"Meet Your Brother With a Welcoming Smile" - Refugees in America

"In order to avoid religious and cultural conflict, the first thing we did," says Midwest Area director Tim Amstutz of Chicago's office of World Relief, "was to seek the input and advice of existing Bosnian community leaders. We need to be building bridges. We can't fulfill our own religious commandments unless we are communicating respectfully with all of our clients." Another young person hopefully on the way to a new life is Ahmed Al Ghazawi, a 25-year-old Iraqi who is deaf, mute, and legally blind. [Ahmed]'s relatives were evacuated to America precisely because of his handicaps, but shortly after arrival they "disappeared" him in a Dallas jail so that they could continue to cash his $494 monthly Social Security check. Large refugee populations who arrived in the 1980s, such as the Vietnamese and the Eritreans, have been well served by local associations called MAAs formed by earlier immigrants from those regions. In most cases, the "old-timers" are highly educated and assimilated individuals who are firmly committed to bridging the gap for new refugees.