American Dreams

In the lobby of the Bowling Green International Center, several students took a break from their English classes, splitting into groups to relax into their native tongues. Spanish and Thai chatter overlapped as they waited for the single bathroom. Some of the women wore floor-length skirts and head coverings; two of the boys wore galoshes and woven bags embroidered with bright red, yellow and purple dancing figures. A poster on the wall bore the logo, “It takes courage to be a refugee.”

The International Center welcomes people from around the world who have fled their country because of persecution for their race, religion, nationality or membership of a social group. Since its establishment in 1981, the center has helped change the face of Bowling Green.

According to U.S. Census data, the foreign born population in Bowling Green has jumped from 247 in 1980 to an estimated 4,420 in 2005-2007, more than a 17-fold increase.

The International Center alone has resettled 4,526 refugees in the Bowling Green area between 1990 and April 14, 2009. The largest refugee groups in the past 19 years have come from Bosnia, Myanmar (also known as Burma), the former Soviet Union, Vietnam and El Salvador.

Over the years, the refugee center has grown from the home of one motivated woman to a large, diverse staff in a building just off U.S. 31W Bypass. The people who have worked for the center come from a range of backgrounds and have different approaches. However, all have had the same goal in mind: helping refugees acclimate to their lives in the United States and become self-sufficient as quickly as possible.

BEGINNINGS

Martha and Kenneth Deputy watched Good Morning America one morning in the fall of 1978, and the show changed their lives forever. The featured guest was a Cambodian refugee who asked others to sponsor refugees like him.

The Deputys wanted to help. They called a refugee agency in Boston, which quickly sent them their first family, the Chanthasomsacks from Laos.

This first family was quickly joined by a Cambodian man and his two nephews, and a Vietnamese family came within the year. Deputy said she did not have a checklist or any advice on how to provide for those first refugees, but she used common sense to figure it out.

“You find them a place to live; you get them some linens and enough mattresses,” she said.

The Deputys personally housed the Cambodian family until the uncle moved to a different city and the two boys graduated high school. At various times, four to five Laotian families lived in a half circle of trailer homes on a hillside a little over a mile away from the Deputys’s house.

As families found jobs and became financially stable, they moved away, but Deputy has held on to her memories of them. Thinking back on those days, her bright blue eyes shined as she leaned back in a lounge chair on her wrap-around porch.

She told stories about teaching the refugees how to drive in a landscape much different than the one they were used to.

“I remember driving down the bypass and Dao Phet [Chanthasomsack] had never read anything except a buffalo,” she said, laughing. “It was such a lot of work, but such a joy to see them get started and take the steps it takes to be able to be independent.”

It wasn’t until 1981 that a friend suggested she apply to become a non-profit organization, and she took this process step-by-step, too.

“I didn’t know what I was doing from the man on the moon, but we got our non-profit status,” she said. “It was just a lot of following the dots.”

She went on to found the Western Kentucky Refugee Mutual Assistance Association, which later became known as the International Center.

Deputy said she thinks she provided for those first refugees as well as the much more structured International Center does today.

At least one of them agrees.

“Martha Deputy is a wonderful woman,” said John Lianekhammy, a refugee who came to the International Center for resettlement in 1996.

Lianekhammy and his family left Laos for a refugee camp in Thailand. They lived there for a year and a half before moving to Bowling Green. Deputy provided the family of six with clothing and food and set them up in her sister’s house before moving them into one of the trailers, Lianekhammy said.

In Laos, Lianekhammy had been a medic educated in the capital, Vientiane; in America, he had to start over.

“You have a high education in your own county,” he said. “When you come here, you don’t have nothing. It makes you sad, but you have to learn.”

Lianekhammy went back to school for five years, taking English and emergency medical technician classes. He now transports patients at Greenview Hospital.

“My philosophy is you have to stand up and go again,” he said. “You have to do what you can. You cannot be thinking of what you had before.”

LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE

International Center case manager supervisor Tatiana Sahanic knows where refugees are coming from

In her hometown of Sarajevo, Bosnia, she looked out the window of her 12-story apartment one day in 1992 and saw a sniper on the 30-story building across the street.

“Everyone had guns; everyone was shooting guns in the street,” she said.

In 1992, political tensions grew among the Bosnians, the Serbs and the Croats, Bosnia’s three ethnic groups. The Serbs violently seized the capital, Sarajevo, according to news reports.

Sahanic’s 8-year-old daughter, Lanna, had a tonsillectomy six days into the war. Sahanic decided to take her two daughters to her grandfather’s house in Montenegro. She left with one suitcase.

“I said, ‘O.K. I’m going to go for two weeks, she will be better over there anyway and she will recover,’” Sahanic said. “That’s why we left, and we never went back.”

After applying for refugee status, getting rejected, applying again, a three-and-a-half-year wait and five or six interviews, Sahanic and her family received refugee status and moved to Bowling Green. The International Center rented a one-bedroom apartment for them and helped Sahanic get her first American job, at McDonald’s, before she could even speak English.

