wfn.org | Episcopal Migration Ministries and Kosovo

[Daphne Mack <dmack@dfms.org>]

For more information contact:
Episcopal News Service
Kathryn McCormick
kmccormick@dfms.org
212/922-5383
http://www.ecusa.anglican.org/ens

99-072
Kosovo refugees in U.S. begin meeting their new communities

by James Solheim and Kathryn McCormick

(ENS) The Kosovo refugees who arrived at Ft. Dix in 
New Jersey recently have undergone batteries of medical and 
background checks and they have received a short introduction to 
American life. Three families have taken the next giant step into 
their new lives: They left Ft. Dix for new homes in Sarasota, 
Florida; Boise, Idaho; and Seattle. 

Since then, other families have also traveled to new 
homes as the refugees' welcome to the U.S. begins its next phase, 
actual resettlement in American communities.

Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM), one of 10 
agencies working with the U.S. government in the resettlement 
process, is playing a key role, said its director Richard 
Parkins, noting that two of the first three families to leave Ft. 
Dix were placed in new homes through EMM affiliates in the 
Diocese of Idaho and the Diocese of Southwest Florida.

These families, like most of the families at Ft. Dix, 
are "free" cases, meaning that they do not have relatives living 
in the U.S., he said. EMM already has reunited families in 
Waterbury, Connecticut; Austin, Texas; Detroit, and Miami.
Settling in Detroit

"Things are swinging," Saundra Richardson, a diocesan-
based affiliate of EMM in Detroit, reported in a recent  e-mail 
to Migration Ministries' office in New York. Richardson, an 
Episcopal priest, went on to report that her network was 
preparing to receive a number of Albanian families.

The Ford Motor Company has offered warehouse space for 
donations of new furniture for the families; a furniture company 
already has said it will provide 200 mattresses, bed springs and 
bed frames, plus tables and chairs, she said. The families will 
be given vouchers to shop at the warehouse. A local school has 
collected clothing and food, she noted, and people are donating 
gift certificates to be used in local stores.

Richardson also said that volunteers have come forward 
to help with the coordination of sponsors, families, community 
groups and agencies and school, work and housing arrangements.

"People want to be involved now," she said, adding 
that many volunteers had not known before that the Episcopal 
Church is involved in refugee work.

Parkins said that while the work is hard, EMM has been 
able to rely on years of experience to quickly find and assess 
sites for resettlement--places that have a workable combination 
of good housing, jobs that can support families, and communities 
that share the refugees' culture. For the Kosovo refugees, an 
Islamic support system will be very important, he said.

"We have studied this through the years," he said, 
"and EMM is not unmindful that we're not the only kids on the 
block doing this. We work with other agencies, such as the U.S. 
Catholic Conference, to do the best we can for each family." 
Together, the agencies will resettle an estimated 70,000 to 
80,000 refugees this year, plus the 20,000 Kosovars that are to 
be brought to the U.S., he said.

At the moment, he added, his office and its 38 
affiliates across the country are "certainly working flat-out to 
respond to the Kosovo crisis."

He marveled at the support that the resettlement 
effort has received from the church and from communities. "I'm 
under no illusion that we're doing this alone," he said. "This is 
a partnership of agencies, of the government and of many people 
across the church." (See Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold's own 
recent update on the church's response to the Kosovo crisis in 
News Features.)

Part of that support is coming specifically from the 
Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief, which has sent $120,000 
to Action by Churches Together (ACT), a relief organization 
working in the refugee camps in countries adjacent to Kosovo.

The fund also plans to contribute to the resettlement 
effort in the U.S., said Sandra Swan, director of the fund, who 
added that the response by people in the church to the Kosovars' 
plight continues to be strong.

Hillary Clinton reports on trip

First Lady Hillary Clinton publicly thanked churches 
and other non-governmental agencies for their relief work in the 
Balkans, especially their "commitment, compassion and resources" 
in meeting the needs of the refugees pouring out of Kosovo. 
"Their stories must be told--and never forgotten," she said at a 
press briefing in Washington May 18, shortly after she returned 
from a visit to refugees in Macedonia. She also met some of the 
first refugees to be brought to the United States at Ft. Dix, New 
Jersey, admitting that she found it difficult to listen to their 
stories. Referring to media coverage of their plight, Clinton 
said that those "haunting images remind us of what's at stake." 

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX), who accompanied 
Clinton and other Congressional leaders on the visit to six 
countries in the area, said that church agencies like Catholic 
Relief Services are doing "a superb job." In one camp she found 
Muslim refugees being helped by Roman Catholics assisted by 
Israeli Jews. "This is the very best in us--coming together to 
help people in crisis." She said that she found it appropriate 
for the United States, a nation of immigrants, to reach out and 
help other immigrants.

Although he found the trip "emotionally draining," 
Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) said that the delegation made it 
clear to the refugees that "one day you will be able to go back 
and reestablish your lives." He added that it is "critically 
important for the United States, as the leading world power," to 
stop oppression and brutality. 

The church agencies represent "the compassionate hands 
of the American people," said Ken Hackett of Catholic Relief 
Services. "We are facing an exceptionally difficult reality," he 
said, and a race to resolve the situation before winter sets in. 

In an interview, Julia Taft of the State Department, 
who was part of the delegation, said that the logistical problems 
are immense. There are too many refugees on the Albanian border, 
for example, and the water and sanitation problems in the camps 
are very serious. Yet she said that "the lucky ones" got out of 
Kosovo, leaving hundreds of thousands still trapped in the 
province without any support.

She shared concern about resettlement before winter 
but said that relief agencies are doing everything they can to 
move people to host families so they are not trapped in the 
camps. The United States will subsidize host families in Albania 
in an effort to relieve economic pressures. While the struggle 
for a political settlement continues, Taft is deeply concerned 
that "nobody has a good picture" of what is happening in Kosovo 
itself. "When we get in we may see killing fields," she said.

--James Solheim is director and Kathryn McCormick is 
associate director of the Office of News and Information of the 
Episcopal Church.