Refugees

I am a restaurant owner in Baltimore and have been successfully employing refugees from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) resettlement center for the past seven years ("Short course in American life," March 3). All of them are legally authorized to work in the United States and pay taxes. Almost all of them live in the city. In my experience, if a company takes sufficient time in the first few weeks to work with their IRC employment liaison to orient the refugee new hire, that company will have added an eager, reliable, loyal employee to their workforce.

As a boy, Abdi Hassen helped his father nurture and harvest maize, wheat and tropical fruits — until the early 1990s, when his father vanished. "He was disappeared because of his political opinion. I don't know if he is alive or not now," said Hassen, a refugee from Ethiopia, as he stood among lush garden beds in a Highlandtown alley. Hassen, 31, spends much of his days in the alley, taking copious notes on the plants' progress and the pests that appear on their leaves. The garden is part of the International Rescue Committee's New Roots program, which aims to help refugees carry on the agricultural traditions of their homelands.

"Welcome to America. " It's a traditional greeting that implicitly embodies notions of acceptance, hope and opportunity. But that simple phrase can also be used as a taunt, as I witnessed during a youth soccer game in Baltimore where the teams were starkly divided by race, religion and language. "Welcome to America" served as a derisive cheer hurled across the field when the fairer-skinned team scored against a team made up of refugees and asylum seekers from Nepal, Bhutan, Iraq, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Eritrea, Tanzania and Guinea.

"Welcome to America. " It's a traditional greeting that implicitly embodies notions of acceptance, hope and opportunity. But that simple phrase can also be used as a taunt, as I witnessed during a youth soccer game in Baltimore where the teams were starkly divided by race, religion and language. "Welcome to America" served as a derisive cheer hurled across the field when the fairer-skinned team scored against a team made up of refugees and asylum seekers from Nepal, Bhutan, Iraq, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Eritrea, Tanzania and Guinea.

A vast majority of respondents to The Evening Sun's phone survey support United Nations protection of the Kurdish refugees.Of 291 callers, 216 (74 percent) said the U.N. should provide military protection for the Kurds, while 75 respondents disagreed. Even more (242, or 87 percent of 289 callers) supported military protection for a relief effort to aid the Kurds. A majority also supported creating a "buffer zone" in northern and southern Iraq for the Kurds: 198 (70 percent) of 282 callers agreed with the idea.

TWELVE-year-old Oscarito is one of about 5,000 children who ended up at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay during the August exodus of Cubans on rafts seeking freedom. Thirty thousand Cubans now are at Guantanamo, living in tents on part of the very island they intended to flee.Oscarito and his father, Oscar Govantes, no longer live at the base, though. They arrived in Miami last Wednesday after the child became temporarily paralyzed and was sent to Washington for treatment.The boy can walk again, and, for humanitarian reasons, the U.S. government has allowed Oscarito and his father to live with relatives in Miami.

As a boy, Abdi Hassen helped his father nurture and harvest maize, wheat and tropical fruits — until the early 1990s, when his father vanished. "He was disappeared because of his political opinion. I don't know if he is alive or not now," said Hassen, a refugee from Ethiopia, as he stood among lush garden beds in a Highlandtown alley. Hassen, 31, spends much of his days in the alley, taking copious notes on the plants' progress and the pests that appear on their leaves. The garden is part of the International Rescue Committee's New Roots program, which aims to help refugees carry on the agricultural traditions of their homelands.

BERLIN -- The pale blond girl with the small beautiful face and exhausted eyes looked out from the train window at the people milling on the platform and clutched her worn plush bear more tightly.People stepped forward from beneath the flag of Bosnia-Herzegovina with its split field of fleur-de-lis and thrust money and candy at her until her hands were full and overflowing. Her eyes remained grave.The 11-year-old, whose name was Marima, was one of 148 refugees who arrived in Berlin late Monday night after a 25-hour trip from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

NEW WINDSOR - Most of the 62 Mideast refugees who refused accommodations at the New Windsor Service Center have left Maryland, using one-way plane tickets provided by the federal government.They left behind some hard feelings from people who had little sympathy about their attitude.U.S. immigration officials say they've received dozens of calls from people complaining about the refugees' refusal to stay at the center."Most people have been asking us, 'Why are you letting them stay here?' " said Louis D. Crocetti Jr., the assistant director of Maryland's Immigration and Naturalization Service office.

