Show links:
Global Refuge
Lutheran Community Services NW
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MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. There are many groups that are being targeted by the Trump administration, but perhaps no group is more exposed than refugees. Yet whether fleeing Civil War, running from gangs and crime bosses, or just trying to improve their lives. Many refugees still believe in what the Statue of Liberty says about tired, poor and huddled masses. But right now, in America, many of the doorways traditionally open to refugees are swinging closed. Today on the show, you'll hear from both a national organization and a local one that are doing everything they can to help refugees settle into America, even as the federal government publicly says they don't want them. It's a high stakes game of conflict, and the losers of the game could literally lose everything. Global Refuge and Lutheran Community Services Northwest collaborate on one of the biggest challenges facing organizations today, how to help the thousands of refugees trying to settle in America and the northwest, while the federal government is trying to stop them. Krish VignaRajah, she is the president and CEO of Global Refuge, and Dave Duea, the CEO of Lutheran Community Services Northwest, Thank you both for coming on and talking with us.
KRISH VIGNARAJAH: Michael, thanks so much for having us.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Krish, I'm going to start with you. Why don't you tell our audience what Global Refuge is and what you do?
KRISH VIGNARAJAH: Sure, I really appreciate that question. So, we've been around for a long time. Were founded in 1939 so we've been doing this work for over 85 years now, and our mission is to walk alongside newcomers, integrate them into communities, help them reach self-sufficiency as they build their lives here in America, obviously, that mission has been challenged in recent months. You know, I think even when you ask what we do, let's hope that it doesn't change. But certainly, I'll say that as one of the 10 national nonprofits that traditionally worked with the federal government to resettle refugees, what that meant was we would meet them, working alongside our local affiliates at the airport, secure initial housing, work with community volunteers to furnish them with basic necessities, culturally familiar foods. Unfortunately, since January 20, the US Refugee Admissions Program has been essentially dismantled, and we're seeing virtually no new refugees enter the country. We have been so grateful to Dave and you know a few other plaintiffs in their leadership in challenging through a lawsuit, the pause on refugee resettlement. We also work with unaccompanied kids who make the journey to the US by themselves. And that work, thankfully continues today, and much of the work that we do is in partnership with it, with a network of affiliates here in Oregon that is Lutheran Community Services Northwest. And you know, maybe that's where Dave can jump in a little bit?
MICHAEL DUNNE: Dave, why don't you tell us what Lutheran Community Services Northwest does, and kind of the same question, what you do and how you do it?
DAVE DUEA: Yeah, I appreciate the question. We are a Northwest organization. So, we serve Oregon, Washington and Idaho. We do several things, including refugee resettlement and Immigrant services, as well as early childhood development, mental health, work with seniors, work with crime victims, amongst other activities, and another thing that we've just introduced into our array of services through compass housing is affordable housing and shelter services. We've been around for over 100 years, and we're proud to serve everyone. Everyone is welcome in our over 100 years, but in the last, last several decades, we have welcomed 50,000 over 50,000 refugees into the Pacific Northwest, and now they are great contributors to our communities, including two of them who we resettled are now on our board of directors.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Krish, I'm going to go to you. In reading your bio, I understand you were in the Obama administration. Talk about the juxtaposition between, perhaps, what our refugee policy was under previous administrations compared to now.
