City of STL
“[The Syrian refugees] have been through hell, or they wouldn’t be here,” said Bob Stein, a volunteer for the International Institute in St. Louis, which aids and resettles refugees and immigrants.
The Institute, funded by the state of Missouri, is the only resettlement center in St. Louis and the largest one in the entire state. When refugees — of any country — are placed in St. Louis, it is the Institute that oversees the complete process.
In 2016, 279 Syrians were resettled in St. Louis and in 2017, 46 were resettled by the Institute. However, with Trump’s executive orders, the Institute has not resettled any Syrian refugees since May 2017.
For refugees coming to St. Louis from any country, it is a long journey, and Ariel Burgess, Director of Client Services at the Institute, is the one who oversees it all.
The first step involves partnering with other national agencies. Burgess will report to the US Committee of Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) in Washington D.C each year, letting them know how many refugees the Institute can take. The USCRI then works up mandatory contracts with the U.S. Department of State.
After the contracts are finalized, all the agencies have a conference call every week in which they discuss which location might be able to resettle a certain family of refugees. If Burgess thinks St. Louis could be a good fit, she will be forwarded the actual paperwork to overview before coming to a final decision about accepting the case or not.
“99.99% of the time I accept the case,” Burgess said. “I really look at language — if we have the language spoken on staff or in the St. Louis community and also I’m looking at medical conditions: do they have any existing medical conditions that I need to start getting prepared for and working on? There have only been about three cases that I have not been able to accept to come to St. Louis and they had some pretty extreme situations. I don’t like to not accept cases because I then wonder if the [refugees] ever made it to safety, either in the US or in Australia or Canada or someplace else.”
If the case is accepted and the incoming refugees have no untreated infectious diseases, they will make the long journey from the refugee camps of Jordan or Egypt, or the violence in Syria, to the so-called “safe haven” of St. Louis.
Upon arrival in St. Louis, refugees are picked up from the airport by Institute staff and provided with housing and basic furnishing. As there is also a culture shock from suddenly being thrown into a new environment, the Institute also tries to provide several community orientations.
However, this adjustment period comes to a quick end. Refugees must find a job after 30 days, according to Burgess.
“There’s a big, big push for new arrivals to begin working as soon as possible, regardless of their ability to speak English. The only way they’re going to be able to speak English or be able to stand on their own legs is if they’re employed,” she said. “Our employment department works very, very hard trying to get jobs for people who speak no english or very little english and these jobs are typically entry level jobs.”
While refugees are forced to adjust quite abruptly, the Institute attempts to make this arduous transition as bearable as possible by providing free English classes, an immigration department to help with paperwork and applying for a greencard or citizenship, a microenterprise department to assist refugees in starting their own businesses, and even social workers to do mental health screenings and referrals to counseling. The organization even hosted a summer camp for kids who had been in the Syrian refugee camps.
While the International Institute serves as the city’s primary establishment regarding immigrants and refugees, St. Louis has plenty of other non-profit services to offer new families.
One particular organization, the Immigrant & Refugee Women’s Program, coordinates native English speakers with refugee/immigrant women. The program highlights life skills and cultural concepts through the building of a personal relationship and development of trust between the woman (and family) and the volunteer. This allows for connections to grow and immigrants to feel more stable. As of right now, the program has 235 volunteer teachers and 260 students; the need is there. Clayton parent Carolyn Morris is one of the volunteers at this unique organization.
“What makes our organization different,” said Sarah Paradoski, Program Director, “is that each student has two hours a week of 1-on-1 classes with their volunteer, and that is done in the homes of our students, [which helps] those who can’t get out to classes in the community… because they are home with kids, or they are having some trauma issues; they lack transportation or they are working..often crazy schedules that prevent them from being able to [learn].”
Another heavily involved St. Louis organization is Bilingual International Assistant Services (BIAS) that addresses the touchier side of the refugees’ transition: the trauma they have carried with them from their homeland to the camps to the Gateway Arch.
BIAS has licensed counselors, psychotherapists, and clinical workers to support refugees and immigrants in their mental health needs and has become one of the Institute’s main partners, as the Institute does not provide these same services.
However, convincing refugees to seek help is a task of its own. The topic of mental health is even more stigmatized in other cultures than it is here in the United States.
“We don’t even use the word mental health when we’re talking to our clients because it has such a stigma. Clients will not want to stigmatize themselves because it all gets translated into ‘crazy,’” Burgess said. “We try to use the word emotional health and if we can, we even try to avoid that. We can say stress. We can say anxiety. But we’re not going to get into any diagnosis. If a person does arrive and they are what we call persistently mentally ill, we then refer them out to the mental health community in St. Louis. We then become the cultural broker but we let the mental health physician or counselor deal with that.”
For many refugees, these issues rise to the surface after months into resettlement process.
“Their first goal is to get a life in the US. So all they’re thinking about is ‘I gotta get a job. I gotta get my kids in school. If I can, I gotta learn English but the Institute is going to help me get a job where I can not need a lot of English,’ and then they start to get into a routine,” Burgess said.
When their kids are in school, the parents have a steady job, and there is a roof over their heads, the memories start flooding back.
“All of a sudden the trauma comes back. The [trauma] starts to come back because they start to feel comfortable, and they start to feel guilty because they feel comfortable. And that’s really when we have to intervene,” Burgess added.
Intervention means first destigmatization of the refugees’ troubles, and then referral to outside mental health organizations such as BIAS.
Specifically for Syrian refugees, Burgess believes that emotional trauma is a more prevalent issue, although they remain strong throughout it all.
“(Syrians) are very resilient just as most refugees are,” she said. “It’s very interesting because the Syrians are coming from an active war zone so they really have trauma, and most likely trauma that’s not getting addressed.”
And to those who think the refugees’ situation and trauma places too much of a financial burden on the city of St. Louis, Burgess has a message.
“Refugees are an asset to not just our country but specifically the city of St. Louis. Our population in the city has been declining and refugees bring that number up a bit. They develop businesses. They’re very entrepreneurial,” she said. “It’s a shame that we’re not resettling as many refugees as we can as a country.”