Garrison Keillor is considered by many to be a quintessential Minnesotan. His 37-year-old, popular and award-winning radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion,” and the majority of his books humorously and poignantly depict life in small-town Minnesota. Many of Keillor’s stories focus on church, particularly the Lutheran Church, and its importance in the lives of his characters. His work highlights the idiosyncrasies of Minnesotan life, emphasising the particular in order to appeal to
258 Garrison Keillor, “Laying on Our Backs, Looking Up at the Stars,” in Newsweek, (4 July 1998) as
cited in The Minneapolis Foundation, Immigration in Minnesota: Minnesota, Nice or Not (Minneapolis, 2000), 2.
259 Church World Service, Immigration and Refugee Program, “Empathy, Listening Mark Vivi
shared experience. Keillor opens up the lives of his characters for his listeners through the telling of personal and localised stories with which they can relate.
The quotation cited above appeals to its reader to recognise the particular and personal in the faces of immigrants and refugees. During such times when
immigration reform in the U.S. appears to be regressing toward a McCarthy-era state of fear and suspicion and people’s attitudes toward the immigrant and the refugee have become flagrantly bigoted and xenophobic, Keillor’s words affect to tell a story of what it means to leave one’s country. He attempts to break through common misconceptions regarding the motives of migration and describe the all-too-painful process of becoming a stranger, whatever that motivation is: leaving the familiar, having to relearn how things work, how to speak, becoming less human in the perceptions of others. Keillor promises us that if we listen to the stories of migrants, we will share in their grief, their despair, their loss.
Minnesota is probably not the first place one considers when exploring issues concerning immigration and refugees in the United States. Locations such as
California, Florida and New York would appear to be more suitable for such a study. But Minnesota has long been a state of immigrants. In 1910, 29% of the state’s population were immigrants, amounting to 550,000 persons.260 In the year 2000, that number has decreased to approximately 260,000 persons, or 5.4% of the state.261 While this represents a decrease in the population, from the years 1990 to 2000, the population of immigrants more than doubled, from 110,000 to 240,000, signifying a resurgence in migration to the state.262
260 League of Women Voters, Immigration in Minnesota: Challenges and Opportunities (St. Paul:
League of Women Voters of Minnesota Education Fund, 2000,) 1.
261 Ibid. 262 Ibid.
Even more compelling is Minnesota’s history concerning refugees. According to the Department for Homeland Security (DHS), Minnesota admits the second-largest number of refugees for resettlement in the U.S. of any state.263 In the years 2004 and 2005 the percentage of refugees arriving in the U.S. that resettled in Minnesota totalled 11.2% and 11.8% respectively.264 The total number of arriving refugees that resettled in Minnesota for those years is 12,289.265 The Minnesota State
Demographic Centre estimates that for the year 2004, the most prominent refugee populations in Minnesota totalled over 140,500.266
This total represents a figure significantly higher than the number of refugees who were originally resettled in the state. Many of these refugees arrived for resettlement in the U.S. via other states, having flown directly from refugee camps and locations of displacement to their DHS-sanctioned destination. Then, after some time of
adjustment, these individuals and families moved to Minnesota to be near friends, family, or members of their particular ethnic community. This phenomenon is referred to as secondary migration.267
263 U.S. Department for Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, Annual Report: Refugees and Asylees, 2005, prepared by Kelly Jefferys (Washington DC, May 2006), 2.
264 DHS, Office of Immigration Statistics, Annual Report: Refugees and Asylees, 2005, 2. 265 Ibid.
266 Accounting for refugee totals is an extremely complex exercise. Several questions must be
considered when approaching this task, the predominant being, when is a refugee no longer considered a refugee? This question can be answered in a variety of ways, such as when the person is no longer eligible for refugee benefits, when the refugee becomes a citizen or is eligible to become a citizen. There are also considerations concerning refugee children. A child born in the U.S from legally migrated parents is considered a citizen. If the child has two Liberian refugee parents, would this child be counted as a refugee? The Minnesota State Demographic Office utilizes a combination of age- based multipliers and particular adjustments to arrive at their total. The Minnesota Department for Health and Family Services estimates that for the year 2006 over 70,500 refugees residing in Minnesota were eligible for refugee benefits. See, Minnesota Department of Human Services, “Refugee Assistance,” 2006,
<http://www.dhs.state.mn.us/main/groups/economic_support/documents/pub/dhs_id_004115.hcsp> as cited in Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, Fact Sheet: Immigration in Minnesota, (Minneapolis, 2006). For further discussion regarding the complexity of accounting for refugees with special reference to recent welfare reform in the U.S., see Miriam Potocky-Tripodi, Best Practices for Social Work with Refugees and Immigrants (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 74-96.
