BRATTLEBORO-Once you have lived through a civil war, or been beaten and tortured and starved, or watched your family killed in front of your eyes, and then taken a dangerous route to find safety for you and your family in - of all places - Windham County, Vermont, the looming threat of a former president re-elected on a hard-line anti-immigration platform might not necessarily faze you.
"We will wait and see," said Joe Wiah, the executive director of ECDC Brattleboro, a chapter of the national refugee resettlement organization also known as the Ethiopian Community Development Council Inc., which nationally handled 5,993 refugee cases in FY 2023.
Wiah himself is from Liberia.
"We don't know right now if there will be any policy change by the federal government," he said. "As far as we know, the policy is still the same. I know during the election time there were a lot of talks, but we don't know until we see those policies. So we're still working within the current policies we have right now."
The ECDC has two offices in southern Vermont - one in Brattleboro and one in Bennington - and its operations cover Windham, Windsor, Orange, and Bennington counties. Nationally, the ECDC has 25 affiliates.
Southern Vermont has been a welcoming place for refugees, with somewhere between 300 and 350 living in the Brattleboro region right now.
The ECDC has a caseload of about 447 clients between Bennington and Brattleboro this year, Wiah said, with about 140 clients in the Brattleboro area.
The refugee world
According to statistics gathered by Wiah, since 1980, when the United States started tracking refugee resettlement, up to Sept. 30, 2024, the United States has resettled 3,652,596 refugees from around the world.
"While this is based purely on humanitarian reasons, the economic return is also worth mentioning," Wiah said in a recent speech, a copy of which he provided to The Commons.
"There's always some kind of talk about refugees taking away so much from the country," he said, pointing to an Agency of Health and Human Services report from earlier this year on the net impact of refugees' resettlement between 2005 and 2019.
"Governmental expenditures on refugees at federal, state, and local levels and asylees totaled an estimated $457.2 billion over the 15-year period," Wiah said in his speech. "In the same period, refugees and asylees contributed an estimated $581 billion in revenue to federal, state, and local governments through payroll sales and property taxes. The difference is $123.8 billion."
The Brattleboro Development Credit Corp., which is working closely with the ECDC to help refugees find employment, started tracking figures from October 2023 to September 2024. According to them, Wiah said, resettled refugees in southern Vermont contributed $4.8 million in total taxable wages to the economy.
Terminology counts
Immigration terminology is complicated.
In terms of nomenclature, the word "immigrant" is a general term meaning anyone who moves to live permanently in a foreign country.
"Illegal immigrant" is an older term referring to those who cross into this country through trafficking, illegal means, or who overstay a visa. The term "undocumented immigrant" refers to someone who is in the country illegally and faces a serious risk of deportation.
A refugee is different.
"A refugee is a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster," said Ian Hefele, ECDC's community engagement manager. "They are processed through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and come to different countries around the world after extensive background checks and international vetting."
Refugees do not get to choose the country where they will be resettled, but are most likely to be resettled in the U.S. if they have family already living here.
Another classification of immigrants is called "asylum seekers."
"An asylum seeker is someone who has left their home country for political reasons, usually very rapidly, and is seeking asylum in another," Hefele said. "Asylum seekers come here and then ask for asylum, when refugees usually ask for protection before they leave their home country."
In the Windham County region, these people are helped by an organization called CASP (Community Asylum Seekers Project).
Those working with people seeking a new life here make a linguistic distinction.
"It is important to note that no person is ever illegal," Hefele said. "Rather, the act of crossing into the country without documents is the illegal action. Both asylum seekers and refugees enter the country legally."
The mission of CASP
CASP was founded in 2016; its office is in Brattleboro.
"Since our founding, CASP has offered direct services to asylum seekers from Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa seeking a life free from violence, persecution, and torture, as well as reunification with loved ones," the CASP website says. "Our support to them is offered with the help of a network of more than 200 community volunteers who orient asylum seekers to the community and help them navigate the process of rebuilding their lives."
They don't come here on a whim.
Immigrants may be fleeing domestic violence, or gang violence, or violence in their culture for being LGBTQIA, or violence to punish them for their political ideas. They may be be forced to pay extortion. Their families have disappeared or been murdered.
"It's a wide range of things these people are facing," said executive director Liv Berelson.
Each of her clients has come to CASP in a different way, she said. Some are recommended by other states to Vermont CASP because they are LGBTQIA, and Brattleboro is known to be a safe and accepting place for them to land.
CASP sponsors people to get them out of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, "and then they end up here," Berelson said. "Sometimes a church will be working with someone and say, 'This person really needs help.'"
The organization, which seeks donations and volunteers, has a yearly caseload of approximately 32 clients needing a full spectrum of organizational support for those seeking asylum.
It has also offered part-time assistance to more than 100 people this year, said Berelson. "Some people only need legal services assistance," she said.
Asylum seekers must file I-589, the form for "Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal," with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.
"It's a pretty detailed application where you have to detail everything that's happened to you and why you're seeking asylum," Berelson said. "It's pretty important."
Somebody who's just escaped with their life might find paperwork bewildering.
"Yes, because it needs to be submitted in English," Berelson said. "So if you don't speak English, that's already a very big barrier. And some people also can't read or write in their own language."
