Welcoming Family
He sat across the desk from me in the small clinic room, accompanied by his wife. They had walked from their apartment to the clinic, leaving their two teenage daughters at home with a friend. He had arrived in the United States a month prior to the clinic visit. Before we delved deep into the reason for his clinic visit, I asked him if he was willing to share his story with me. He was, and it was gut-wrenching.
He was from a minority Muslim group and suffered persecution in two different countries, finally living in a refugee camp, separated from his parents. During the second (of seven) years he lived in the camp, his father died. He could not attend the funeral. Eventually, following a rigorous vetting process that lasted almost two years, he was approved for resettlement in the United States as a refugee.
When I asked him about his experience of arriving in Minnesota, his eyes teared up as he described how he had finally found a welcoming family waiting for him and his family at the RST airport. The name of his newly found family was the Refugee Resettlement Program of Catholic Charities of Southeastern Minnesota. They helped him navigate his first month in the United States, with basic things such as a safe, warm, and furnished place to stay, and where and how to buy groceries, attend clinic appointments, and enroll children in school. He had started taking English classes at Hawthorne School and was looking to begin a job at one of the meat packing factories in the Rochester. This new family allowed him to have hope.
Class of Seeds of Wisdom students being educated in the refugee camp.
The other day, reflecting on this encounter, I considered just how lucky this gentleman and his family were as far as timing! If he had been scheduled to arrive in the United States any time after January 20th 2025, his trip would have been cancelled and if he had arrived in the 90 days prior to January 24th 2025, he would not have the support of the new family he had found here. This is because with the stoke of a pen, an executive order abruptly cut off these services. And for context, while the United States accepted 100,004 refugees in 2024, there are over 1.5 million refugees living in Uganda, (a country in East Africa the size of Oregon); this includes the students attending our Seeds of Wisdom School there and their families.
It is very easy to visualize this world as US and THEM, and a lot of current rhetoric tends to pit US versus THEM. The line between US and THEM can be a number of things – place of birth, religious affiliation, language spoken, and even superficial, God-given, unchangeable physical characteristics. The THEM easily becomes a homogenous faceless mass, devoid of provoking any empathetic or relational response. But the truth is, we are not very different from THEM. We are all broken. No one is perfect. Our brokenness is as diverse as we are. Our communities are also broken - some by poverty, others by war or natural disasters.
While we do not get to choose the type of brokenness we or our communities experience, or its timing, we sometimes get to choose how we respond to this brokenness. We tend to those whose bodies or minds are broken by disease or illness, we clothe those who are naked, we welcome the stranger. Our Catholic faith further teaches that “more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent that they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of security, and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2241).
In his letter to the bishops of the U.S.A. dated 2/10/25, Pope Francis stated “The true common good is promoted when society and government, with creativity and strict respect for the rights of all …welcomes, protects, promotes, and integrates the most fragile, unprotected and vulnerable. This does not impede the development of a policy that regulates orderly and legal migration. However, this development cannot come about through the privilege of some and the sacrifice of others”. He exhorts all of us “…. not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters”.
In our minds, we acknowledge the inherent dignity of every human being. We also acknowledge the immense complexity of this issue of immigration, and that there is no easy solution. But we are not entirely powerless: we can open our hearts. In the chapter on Christian Prayer in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2563), there is a beautiful definition of the heart: “…the heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; …the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation…”. It is through the eyes of our hearts that the homogeneity of the THEM will break down to the granularity of individuals and families – broken and desperately trying to make it through this life, but like us, also redeemed by The Man on the Cross. Practically, this translates to our spiritual and material support for our brothers and sisters, to give them hope. Here are some ways we can help…
Learn: https://justiceforimmigrants.org/
Give: https://www.smiild.org/
Jane Njeru