267 The phenomenon of secondary migration is significantly responsible for the difficulty of accurately
accounting for where refugee populations permanently settle. If not for this occurrence, DHS records would provide the material necessary for tracking refugee populations with respect to their original resettlement location. But because refugees often move across state boundaries, this information must be correlated with both U.S. and state census records and those of other governmental agencies such as federal and state welfare departments.
Just as particular locations within a nation, state, city or town become associated with particular groups of people, so it is with refugees. For example, Minnesota is generally thought to be associated with Scandinavia, Germany and Ireland as many of the immigrants from the 1800s—1900s originated from those locations.268 In
contrast, San Francisco is often associated with east Asian populations such as the Japanese and Chinese. In Chicago, various immigrant groups have gathered and settled into distinct neighbourhoods bearing such appellations as Chinatown, Little Italy, the Ukranian Village, and Greektown.
In the same way, Minnesota has now become associated with several different refugee communities. These communities have developed and become established over time and have changed over the years according to global refugee trends and U.S. refugee policy. As of 2004, the largest major refugee communities in Minnesota were estimated at:269
Hmong 60,000
Vietnamese 25,000
Somali 20,000 - 50,000270
Laotian 13,000
Former Soviet Republics 12,500
Ethiopian 7,500
Cambodian 7,500
These communities differ in many respects. Many of the Southeast Asian people, including the Hmong, Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian, have been resettling in Minnesota since the 1970s while Somali people have only been arriving in the U.S. since the mid-1990s. Minnesota is host to the largest urban Hmong population in the
268 It must be noted that Minnesota also remains highly associated with the Ojibwe and Dakota people
who these immigrants originally displaced.
269 Minnesota State Demographic Center, Estimates of Selected Immigrant Populations in Minnesota: 2004, prepared by Barbara J. Ronningen (St. Paul, June 2004), 6.
270It should be noted that the estimation concerning the Somali population ranges from a conservative
world, including Asia.271 However, the majority of Hmong people in Minnesota are not immigrants, rather they are second and third generation citizens.272 The Somali population in Minnesota is the largest in the United States.273 In their report,
Immigration in Minnesota, the League of Women Voters quotes a Somali woman, Hawa Aden, as saying, "You ask anyone in Somalia or in the refugee camps, and they all know Minnesota!"274 While many refugees from Southeast Asia now own their own homes and run their own businesses, Somali people are first-generation immigrants who have only been in the U.S. for a decade and are just beginning to settle in to life in Minnesota.
Refugees from Africa are, on the whole, a recent phenomenon in U.S.
resettlement history. From 1993 through 1998, the U.S. accepted anywhere from 4,770 to 6,969 refugees per year from the entire African continent for resettlement. This number peaked in 2004 at 29,125.275 While these figures represent an
exceptionally small percentage of the total number of refugees in Africa, a number that is consistently in the millions, the Presidential Determination ceiling has held at approximately 20,000 since the year 2000.276 This can be read as a small but positive sign of commitment toward the alleviation of Africa’s refugee crisis. The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants estimates that by the end of the year 2005, of the approximately 2,884,500 refugees in Africa, 2,262,000 have lived as refugees for at least ten years or more.277 With the conflicts, civil wars and turmoil around the
271 Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, Fact Sheet: Immigration in Minnesota (Minneapolis,
2006), 2; The Minneapolis Foundation, Immigration in Minnesota: Discovering Common Ground (Minneapolis, October 2004), 12; League of Women Voters, Forward.
272 The Minneapolis Foundation, Immigration in Minnesota: Discovering Common Ground, 12. 273 League of Women Voters, 10.
274 Ibid.
275 USCRI, “Regional Refugee Ceilings and Admissions to the United States, FY 1993-2006,” in Refugee Reports, vol. 27 no. 1 (Washington DC: USCRI, February 2006), 15.
276 Ibid.
277 For figures see, USCRI, “Table 8, Principle Sources of Refugees as of December 2005,” in World Refugee Survey 2006 (Washington DC: USCRI, 2006), 11; and USCRI, “Table 7, Warehoused Refugee Populations as of Refugee Populations,” in World Refugee Survey 2006 (Washington DC: USCRI, 2006), 10.
continent showing no signs of abating, the need for resettlement of Africans may prove to be the only durable solution available for years to come.