So if you're a new arrival, "hopefully, you're able to find an attorney who can help you with your asylum case," she continued. "And some people do fill it out themselves. Some people come to organizations like ours, and we're able to help them. The best thing would be an attorney, but a lot of people, unfortunately, don't have access."
If those seeking asylum haven't suffered enough, there are also scammers, Berelson said.
"A lot of people are taken advantage of by scammers and people who say, 'Oh, I'll help you if you pay me,'" she said. "And then they pay them and the person disappears, or they do it wrong. And it's really, really upsetting how much people take advantage of vulnerable people."
For her clients, transitioning to living in the United States can be overwhelming, Berelson said. And their status leaves them in limbo.
"You cannot work for a minimum of six months after you filed your application," Berelson said. They also can't access social services and safety-net programs like food stamps.
So their options are "to work under the table, to be homeless, or to hopefully find an organization like CASP that's able to support them with housing until they're able to work," she said.
"Then there are language barriers and culture barriers, depending on the state," Berelson continued.
The recent arrivals "face discrimination, lack of access to health care, and a lack of health insurance. [...] They're also often dealing with trauma and PTSD. It's very hard to find mental health care for people in their native language.
"It's definitely a rough transition," Berelson said.
Immigration in Brattleboro
The international community in Windham County is larger than most of us know, Wiah said.
"We have refugees from Afghanistan, but we also have refugees from Venezuela, from Colombia, from Eritrea [in East Africa], from Iraq and Syria," Wiah said. "Our support comes from the federal government as well as private donors and the state."
Trump has blamed "immigrants" for everything from crime and drugs to eating family pets. He has promised a closed border, detention centers, and sweeping mass deportations.
In Brattleboro after the election, many were concerned about the status of refugees and asylum seekers who have been resettled in the area, and become valued members of the community: painting murals, working in supermarkets and at the hospital, doing construction, and in other ways contributing to life in the area.
Wiah said he was unperturbed by Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric because his clients are in the U.S. under the protection of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
"They have legal status because first, they come in under the protection of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which is working along with the U.S. government to resettle them into a third country," Wiah said. "So for them, they are protected somehow, at least now, under the international law, and also by the legal status that the U.S. government gave them.
"They were admitted into the United States lawfully. That's why they can work. They have their employment authorization cards, and after one year, they are qualified under the current law to apply for permanent residency."
That's why Brattleboro's refugees should not be vulnerable to a sweep by ICE, Wiah said.
He characterized Vermont as an especially safe place, but he foresees that his organization will, like CASP, need more community support.
"We live in a community where everyone is so happy to have refugees here," Wiah said. "Now we call on the community to support us again. We don't know what a policy change is going to look like, whether it's going to affect those who are supposed to come, or if it's going to affect those who are here."
Community support means volunteers and donations.
"One way the Brattleboro community could help support us is to go out to the dollar stores and buy everything you may need to clean a bathroom," Hefele said. "Then bring it to the Multicultural Center, because when we move our clients into their first apartments, we are required by the federal government to provide them with things like fresh pillows, blankets, and towels."
Although financial support is very important, Hefele continued, "not everybody has the means to support our work monetarily."
"But if you can support us by household donations, or if you have a gently used piece of furniture that you're looking to get rid of, please send them our way," he said.
Vermont's congressional delegation has always been very supportive of refugee resettlement, and the state has always been welcoming. That is, in part, because Vermont's population is shrinking.
"For example, my children's school in Vermont was built for 300 students," Hefele said. "Right now there are 156 in it. Our families bring students who grow up and start working. When I talk about southern Vermont to people, they always say, 'We have an aging demographic and not enough workers.'"
Within the ECDC's refugee population, "we have an average age of about 38, I believe," Hefele said. "And they're all legally able to work when they arrive. We just need to get them employed depending on their English language skills."
Preparing for the worst
People can help asylum seekers right now to prepare for changes that might come with the new administration, Berelson said.
"Some are very basic direct services, like helping people get to doctor's appointments and to the grocery store and orienting them to the community when they first arrive," she said.
Unlike refugees, Berelson's clientele could be more vulnerable because of the legal paradoxes of immigration law. That's when things become more serious.
"If ICE tries to pick someone up from their home, there are people who will form a protest around that person's home," she said. "People go to airports to try and stop deportation flights leaving there. There's a wide range of things, and I think we're going to be mobilizing on all of them with what's coming ahead, because we don't really know what's coming and to what extent."
Steve Crofter, one of the founders of CASP who still works informally with an asylum-seeking family, sees room for positivity as well as struggle.
"Personally, I'm ready to take on the challenges we have in front of us," Crofter said. "Clearly there are many things that will be much harder for many people, but there will also be new opportunities to organize and make progress."
He also believes that one main task, "regardless of who won the election, is to build unity within our divided country, and the opportunities to do that abound. For all of us, it's a great time to reach out to people on the other side of the political divide."
Wiah said to remember that refugees are, if nothing else, a resilient group of people.
"They have come from tough situations," Wiah said. "They left their countries under attack. Some of the refugees have been refugees for the past 10 years, or even longer. They have seen worse before."
That doesn't mean he will downplay grave possibilities.
"But they came to this country to be safe, and we still have the anticipation that it [will remain] safe here," Wiah said.
"Remember, refugees are tough people. We will get through it," he added. "But also, if things change, we will get through this collectively, with the community."
This News item by Joyce Marcel was written for The Commons.