Across American Towns, Tension Brews Against Refugees
Since the early 1980s, the agency now known as the Collegeof Southern Idaho (CSI) Refugee Center has been welcoming refugees to Twin Falls, helping them find housing and jobs, learn English and enroll their children in local schools. Over the decades, the agency has resettled more than 2,500 refugees in this southern Idaho city of 44,000.
But in recent years, the CSI Center — like refugee offices in other smaller, predominantly-white communities — has come under pressure. Fuelled by a fear of Islamist extremism and claims that refugee resettlement may be a cover for terrorist infiltration, local opposition movements in Twin Falls and elsewhere have sought to block the arrival of more refugees in places where they were once welcomed.
In Twin Falls, the opposition has been led by a Committee to End the CSI Refugee Center, whose leader claimed the refugee vetting process would not catch people lying in order to get into the U.S. “We are not against legitimate refugees,” he told Reuters in 2015.
Protests have also been organized in towns from Rutland VT to Missoula MT. The opposition in Rutland grew so strong that Mayor Christopher Louras — who actively promoted refugee resettlement — was defeated in a reelection bid this year by David Allaire, who claims that he is not anti-refugee but was opposed to the lack of transparency in Louras’ work with local refugee resettlement agencies. In early March, the state of Tennessee filed a lawsuit against the federal government for refugee resettlement on the grounds of the 10th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, that allows states to have powers that are otherwise not given to the U.S. government by the Constitution.
Even though the committee seeking to close the refugee center in Twin Falls failed to get enough signatures to call for a public vote on closing the refugee agency, the tension remains.
On websites like Breitbart News and InfoWars, the drumbeat of anti-refugee stories continues. Breitbart, for example, published a lengthy attack last summer claiming that refugee boys had assaulted a 5-year-old girl in Twin Falls, a story largely refuted by the county prosecutor. Breitbart posed the question: “Why are the refugees in Twin Falls in the first place?” and said “The simplest part of the answer is that Muslim refugees are being used as cheap replacements for the middle-class Americans who want to work in Twin Falls’ government-boosted food processing industry.”
“I think the community was not informed enough about the refugees, and as a result people believe whatever is being told to them,” said Zeze Rwasama, director of the College of Southern Idaho Refugee Center. “When I speak to them, all their questions are answered and I’m able to give them references for them to verify that information.”
According to a Pew Research Center report, while ethnically diverse states such as New York and Texas have resettled the largest number of refugees, states such as Idaho, Vermont, Nebraska and North Dakota have taken in the largest numbers per capita. These states have a white population higher than 85%, and are thus less multicultural.
Coincidentally, these are also among the places where anti-refugee sentiments have grown in the past couple of years.
Refugees who come to the U.S. go through a lengthy vetting process before they are approved for resettlement. The vetting is done by the federal government, which then turns to resettlement agencies across the country to find a home for approved refugees. Among the factors that can determine where a refugee is sent: whether they have family in that city or state; whether there’s already a community there of immigrants and refugees from their country; how successful the local refugee agency has been in resettling earlier arrivals; and what sort of employment opportunities are available.
In Twin Falls, the unemployment rate has dropped from 9 percent in 2010 to 3 percent at the end of 2016. This means there are plenty of employment opportunities, said Rwasama. In fact, some refugees resettled in other cities end up moving to Twin Falls because of jobs, he said.
Bob Nearbot, director of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, says that refugees have been welcome by employees at dairy farms in Twin Falls and the surrounding Magic Valley area. He noted that one local company has at least 55 refugee employees.
However, because of the local backlash against refugees, Nearbot said the company does not want to be publicly named, nor would any of its refugee workers speak publicly.
Like Rwasama, Nearbot says he believes much of the opposition to refugees comes from a lack of information about who they are, how they are vetted before approval for resettlement, and how the resettlement process works.
“I think what we had to do was look at more education,” he said. “How do you bring assurances to people? And that’s in the best interest of the citizens of Twin Falls, the Magic Valley area and the refugees themselves.”
However, there are no state-sponsored orientation or information sessions to educate host communities, said Rwasama. That job is left up to his agency, which does some public speaking about refugees and also fields phone calls from critics of the refugee program.
“Sometimes they complain that these people are taking their tax money,” said Rwasama. “Then I explain to them our self-sufficient program, and that these people start earning by their third month here and actually pay taxes.”
Rwasama said he once pulled out a W2 form of a client, to show to one of the anti-refugee protesters that refugees are tax-paying residents.
“When someone sees that their money was used to save lives and rescue refugees, then they are proud of their contribution,” he said.
But a lot more remains to be done. While Rwasama is taking small steps to educate the local community about refugees, the fear and tension continue to brew in these towns across the country.