Minnesota has become a home for many African refugees. According to the 2000 census, 13% of Minnesota’s immigrant residents were from Africa, this being the highest percentage of any state in the U.S.278 Along with the burgeoning Somali population, the state is home to refugees from other African countries as well, including Ethiopia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Rwanda, Congo-Kinshasa, and Togo. Minnesota also lays claim to hosting the largest community of Oromo people outside Ethiopia, the Oromo being one of the longest-standing African communities in the state.279 The presence of these communities affects the flow of Africans who are resettled in the state. While refugees are not able to choose where they are to be resettled, national and local agencies attempt to place them in areas where there exist communities of the same ethnic background in order ease the process of
acculturation.280
Refugee resettlement tends to occur in waves. Refugees from particular areas of conflict are likely to be resettled around the same time, such as the large influx of Vietnamese after the end of the Vietnam War or of people from the former Yugoslavia during and shortly after the Balkan conflict. These periods of
resettlement reach a certain peak and then tend to taper off. The Hmong people have an established community in Minnesota’s capital, St. Paul. They have been settling there since the 1970s and many now own their own homes and businesses. The Balkan people have had a relatively easier time adjusting to life in Minnesota, parts of which are even said to resemble Bosnia and Serbia. This could be due to a number of
278 Minneapolis Foundation, 10.
factors: greater familiarity with western culture, greater exposure to the English language and vocations that have translatable correlations in the U.S. African refugees are relative newcomers to Minnesota. It remains unclear how well they are adapting, though signs look promising. It is certain that several communities of Africans have chosen to remain in Minnesota and that via secondary migration these communities are growing.
All of these refugees have come to Minnesota to begin a new life. They have been forced from their homes and have had to flee for their lives. They have probably lived long enough in a refugee camp or settlement to know that being resettled means both that there is no hope for a peaceful life in their home country and that they will likely never see that home again. They arrive in Minnesota to begin again in a place that is famous for its long and bitter winters. Many of these refugees have little or no idea what is in store for them after they arrive. Many look with expectation toward a life lived in relative safety, only to find that the neighbourhoods where they can afford housing tend to have higher crime rates. Many hope to continue an education that was cut short by conflict or to begin a degree, only to find that the U.S. government expects them to find employment immediately. If they have an advanced degree, such as in medicine or law, they find that their degree or training is not recognised in the U.S. and they must take entry-level jobs for little pay. Many refugees do not or cannot anticipate how difficult the road that lies ahead of them will be.
One thing all refugees can be sure of is assistance, from the government, the agency that resettled them and their sponsors. The U.S. government provides
monetary and programmatic assistance via VOLAGs, local resettlement agencies and limited public benefits. Local agencies offer refugees case management services, an
280 Erin Patrick, “The U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program,” in Migration Information Source
orientation to American culture and help securing employment. While all of these participants are necessary to the resettlement process, a refugee’s most significant support is often provided by church sponsors. Through experience with the
resettlement of Vietnamese and Southeast Asians after the Vietnam War, the USRP recognised that while a certain level of material and monetary assistance is necessary for refugees to begin a new life, what makes the resettlement process successful is the presence of sponsors, particularly church sponsors.281
This thesis is ultimately concerned with the topic of hospitality as experienced in the context of church sponsorship with refugees. For the purposes of this study, I have chosen to conduct a series of interviews with three congregations in Minnesota that have sponsored three separate African refugee families for resettlement. The focus of the research is the congregations’ experiences, not the experiences of the refugees. The objective of this chapter is to introduce the subjects of this study, provide a context for their experiences, and explain the various factors considered when determining the parameters for the case studies. First, I will introduce the three refugee families that were sponsored by these congregations. Within the limited parameters set by the Minnesota Council of Churches (MCC) for this research, I will briefly describe the histories of several protracted conflicts across Africa, discuss what happens while refugees wait for resettlement, and give brief descriptions of the families resettled. 282 Then I will introduce the churches with whom I conducted
<http://www.migrationinformation.org/USfocus/display.cfm?id=229#8>.
281 Interview with Joel Luedtke, Director of Refugee Services, 12 November, 2003. As mentioned
previously, sponsors are groups and individuals committed to assuring that refugees arriving into the U.S. are welcomed into a community which will provide them with as much assistance as they need to begin their new lives. They can be both family members already living in the U.S. or a committed group of people, typically a church, or combination of both, depending on the needs of the refugee family.
282 According to an agreement with the Minnesota Council of Churches Refugee Services Program, I
was granted access to their constituent churches and Refugee Services case files but can not reveal the following in the presentation of this thesis: the refugees’ names or identifying characteristics of their identities, any reference to their home countries or regions of Africa they came from or what parts of the Twin Cities metro area they came to live. Likewise, names of the congregations and church
interviews. I will describe the churches’ roles and responsibilities in the process of resettlement and how I chose the three congregations that constitute the case studies for this research. Finally, I will introduce the churches themselves, providing brief descriptions of the congregations and of the three persons from each church that I interviewed.