low-paying jobs. This is due to a plethora of issues including foreign certifications not being accepted in the U.S. and language barriers. Then there is the issue of discrimination. Refugees aren’t always greeted with “welcome to America” signs or attitudes. That might be the understatement of the century.
Every human being has the desire to flourish. We all want to feel that we have a purpose. To live your life just to survive and to spend your time merely waiting for an opportunity that was taken away from you, not from anything that you did only to be met with “go back to where you came from” is an impossible situation to be in. How do you win? This experience was eye-opening to the privileged bubble I live in. No one has a choice in where they’re born or what country they are a native to, but everyone has a right to a home and a sense of purpose.