{"id":4290,"date":"2012-01-27T06:30:34","date_gmt":"2012-01-27T13:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=4290"},"modified":"2013-05-13T16:18:05","modified_gmt":"2013-05-13T22:18:05","slug":"a-young-refugee-searches-for-a-place-in-idahos-reshaped-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/01\/27\/a-young-refugee-searches-for-a-place-in-idahos-reshaped-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"A Young Refugee Searches For A Place In Idaho’s Reshaped Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Molly Messick \/ StateImpact Idaho<\/p>

Nowela Virginie and her daughters often visit social worker Marcia Munden at Catholic Charities of Idaho.<\/p><\/div>\n

In the last few years, more than 4,000 refugees have found their way to Idaho.\u00a0 They\u2019ve come from Africa, and from East and South Asia.\u00a0 Most came to Boise.\u00a0 For years, the city\u2019s strong economy, good quality affordable housing and supportive community created an especially favorable environment for refugee resettlement.\u00a0 Now, the recession has shifted that picture.<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object>A Young Refugee Searches For A Place In Idaho\u2019s Reshaped Economy<\/a><\/p>\n

Most days, Nowela Virginie and her two young daughters are here, in her small apartment just off a busy thoroughfare on the outskirts of Boise. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Virginie is 23, and she arrived in Boise three years ago.\u00a0 She was born in Rwanda, but spent sixteen years of her life in a refugee camp in Tanzania.\u00a0 She remembers the shock of finding herself in a new city, a place that looked nothing like anywhere she\u2019d ever been.\u00a0 “When I coming USA, nobody can explain to me how USA is to look like, nobody can explain to me,” she says.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Virginie says even the buildings didn\u2019t make sense to her.\u00a0 What were they?\u00a0 Was that a house, or a business? “Because you don\u2019t know this is, like, hotel, or this is like company, let me go looking job,” she says.\u00a0 “Before I was so scared.”<\/p>\n

<\/em>She mentions looking for a job, and right now, that\u2019s her most basic hope: to find work.\u00a0 But as Virginie herself knows too well, that\u2019s a huge challenge.\u00a0 “You know, new country is supposed to be hard,” she says.\u00a0 “New language, everything is new.\u00a0 But if you have a job, you have education, is not hard, is good.\u00a0 But the bad thing, if you don\u2019t speak any English, is so hard \u2013 really hard.”<\/p>\n

All of that is compounded by an economic downturn that has eliminated many of the entry-level positions that might have been possibilities for Virginie not so long ago.\u00a0 Marcia Munden is a social worker with Catholic Charities of Idaho.\u00a0 She says Virginie is one of many refugees living in Boise who have found themselves stuck.\u00a0 “Three years ago we were just seeing a few extreme cases of refugees that had consistent difficulty with integration,” she says.\u00a0 “And then it really happened very suddenly where there were 50, 60, 100 families really struggling.”<\/p>\n

<\/em>Munden and Virginie met two years ago, when Virginie came to Munden\u2019s office with an eviction notice.\u00a0 By then, the eight months of medical and financial assistance Virginie received as a refugee arriving in the U.S. had expired.\u00a0 She managed to find work cleaning rooms at a Boise hotel, but that didn\u2019t last.\u00a0 Her hours depended on the number of rooms to be cleaned, and usually there weren\u2019t many.\u00a0 Plus, there was the problem of daycare for her children.\u00a0 “She would have to get them over there, pay for the time that the daycare requires that you pay for, and then show up to work and possibly only work a partial shift,” Munden says.<\/em>\u00a0 The daycare bill was sometimes hundreds of dollars more than her paycheck.\u00a0 Eventually, Virginie had to quit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Molly Messick \/ StateImpact Idaho<\/p>

Idaho Office for Refugees Director Jan Reeves<\/p><\/div>\n

The recession has complicated the hard task of refugee resettlement nationwide.\u00a0 But the shift is especially stark in Boise, because this city has long been regarded as a good place for refugees to put down new roots.\u00a0 That’s according to Bob Carey, Vice President of Resettlement and Migration Policy for the International Rescue Committee.\u00a0 “Boise was particularly favorable, yes,” he says.<\/p>\n

<\/em>The IRC opened an office in Boise in 2006.\u00a0 At that time, Idaho had the fastest growing economy in the country, and unemployment in the Boise area was under three percent.\u00a0 The economy wasn\u2019t the only factor the IRC considered, but it was a plus.\u00a0 “It was a very strong employment market, and there were certainly many jobs available for refugees at the entry level when they arrived in Boise,” Carey says.\u00a0 “So for those people who were able to work, we could generally find them jobs that would allow them to support themselves within 90 days.”<\/p>\n

<\/em>Now, Boise is one of the places where the IRC has reduced the number of refugees it aims to resettle each year, cutting back by about a third.\u00a0 In addition, they and other local agencies that help refugees find work have adopted new strategies.\u00a0 Jan Reeves heads the Idaho Office for Refugees.\u00a0 “We\u2019ve looked at other ways of opening doors that we\u2019ve never had to look at before,” he says.\u00a0
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>For example, Reeves says, they\u2019ve looked farther afield, finding jobs for a number of refugees at a dairy in Boardman, Ore.\u00a0 The efforts appear to be paying off.\u00a0 Before the recession, in 2005, 95 percent of the office\u2019s employable caseload found work.\u00a0 That dropped to 55 percent in 2009.\u00a0 It has since gone back up to more than 70 percent.\u00a0 Reeves says, yes, there are refugees who are not making it, but it\u2019s important to think about what the resettlement program offers, and what it doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 “The refugee resettlement program provides an opportunity for people to achieve a level of protection from violence and torture and other forms of persecution,” he says.\u00a0 “But the system in our country does not provide a guarantee that everybody will be well taken care of.”\u00a0 That, he says, is an unfortunate reality.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Molly Messick \/ StateImpact Idaho<\/p>

Nowela Virginie's daughters, Odille and Audrey, show off for the camera.<\/p><\/div>\n

Despite the clear difficulty of Nowela Virginie\u2019s situation, there\u2019s room for hope.\u00a0 Virginie and her daughters have been lucky to get subsidized housing, at a moment when waiting lists are either closed or very long.\u00a0 And Virginie recognizes that her children already have opportunities she never did.\u00a0 “You know, I\u2019m so happy because my daughter, my big daughter, Odille, she speak English now,” she says.\u00a0 “Yeah, she in the kindergarten, but she speak really good English.\u00a0 I really happy about that.”<\/p>\n

Her daughter, Odille, who is five, and has been quiet so far, gives a smile.\u00a0 “My teacher said we\u2019re almost first graders,” she says.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>She offers to sing a song, and launches in.\u00a0 “I\u2019m bringing home my baby bumblebee\u2026” she begins.<\/em>\u00a0 It\u2019s a familiar one to most any American kid, and she sings it the whole way through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last few years, more than 4,000 refugees have found their way to Idaho.\u00a0 They\u2019ve come from Africa, and from East and South Asia.\u00a0 Most came to Boise.\u00a0 For years, the city\u2019s strong economy, good quality affordable housing and supportive community created an especially favorable environment for refugee resettlement.\u00a0 Now, the recession has shifted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":4299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[46,74],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}