Catholic Social Services resettled around 150 refugees in Nebraska last year. / Photo by Tiago Zenero de Souza

By Tiago Zenero de Souza

When it was founded in 1932 by Bishop Louis Kucera, Catholic Social Services had a simple goal: To help people suffering the effects of the Great Depression.

After 80 years, the institution has helped many people, these days especially refugees. Catholic Social Services resettled around 150 refugees in Nebraska last year. The agency receives two or three families a month from Burma, Iraq and sometimes Africa.

Catholic dioceses across the country receive refugee cases from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Katie Hile, refugee case aide from Catholic Social Services of Southern Nebraska in Lincoln, said the organization does not accept so-called “free” cases, meaning that refugees resettling in Lincoln must have friends or relatives already established here.

When refugees leave their home country, they generally first stay in a host country. The host country hopes to convince them to return home, but many times the refugees were persecuted and are reluctant to return. They need to be resettled somewhere else, and this process can take years.

When refugees finally move to the U.S. through Catholic Social Services, the agency receives a notice two or three weeks in advance, so they can provide housing, utilities, furniture, cookware, towels and so on.

“And we provide them with food for at least a week,” Hile said.

When they arrive, the refugees already have everything they need to get settled. The items the refugees receive are donated. Most donations come from Catholics, though anyone can donate items. Donors, however, don’t know specifically whom they are helping.

Zac Stuart is Catholic, for example, and he said he always gives to the church and also donates to Catholic Social Services. He knows the agency helps poor communities but not exactly which ones. Neither does fellow contributor Anne Jackson, who said: “I trust the Catholic Social Services. They will invest the money in a good cause.”

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Iraqi refugee Raeed Khadida, here with his son, worked as a translator for the U.S. Army. / Photo by Tiago Zenero de Souza

Catholic Social Services helped bring Raeed Khadida, an Iraqi, to Lincoln, along with his wife and two children.

In 2003, the U.S. Army entered Iraq. “Some people call it invasion,” Khadida said. “I call it liberation.” He spoke English, and he went to work for the U.S. Army as a translator.

At the time, he said, Iraqis had no reliable electricity, no safe water to drink, and they weren’t free.

“Living there,” he said, “was like a prison.”

Non-Muslim minorities in Iraq, such as Yezidis, Sabeans and Christians, had an especially difficult time, facing persecution, kidnappings and killings daily.

Khadida has found Lincoln to be a great place to live and the perfect spot to raise their children, in some ways he expected more.

“Honestly, we interpreters expected U.S. government to offer more support than basic benefits that refugees obtain monthly, after those long years service in the battlefield with U.S. military confronting death every time we were out on military task or reconnaissance.

“I have risked and sacrificed everything I had.”

Khadida worked for the U.S. Army for seven years, eventually being viewed as a traitor by his fellow Iraqis. He was threatened and persecuted. So he applied for a special immigrant visa for Army interpreters. But instead of granting him citizenship, he said, he was given a green card.

“I see that as tiny privilege and not adequate entitlement.”

Many refugees arrive without Khadida’s English language abilities.

Eh Paw, a Christian from Burma, said he had been persecuted in Burma. He lost his leg when he stepped on a mine. / Photo by Tiago Zenero de Souza

Eh Paw, a refugee from Burma, has been living in Lincoln since December. He speaks no English and needs an interpreter to communicate.

Paw is Christian, and he said he felt persecuted by Burma’s military government.

In 1987, when he was escaping from the Burmese Army, he stepped on a mine in a refugee camp on the border between Burma and Thailand and lost his left leg. Eh Paw’s injury has made working difficult. He is trying to raise his seven children on his own, since his wife has passed away.

The chance to better educate his children brought Eh Paw to the U.S.

“I came here for my children to have the opportunity to go to school,” he said through an interpreter. He didn’t have the chance to study himself when he was in Burma.

Paw had relatives in Lincoln, and Catholic Social Services provided him with some furniture, a rice maker and an apartment, where he lives with his children. But he hasn’t found a job yet, in large part because of his injury. He is willing to work with any light job that he can find here.

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Refugees resettled in Lincoln by Catholic Social Services receive some help for the first eight months. They participate in employment programs, which will help them, one by one, to find work. Most often they are hired to work in factories or in food processing plants, as cooks or fast food workers, usually not jobs they had back home.

“I would say that the biggest obstacle the refugees have,” Hile said, “is transferring their work skills either from their home country or their host country into this country where they were resettled.”

In many cases, she explained, the refugees don’t have a high school diploma, particularly women who have never received any sort of certification from their home country. To begin all over again, they need to learn English, and that takes time, especially if they have a large family and the mother is at home with the children all day.

The process of changing is very hard, Hile said, but “at the end of the day, they are really grateful to be here.”

Both Khadida and Eh Paw agree.

Only one thing would get Khadida to return to Iraq, he said.

“I would only return if my mom were sick or something happened to her that forced me go back. Otherwise I wouldn’t.”

As for Eh Paw: “Here I am free to go and leave without fear,” he said through an interpreter. “It is not like Burma. I like to live here.”