KRISH VIGNARAJAH: I think that historical perspective is so important. So, I served as Michelle Obama's policy director at the White House. You know, I had some exposure to working on these issues because of programs like Let Girls Learn that we launched, but also, I was a senior advisor at the State Department. And refugee resettlement has always been a long-standing bipartisan program. We've resettled as many refugees under Democratic administrations as Republican ones, and unfortunately, a lot has changed in the last few months. So, on January 20, the administration issued an executive order suspending the refugee admissions program so refugees who had already passed extensive background checks, who had received travel clearance, had their flights canceled, including thousands who were just days away from departure, and many of whom were poised to reunite with family members already in the US. And these are some families who had waited years, if not decades. So, four days later, the State Department issued a stop work order, which effectively halted the ability to serve refugees who are already here in the US, and since then, multiple court rulings have made clear that refugees who were conditionally approved before the suspension must be admitted. You know, obviously the legal cases you see this in a range of areas are working their way through the court system, but we do hope that we will see a resumption of a program that has always been a lifeline in terms of other pathways for immigration. The administration has revoked protections for many families who are legally in the US through humanitarian parole programs. So that is a set of programs that provided safe and legal entry for individuals fleeing crises in countries ranging from Ukraine, Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba, they've also moved to terminate the temporary protected status of individuals who are, again, already here in the United States. These are individuals, families who receive the status because their home countries are experiencing war, natural disaster, and other extreme conditions. So, countries like Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Venezuela. And so, while there have been legal challenges to both of these actions, you know, we hear on a weekly, if not daily basis, from families where uncertainty looms, and it's obviously created a lot of anxiety and fear. And then finally, in terms of asylum access at the border, there have been a flurry of executive orders that declared the situation at the southern border and invasion, deployed military personnel, suspended the physical entry of most migrants from the southern border, and then, of course, in the news every day. You know, I know so many outlets are covering them.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Dave, I want to go to you, because perhaps picking up on what Krish just said. How do you see this sort of permeating down to a more local level and the northwest of which you have optics on?
DAVE DUEA: Yeah, I appreciate that. When the stop work order came about, we responded a couple of ways. We were invited into a lawsuit that we are participating in. We are the only regional plaintiff in the lawsuit and the other thing that has happened is back to what Krish mentioned. We had 49 refugees booked on flights for the month of February that, at the last minute, were canceled. I even have a board member that I mentioned before - one of our board members has a friend that he grew up with in the refugee camp, and it was finally scheduled to come over, and then, of course, when the stop work order and flights were canceled, they were left in limbo and still in a very dangerous situation. So, we're feeling it, not only for our staff. But of course, our clients, and you know, going back to the lawsuit we've had, as Chris mentioned, we had some victories. The law has been on our side. What the President has done is canceled something that the Congress authorized and the judge has ruled he did not have authorization to cancel. Not only that, they canceled our contracts and stopped paying us for work that we've already done. Now the lawsuit we've had several, I would say victories. Sometimes I say moral victories, but we're not doing this for moral victories. As Krish mentioned, there are people that are waiting, that have waited years to legally come into this country.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Krish, I want to go to you. Is there a particular group that's the hardest hit, or is it really kind of spread out throughout every single refugee population?
KRISH VIGNARAJAH: The President's campaign rhetoric was almost entirely focused on illegal immigration, and yet most of the changes we've been talking about have been changes to lawful pathways and protections. And so, when we talk about the impact, it has been sweeping to affect people who have followed legal pathways, often waited patiently for years, who are now left with no options. You know, we have thousands of vulnerable families, many fleeing persecution and violence, who've been left in limbo. You know, obviously I've touched on some of the kind of demographics of refugees, those here in the US who had temporary protected status or humanitarian parole we are seeing, you know, international students who have been impacted. And I just think that, you know, it is really sweeping, you know, essentially that system of order is being entirely dismantled. And so that's why I think the impact has been so sweeping.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Dave, I want to go to you because I have talked to a lot of different people on all sorts of aspects of how, sometimes the word whipsaw seems to come up a lot, in terms of how quickly things changed. When the Trump administration came to power. And I kind of wanted to ask you in terms of just the speed with which the executive orders were flying and the ways that policies were changing. What was it like working for, for an organization such as yours?
DAVE DUEA: Just the back and forth is a good term. I mean, we were, we weren’t prepared for this. Once we have the election results, what we weren't prepared for is the callous stop work order. As Chris mentioned, we had, we had about 160 refugees arrive within the 90 days of the inauguration, some within a couple of days of the inauguration, and to just say, Hey, don't serve them. Stop when they're legally in this country, they've gone through the most vetted way possible to enter the United States,
and it was, it was just a very cruel act, and it made us, all you know, very scared, frankly, about what's going to happen to these folks that put our trust in us And we made a commitment to on what's going to happen to these programs that have really benefited our economy, even if it's not, it's a very moral thing to do for the United States to welcome these folks. But if you just care about economics, the economics are astounding with them being contributing members. I'll go back to our two board members, because they're very safe examples and give me permission to tell their stories. One is an intern, I mean, an engineer at Intel, and is doing great work at Intel, a Northwest company, and the other went back to seminary and is a Lutheran pastor at a church in Oregon. And that is the normal story, the normal refugee story. So, the whiplash, the how we felt back and forth, you know, there is the shock and awe trying to distract us, and so we're just trying to remain focused on the work that we're doing serving the communities. And I got to give a shout out to our donors and our board and our partners like global refuge. Everyone has been very brave. Everyone has been very committed to this population. These are brothers and sisters, and so we want to serve them in any way we can.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Krish, you have more optics, nationally. I wonder how communities, how are they impacted by, by what's happening right now, the communities in the United States, that you know were perhaps welcoming of refugee communities, but now they aren’t coming here.
