I Lived Through A War, But It Took My Family Four Years to Get a U.S. Refugee Visa.
Arnesa Buljusmic-Kustura is the executive director of the Bosniak American Association of Iowa and the author of the upcoming book Letters from Diaspora, a collection of short stories about the lives of immigrants and refugees in the United States. Last week, she tweeted about what it takes to get a refugee visa to the U.S. and her tweets went viral. This is her story.
I was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, a city often referred to as the “Jerusalem of Europe” due to its religious diversity and wealth. In April 1992, a brutal war broke out and Sarajevo fell under siege to Serb forces. For almost four years, the residents of the city were subjected to a brutal shelling campaign until the war finally came to an end following the Srebrenica genocide and the Dayton Peace Accords.
While the war was “officially” over, those of us who survived it knew that wars don’t end with a simple ceasefire. Following the war, I found myself a displaced person without a home, along with 1.2 million other Bosnians. The houses that once belonged to my family were either destroyed or under the control of Serb forces.
Just like other Bosnian families, my family and I loved our city and our homeland. Despite the bleak outlook that awaited us following the war, we decided to stay and try to help rebuild. We found ourselves struggling to survive, living in poverty, and dealing with the scars of trauma the had war left.
After numerous conversations about our futures and the possibility of survival, my parents found themselves in line at a U.N. agency, filing an application for refugee status in the hopes we would find ourselves in America reunited with the few surviving family members my father had left. The process began in 1998, and started with tears on my parents’ faces.
My parents were advised of what they needed to file for refugee status, the length of time it would take, and how much effort they would need to put in. It started out slowly. The first step was to gather the documentation necessary to prove our how we’d been living. Some of these things cost money that my parents didn’t have. I often remember seeing them weep as they struggled to get the information the U.N agencies required us to show. But gathering the documents was the easy part.
After the submission of report cards, driver’s licenses, government-issued IDs, bills to prove where we were living, and even proof that my father was a concentration camp survivor, we were invited to our first interview. The room was cold, both physically and emotionally. Across from us sat a Bosnian translator and a U.N. agency official.
The questioning of our pasts started. We were required to recount the worst moments of our lives, to repeat our story to people who at times seemed to view us as just another burden they had to deal with.
My father told them about surviving a death camp and how he escaped. My mother told her story of being under siege in Sarajevo. I told my story of observing all of the damage the war brought us; as a child, I wasn’t able to quite fully understand it at the time. Even my brother, who was only six and seven years old, was required to answer the official’s questions. The questions would be repeated and our answers were required to stay the same. One little mistake, and our hopes of finding a safe home could have been destroyed.
We provided references of friends, surviving family members, neighbors, and past co-workers who could confirm our story. We handed over documents showing how many of our family members were considered missing (a code word for murdered, but buried in a mass grave that has yet to be found) and confirmed dead, along with documents verifying that the homes my parents once owned were destroyed. The documents were countless. Over the next year and a half, our story was verified and background checks were ran across different agencies to ensure we were not lying, had a criminal past, or were in any way involved with anything that could be considered a crime.
Following this process, we returned for more interviews and questions. They asked us about our thoughts on communism, our involvement in the war, my parents’ lives before the war, our lives during the war, and anything else they deemed necessary. I often found myself in tears recounting my story and the trauma that came with being a child of war. I found myself living in fear throughout this process that something I said would be used against my family and prevent our journey to a safe place and a better life.
Once the interview process was finally complete, we were subjected to biometric testing including fingerprinting and medical exams. After almost four years of countless interviews, verified documents, personal references that checked out, background checks, fingerprinting, retina eye scans, medical and psychological exams, and financial costs that we did not truly have the money to cover, we went to one final interview during which we were told our application was approved.
My mother and I broke down. I wasn’t sure if we were crying out of happiness and hope or if we were crying out of the grief that came with leaving our home. The next step was taking classes on American etiquette and how to behave once we arrived, along with brief and limited English lessons and a primer on what awaited us in America. A few months later, we received a phone call advising us that we had a month to pack our stuff and the precise day we would get on the plane to the United States.
We received that call four years after we initially applied for refugee status. Over the next month, we packed up our clothing and the few belongings we had left. We said goodbye to family and friends we knew and loved. We said goodbye to our country. We left everything we once knew in hopes that America would welcome us with open arms.
The day after we landed in the place we now call home, we were required to go to the local immigration and refugee center for another interview with officials, fingerprinting, and more medical exams to ensure we were healthy and received all of the necessary shots we needed. We were advised that shortly after, we would be given Social Security numbers which would allow my parents to find jobs and for my brother and I to enroll in school.
We arrived in America with almost no money and very few belongings, but with the feeling that being safe made everything else irrelevant. After receiving their Social Security numbers, my parents both found jobs and got to work. They worked constantly and I barely saw them, but they were determined to pay back the plane ticket to the government and become financially stable.
Our first year in America consisted of navigating the immigration process and our new life. I found that even in the U.S., I wasn’t able to be a child but rather an adult stuck in a child’s body. Paperwork, bills, and ensuring that we were in compliance with everything that was required of us became an after-school activity. Department of Human Services and immigration case managers became the few people I was able to actually have a conversation with — and that was mainly because they asked questions and I provided the answers.
Within a couple months of our life in the U.S., my parents were off the very tiny portion of financial assistance they were receiving ($300 per month for a family of four for food stamps). Within a year, they paid back their ticket and the following year, immigration and DHS case managers stopped making their visits.
We survived our first year and continued to work towards bettering our lives and other people’s lives for the sole reasons that we, out of countless others, were granted the privilege of coming to America.
My story is long and one of many. In all honesty, my story is far less tragic than many others who go through the resettlement process. After all, I was given the clearance and approval to obtain refugee status and resettle. My family was lucky to get that call in 2001. The vast majority of refugees never will.
This essay is part of the My Time in Line series, in which immigrants are sharing their experiences of what it’s really like to get legal status.