TODAY IS World Refugee Day. It is no cause for celebration. There are about 15 million refugees in the world, of whom 80 percent are women and children. Some are eking out an existence in cities far from their homelands; many live in squalor in refugee camps of neighboring countries. Very few - less than 1 percent - of the world's refugees get a chance to start a new life in a third country. The United States is the leader in refugee resettlement. The president, in consultation with Congress, determines each year how many refugees may come here and from which countries they may come.

There are few issues as contentious in American society today, including here in Maryland, as immigration. While immigration is inherently an economic issue, a cultural issue and a political issue, at Baltimore-based World Relief we view the issue first and foremost from the perspective of our Christian faith. As an organization that empowers churches to serve vulnerable refugees, human-trafficking victims and other immigrants throughout the United States, we believe the Bible has a lot to say thatshould inform our thinking as we confront the challenges and opportunities of immigration.

I am a restaurant owner in Baltimore and have been successfully employing refugees from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) resettlement center for the past seven years ("Short course in American life," March 3). All of them are legally authorized to work in the United States and pay taxes. Almost all of them live in the city. In my experience, if a company takes sufficient time in the first few weeks to work with their IRC employment liaison to orient the refugee new hire, that company will have added an eager, reliable, loyal employee to their workforce.

Someday, members of this year's seventh-grade class at Wilde Lake Middle School might be at the forefront of efforts to eradicate such social ills as genocide, animal cruelty, homelessness and deforestation. The students are learning about social problems both at home and abroad, and on Wednesday night, they presented speeches about causes that have piqued their interest as part of Voices of Youth, a charity fundraiser. The event comes on the heels of the students learning about the conflict in the Sudanese region of Darfur.

- As the small plane entered the pattern to land at this town on the eastern edge of Kenya, the view from the window was of miles and miles of scrubby landscape, low trees and bushes almost the same brown color as the sandy earth beneath them. Hardly noticeable were the small buildings and many tents that have put this place on the international map. They were covered with the ubiquitous brown dust that would soon blow in my face as I stepped onto the tarmac. Dadaab has become host to one of the largest refugee populations in the world.

A field with overgrown grass and patches of mud, two rusty soccer goals without nets and a tired chain link fence was the setting for soccer practice on a hazy Monday afternoon at Northeast Middle School on Moravia Road. Jill Pardini, of Waverly, tried to gather her dozen or so players, who were dressed in a rainbow of athletic shorts, most in soccer cleats and three in soccer socks, into some semblance of a practice. In a pale yellow shirt and black shorts, 15-year-old Glory Aganze, a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, shouted to his friends something in a foreign language that sounded like a hurry-up call.

I was deeply saddened to read of yet another tragic senseless killing in our city, this time of a Bhutanese refugee who fled his own country due to persecution of his people. ("Bhutanese refugee in city two months is killed in robbery," Aug. 25). How is it that we as Baltimoreans continue to be persecuted by indiscriminate armed thugs and appear powerless to stop them? Where is our homeland security? Stuart R. Varon, Lutherville

Guantanamo Naval Base, Cuba -- AS HAITIAN mothers and babies peered out from behind barbed wire, the commander of refugee operations here, Mike Pearson, pleaded with photographers not to use the barrier for dramatic effect. "I want to take it down or cover it up," Colonel Pearson said. "This is a humanitarian mission. But I need some wire as a control measure between single men, single women and families."Even as Colonel Pearson begged for journalistic mercy, six soldiers unfurled fresh rolls of wire.

Two Bhutanese refugees were shot, one of them fatally, in an apparent robbery in Northeast Baltimore, one of two double shootings investigated by Baltimore police Tuesday night. Big Bahadur Gurung, 20, had emigrated two months ago, after being given sanctuary following years of persecution in his home country, said Holly Leon-Lierman, the outreach manager for the International Rescue Committee, which helps refugees assimilate. "He came here seeking freedom and safety," Leon-Lierman said.

Waves of refugees arrive daily to Kenya, some having walked weeks through unforgiving desert with virtually no possessions, and yet local relief workers report optimism among the millions threatened by the historic famine and drought spreading through the Horn of Africa. "Everyone looks hungry and wiped out," said Bruce White, a Catholic Relief Services adviser who returned earlier this month from Kenya. "But there is a sense of hope because there is help. I asked one man what he wanted here and he said 'peace.'" Jonathan Ernst, a Baltimore freelance photojournalist, reached the refugee camps in eastern Kenya last week and is reporting to Lutheran World Relief.