On Tuesday, April 30, Chris George, the former Executive Director at Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS), shared some of his many stories and experiences welcoming new refugees and being a member of the Peace Corps.
Mr. George provided the entire school with a truthful, real-life representation of how rigorous and sometimes unfair the resettlement process can be in the United States.
IRIS is a nonprofit agency with locations in New Haven and Hartford that is dedicated to bringing refugees around the world to Connecticut and helping them become self-sufficient members of our very own communities. Over his time at IRIS, he turned the eight-person team with only a $500,000 budget into a full scale operation with a full-time staff of over 200 people and a budget well over $10 million.
Mr. George started out the assembly by telling a little bit about himself. After graduating college in 1977, he decided that he wanted to see the world, so he joined the Peace Corps. He spent 12 years working for the Peace Corps in the Middle East, living in places such as Lebanon and the West Bank.
Spending so much time in and out of refugee camps all across the East inspired Mr. George to go into refugee reintegration when he returned home to the United States. “I remember visiting the camps where they had lost so much and had so little; it was the most amazing hospitality that the refugees showed me,” Mr. George said.
He went on to share his experiences in these refugee camps. “They knew that I was coming from the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world and the most important thing to them was to show me hospitality,” he said. “They would put on a pot of water or rustle up their last bit of food to serve me. They would grab what little money they had and send their oldest son down the street to get a package of cookies to serve to me.”
After this, he took a deep dive into the definition of a refugee and who qualifies as one to be eligible to seek refugee status under the United Nations. What defines someone as a refugee is someone who has been forced to flee conflict or persecution and has crossed an international border to seek safety.
In his presentation, Mr. George explained that the Department of State is only interested in families that are the most vulnerable and in need, not those that are the smartest, those who speak the best English, or those who have visited the United States. He explained that while some countries try to cherry pick some of the smartest, or wealthiest families from the refugee camps, the United States is determined to help the most vulnerable.
For the remaining time of the assembly, Mr. George conducted a real life walkthrough of what truly happens at refugee camps across the world. Using students as volunteers, he retold the story of a real Syrian family: Salwa, Abdullah, and Fatima. He explained their experiences with the rigorous background checks and the in-depth integration services of the U.S. in a powerful and moving story.
Mr. George explained that after Abdullah’s bakery had been bombed, with other tragedies causing them fear for their lives, they fled to the Zaatari refugee camp just over the southern border in Jordan. After being interrogated for years and questioned to tears and thoughts that they would never get to come to the United States, they were accepted.
This is when Mr. George’s work came in. The policy of IRIS when the refugees first arrive is to give them an accurate, cultural meal from wherever they are from. From there, the integration process begins. However, Mr. George explained that acclimation to refugees’ new lives in the U.S. is often difficult. He stated that when families settle into their new lives, oftentimes they have to accept low-paying, unskilled jobs despite them sometimes having been high level doctors or professors in their home countries.
Finally, Mr. George touched on the idea that taking in refugees is something that our country must never stop doing; after all, we are supposedly the land of the free and the home of the brave. “The Statue of Liberty is the symbol of this great tradition,” he said. “And as far as I know, the Statue of Liberty still stands and will stand for that great message we project to the world. This country will always welcome refugees.”