“I did not speak a word,” she said. “I started working 16 days after I arrived in the country.”

Two years later, Sahanic started working as an interpreter at the International Center. Six months after that, she became a caseworker, and has worked her way up from there.

Working at the International Center is more than just a job to Sahanic.

“I work for the people, and I know where they’re coming from, and I know how they feel,” she said. “I just want better for them than I had when I arrived.”

Most of the case workers are former refugees themselves, so they have learned by experience what issues refugees face, and they are always learning from new refugees’ experiences, Sahanic said.

She said she never thought that she’d have to teach refugees not to urinate in public.

“We had a guy in jail for that for three days,” she said. “How I would imagine to tell him not to do that? He learned from that, and we learned from that.”

Sahanic said they can tell refugees the laws here – that it’s illegal to drink and drive, that punching someone is considered domestic abuse – but they cannot make them follow the laws. Another issue International Center workers face is refugees with high expectations of what their transplanted lives will be like.

“People are telling them ‘Oh if you go to America now your life’s going to be just heaven,” Sahanic said. “And then they come over here and there is a used mattress on the floor, table and chairs one set of the plates, one enough for each family member,” Sahanic said. “Why is it like that? Because we have $450 per person.”

The International Center receives funding through the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a non-profit agency, which in turn receives funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The USCRI provides $450 for each refugee as well as an additional $450 to cover administrative costs. Current International Center Director James Robinson explained how the caseworkers use the refugees’ money on their behalf. A family of four would receive $1800 initially. The caseworker would then spend about $400 on an apartment deposit, $650 on the first month’s rent and utilities, and $250 on basic food and furnishings, leaving only $500 left for the family to spend.

Because this money is likely to run out quickly, the International Center aims for refugee families to be self-sufficient in 90 days.

A NEW DIRECTION

Robinson’s muted Sparta, Tenn., drawl adds to his eager, open manner. When he worked on farms and construction sites 18 years ago, he couldn’t have pictured himself helping refugees resettle.

After being injured in a construction accident in 1993, Robinson decided to go back to school rather than live on disability checks. He earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in social work and then worked at various non-profit organizations and as a principal for a year. He was hired at the International Center when Deputy retired in July 2006.

“I came here really not knowing one thing about refugees and immigrants, except for what I read in the paper and heard on television,” he said.

That was about to change.

Robinson now makes a point of walking into the English classrooms and the lobby to say hello to people. An eager learner, he walked into Sahanic’s office one day requesting that she help him pronounce an Iraqi refugee’s name. He was getting ready to meet the man to discuss the war in Iraq from the refugee’s perspective.

“I don’t look at the world as paperwork,” he said. “I want to serve people how I’d like to be served.”

When Robinson arrived at the International Center, he wanted to focus on diversifying the staff to better serve the refugees coming in from around the world. He said he also saw tensions and misunderstandings between the International Center and the community.

Robinson said he views the International Center as a community agency, and he wants to educate people in Bowling Green about the refugees so that the two groups can help each other. He said he will go to the bat for refugees when they need help, but sometimes, they need to fight their own battles.

“There are people who aren’t receptive to the refugees, and there are always going to be,” he said. “They think that refugees are getting a free ticket to come to the United States, and that’s just not true.”

For the most part, refugees transition into the community quickly. Robinson said that 95 percent of its clients are self-sufficient and employed within 90 days. The International Center has been recognized by the USCRI for having a notably high self-sufficiency rate and low use of welfare.

“There’s a need to take a look at the impact that the refugee population has on the local economy,” Walker said.

Jack McCoy, who houses many refugees in his Creekwood Apartment complex, witnesses the hardships his tenants face when he sees them picking dandelions to eat in the field next to the apartments.

“People have been through amazing things to get here,” he said.

McCoy said he doesn’t see many refugees taking advantage of English classes at the International Center. Generally, though, his experiences with the BGIC have been excellent.

“I get a good feeling out of helping them, but there’s only so much I can do,” he said of his tenants.

Helping hands can only reach halfway for refugees.

Salim Korazhayev, 32, moved to the United States from Russia almost two years ago.

In Russia, Korazhayev faced daily persecution and extortion from the police because of his Turkish ethnicity.

He first moved to Tucson, Ariz., where a refugee center helped him get his Social Security card and established his right to work. Then he moved to Bowling Green to live with family members. Although Korazhayev tries to be self-sufficient, he has gone to the International Center several times for help finding a job and getting his green card.

“If they see you can’t figure out by yourself, they’re going to help you exactly,” he said.

Korazhayev knows what it means to get by on his own steam. He has taught himself English from magazines, conversation and a dictionary gotten a job at Rafferty’s as a line cook and performed odd jobs through Labor Ready, a temp labor service.

“If you’re just going to sit at home and pray to God to send you a paycheck…” he trailed off, smiling and shaking his head. “It’s up to you. You have to be responsible for yourself.”