KRISH VIGNARAJAH: I think that is such an important question, because I do think it highlights sort of the two sides to this coin. I know that kind of the work of welcome is often viewed as charity, but I think we need to be clear that we get as much, if not more, than we give, and we hear that all the time from the communities that support this work of welcome, whether it's congregations who view this as part of their right of religious freedom, who, you know, whether it's a Lutheran congregation or a Jewish one, or a Muslim one, or community based groups who do this for secular reasons, because they believe that this is who we are as a nation. It also has a massive impact on businesses, right? When you make the decision, and it's a desperate one, but when you make the decision to uproot, go to a place halfway around the world where you oftentimes have no connections whatsoever, and you plant down roots, frankly, there's kind of an entrepreneurial spirit. There’s a willingness to take a risk that often means that these are people who they fill jobs that would otherwise go unfilled. You know, I think the great examples that Dave gave you show how they fall into the range of the skill spectrum. It's not surprising that nearly half of the Fortune 500 companies have been founded by an immigrant or their children. And so, when we talk about a strong economy, when we talk about, you know, remaining the greatest nation in the world, when we talk about national security conflicts, Ukraine, Afghanistan, part of the immigration response has been to serve Afghan allies, for example, and national security officials are the ones who are the most vocal to say, look, God forbid we fight that 21st century war. We don't win without the support of local allies. And so, if we turn our back on people who we made a pledge to, what it means is that America's word means nothing, and I think that that's a very precarious future. You know, I talk sometimes about my personal story of I wasn't a refugee in the technical sense, but my family came from Sri Lanka when I was nine months old, and I know my daughter's lives will be easier because my parents’ lives were hard. And to me, that's the American dream. And so, I think that there are communities all across the country where, if you put the rhetoric aside, they still so strongly believe in this work.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Dave, especially here locally, what can average citizens do to help an organization such as yours in this cause?
DAVE DUEA: There's several things they can do. One, and we're seeing our donors respond in a very supportive way. They want to help. And sometimes that's your pocketbook. Sometimes what they can do is call their local legislation. I was just in DC last week and calling your legislator's works. I mean, they're getting inundated with calls for protections of Medicaid, but the refugee immigrant story is still strong, and so there's a lot of support for that. So that's one thing they can do. Also, just, frankly, get informed. We've had 12 SIVs walk into our doors. Siv stands for Special Immigrant Visas, and those are the folks that have served for the most part our military, and they have found legal ways to get here. We made a promise as a government to bring them here, but that promise was broken, and so they have found their way here, and they come to us for support, and our community has really rallied around supporting them.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Krish, perhaps the last question is for you, and maybe just in 30 seconds or a minute, you know, what gives you optimism going forward, these are dark times, but what gives you optimism?
KRISH VIGNARAJAH: Yeah, that is definitely a hard question to answer. Depending on the day, but I think what gives me hope is just having the blessing of working day to day in this. And what I think both Dave and I have described is very much what I see continually, which is that there is still the generosity of the American spirit. This is who we are as a nation. And I know that when you kind of turn off the TV, tune out social media, there is such a strong commitment.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Krish VignaRajah, the President and CEO of Global Refuge, and Dave Duea, the CEO of Lutheran Community Services Northwest, really appreciate both of you coming on and chatting with us.
DAVE DUEA: Thanks for this great conversation.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the record are available as a podcast at klcc.org. Tomorrow on the show, you'll meet the new managing director of the Hult center and hear her vision for the region's signature Performance Center. I'm Michael Dunne, and this has been Oregon on the record from KLCC. Thanks for listening.
