What I Learned From a Summer in Refugee Resettlement

On the very first day of my summer internship, I learned that I had no clue what I was doing. I spent the past three months as an Employment Services intern at a refugee resettlement agency helping clients find jobs and resources for becoming self-sufficient. If there’s one thing I can say to sum up this experience, it’s that the clients I served taught me more than I ever could have taught them, and that really, I still have no clue what I’m doing! If you’re not a big reader, take this advice and stop reading (and ask me more about it in real life!): Go to Clarkston. Make some friends. Let them rock your world.
But if you do like reading, here are the 4 things I learned this summer while interning for a refugee resettlement agency, and why I think they’re vitally important.
1. We NEED Refugees
Within the past year, refugees around the world have (finally) received a shocking amount of media attention. But, as much as we might have liked it to, the increased volume of Facebook posts about “America Welcomes Refugees!” didn’t actually do a whole lot to increase the volume of refugees entering the US.
The number of refugees admitted into the United States during the previous fiscal year was 110,000. And in case you don’t know the current number (like me when I began my internship), the threshold has since been lowered to 50,000.
We should know how many people we have welcomed in. We should know what is required of us when it comes to serving those people. We should never forget that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. We should remember that better is possible. I’m thankful that the United States is still one of the top first-world countries to host refugees, but we can do better.
We need refugees because of what they contribute to our society, both economically and culturally. Among the other 60,000+ refugees that the US might have admitted this year, we missed out on engineers, doctors, future Olympians, soldiers, and some of the most resilient humans on the planet.
We need refugees because they can hold up the American industrial workplace (*Fun Fact: you can thank corporations like Chick-Fil-A for creating jobs for refugees via chicken processing). It makes sense to hire refugees, because they’re eager and determined to work. It’s easy to hire refugees, because they are all granted permission to work when they are admitted to the US. So Dear American Employers and Business Owners: you need refugees, and refugees need you!
2. Your Community is Your Greatest Asset
This phrase was something my supervisors always repeated to our clients, especially when they were first searching for employment. This is a lesson not only for refugees learning to expand their professional network, but for everyone.
In the United States, we idealize the values of individualism and the thought that one can reach any level of success or fulfillment if they just work hard enough and climb the ladder. I saw these ideas repeatedly challenged while working with refugees.
Often times our clients are coming from very contrasting “collectivist” cultures. Just take a look at any documentary on the conditions of refugee camps in Turkey or Ethiopia. You can’t survive unless you cultivate your community, wherever you are. In employment services, we have found that refugees who are surrounded by support, whether it be friends from their home country or volunteers in their community, have a far better chance of finding jobs and feeling more integrated into American culture.
If we begin to value this community above our own abilities to make it alone, we might start seeing more successes than we see failures. But first, we must commit to being steadfast members of that local community. Resettlement agencies will never be able to provide everything that is needed, but we can. For example, there are over 300,000 churches in this country. Remember that number from before? (*Hint: it’s 50,000)…You can do the math. It is beyond feasible for us to surround our refugee neighbors and friends with the resources they need to become self-sufficient.
3. Patience = Strength
It wasn’t until I stepped into the somewhat complex world of non-profit work that I began to realize just how much I value efficiency in the professional workplace. Especially as a university student at a heavily STEM focused school, I find that efficiency has become one of the primary goals of any job I find myself in.
While I highly value the desire to strive for efficiency, sustainability, and grit in the professional world, I also have observed through working with a non-profit that sometimes the first step is a step back; a step back to get a bigger picture of the full, complex, tricky system that you may be working with.
Efficiency must remain a goal for any organization, or we begin to lose sight of the ways we can always continue to improve our systems. BUT, maybe equally as important as this concept is knowing that not everything can be wholly solved through better strategy, better minds, or even better funding. I say that patience is strength because I believe this may be something we tend to lose sight of. Imagine what could be possible if even in the midst of the chaos of work, we valued patience in our work, and gained strength in both the planning and the waiting?
4. God Is In Control
Not me, not my refugee friends, and certainly not the man sitting in the White House.
I could go on about the countless times I felt completely helpless this summer. The most difficult part of this was coming to the realization that no matter how hard I work, and no matter how qualified or determined my client may be to get an interview or a job, we still cannot change anyone’s mind.
In refugee employment services, sometimes all it takes is one interview, or one connection, or one added experience on a resume. More often, it takes three, four, maybe even five interviews. Ultimately, we are not in control of the outcome.
He cares about them, every single one. He cares about you, too! And He will not leave our refugee friends hanging. After all, Jesus himself was a refugee. When we feel helpless, lost, or angry at those who don’t understand why it is so important to make America a welcoming place for refugees, remember that we are NOT in control… but someone stronger than us is.
And even if we aren’t in control all the time, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight with every fiber of our being for what is right. Martin Luther King wasn’t in control, either! Nor was Nelson Mandela, or Malala, or Wonder Woman when she was saving the world from Aries’s destructive wrath of WWI! Wins don’t come easily. They are preceded by failures that make us feel like we can’t bounce back, tears that fall over the work we pour ourselves into, and faith in the force that is greater than all else in this universe: the force of Jesus’s love for His people. My friends, He has already won.