[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 20 (Monday, February 6, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S964-S966]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      REFUGEE FAMILIES IN VERMONT

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, since 1989, Vermont has accepted more than 
8,000 refugees from around the world. Most recently, two families from 
war-torn Syria were placed in Rutland.
  Vermonters understand the meaning of community, of supporting one 
another through tough times and celebrating together in seasons of joy. 
Over the last three decades, the meaning of community has expanded to 
include numerous nationalities as Vermonters have welcomed new 
neighbors from countries including Somalia, Sudan, and Bhutan, among 
others. Over the last 25 years, Vermont's growing diversity has infused 
vitality and a diversity of culture into our rural State as locals open 
their arms--and their hearts--to new cultures and ways of life. New 
Vermonters hail from the world over

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and are greeted in the Green Mountains by support groups and refugee 
associations. Some organizations aid new arrivals by offering workforce 
developments and translation services, while others host furniture and 
clothing drives. Many refugees are able to find jobs in Vermont's 
bustling tourism industry, as they work to save for future endeavors.
  These support networks expand as the same individuals who once relied 
on refugee organizations begin to offer guidance to others. For some, 
this means years of saving before opening restaurants or stores with 
food and products that feature their home countries. Others focus on 
engaging recently arrived refugees in the very communities that they 
were welcomed into. As their roots grow deeper and their communities 
wider, Vermont's cultural vibrancy increases.
  At the end of the day, however, these refugees have become part of 
the fabric of our communities. Vermont has become a home, if not their 
first home. In an article featured in POLITICO in November 2016, one 
refugee, Ramadan Bahic, a Bosnian Muslim who fled their Serb-controlled 
town during the Bosnian civil war said, ``My language is my language, 
my accent will stay, but if you ask me, I'm a Vermonter.''
  To Mr. Bahic and to those refugees recently settled in Vermont--or 
hope to do so in the future--I say welcome home.
  I ask unanimous consent that the text of a November 2016 POLITICO 
article, ``My Language is My language, But I'm a Vermonter,'' be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                     [From POLITICO, Nov. 17, 2016]

           `My Language Is My Language, But I'm a Vermonter'

       Vermont has accepted thousands of refugees over the years, 
     boosting the population and the economy. A debate over 
     accepting Syrians put the state to the test.

                           (By Erick Trickey)

       Burlington--Eight years ago, Som Timsina's family left a 
     refugee camp in Nepal and became one of the first Bhutanese 
     families to seek sanctuary in Vermont. Timsina drove the 
     Holiday Inn's shuttle on night shifts for three years as he 
     saved to open his own Asian grocery. Five years later, 
     Central Market has become a gathering place for the state's 
     growing population of ethnic Nepali from Bhutan, and its 
     kitchen dishes out Himalayan cuisine that gets raves from 
     locals on Yelp--tikka masala and biryani, plus Nepali momo 
     dumplings.
       Timsina, 38, works long, fast-paced days. In a 20 minute 
     chat in his store, he never takes off his black jacket or 
     takes the Bluetooth from his ear. Though business isn't as 
     strong as he'd like, and housing costs in Burlington are 
     high, Vermonters, he says, have offered a welcoming refuge 
     for him and his family--including his father, who was 
     tortured by authorities in Bhutan.
       ``They react good so far,'' he says of Vermonters. ``They 
     are helping us.''
       For decades now, Vermont has welcomed refugees from around 
     the world: more than 8,000 since 1989, just over 1 percent of 
     the small state's population. Vermonters have been almost 
     Canadian in their big-hearted welcome of the displaced and 
     persecuted, primarily from Somalia, Sudan, Central Africa, 
     Bhutan and Bosnia. They're generous donors of furniture and 
     household goods for new arrivals. They've taken Somali 
     refugees into their homes to help them adjust to American 
     life. And their schools have stepped up with English-language 
     classes for kids from abroad. In Vermont, refugee 
     resettlement has enjoyed near-unanimous support from state 
     and local political leaders, who see it as a way to add youth 
     and vigor to the largely rural state's declining population. 
     And for the most part their constituents have agreed. Until 
     this year.
       On April 26--the same day Donald Trump swept through seven 
     Republican primaries in the northeast--the mayor of Rutland, 
     southern Vermont's largest town, announced a plan to accept 
     up to 100 war refugees a year, beginning with Syrian 
     families. The reaction was swift. A volunteer group, Rutland 
     Welcomes, organized to prepare for the Syrians' arrival, and 
     at the same time a vocal group bent on halting the 
     resettlement, Rutland First, flooded meetings in the town of 
     16,000. The ensuing debate, which dragged on through the 
     summer, was a miniature version of the emotionally charged 
     argument that dominated so much of the presidential cycle. 
     But the way Rutland residents responded was quintessentially 
     Vermont: generous and pragmatic. In the end, most residents 
     saw that this was about more than the refugees' well-being. 
     It was about their own as well.
       A six-foot-tall teddy bear with a red bowtie rests on a 
     shelf in Vermont Bosna Cutting, Ramadan Bahic's fabric shop. 
     It's a photo op for every kid who visits the business, and a 
     symbol of how Bahic and his wife rebuilt their lives in the 
     Green Mountain State after fleeing Bosnia in 1993. Fashion 
     designers before the war, the Bahics now cut fabric for 
     clients that include the Vermont Teddy Bear Co.
       ``I can say I'm born here,'' says Bahic, 56, burly and 
     upbeat. ``My language is my language, my accent will stay, 
     but if you ask me, I'm a Vermonter.''
       Bahic and his family, all of them Bosnian Muslims, fled 
     their Serb-controlled town during the Bosnian civil war. ``My 
     father was beaten by Serbs,'' Bahic says. ``Both my parents, 
     they were almost killed. We were witnesses, so we were 
     supposed to be killed.'' The Red Cross evacuated them to a 
     refugee camp in Croatia, and after four months, they were 
     resettled in Burlington.
       Though Vermont isn't known for its diversity--whites make 
     up 94 percent of its population of 625,000--that's changing. 
     Bahic's new life is a testament to the major role refugees 
     have played in bringing new cultures to Burlington. His 
     parents' funeral services were presided over by an imam from 
     the Islamic Center of Vermont, one of the state's two 
     mosques. Though Bahic leads a mostly secular life--he likes 
     to gamble and drink--he's visited Burlington-area churches to 
     explain Islam. The 15 employees at his business in suburban 
     Winooski include many Vietnamese-immigrant seamstresses. His 
     Bhutanese neighbors in his Colchester apartment complex are 
     working hard, hunting for new work, moving up. ``In five 
     years, they're looking to buy a house, some looking to buy a 
     new car,'' he says.
       Immigrants in Vermont have organized to help newer 
     arrivals. The Association of Africans Living in Vermont, 
     founded as a social circle, now offers workforce development 
     and translation services to new refugees. Tuipate Mubiay, a 
     Congolese immigrant who co-founded the group in 1999, also 
     runs an orientation and a conversation partners program for 
     refugee students at the Community College of Vermont.
       ``I feel Vermont has more open doors than other states,'' 
     says Mubiay. Immigrants in the state tend to find jobs, 
     apartments and health insurance faster than elsewhere, he 
     says.
       At the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program in Colchester, 
     the state's only refugee placement agency, flyers on a lobby 
     bulletin board offer refugees tips on jobs, health care and 
     transportation: ``UPS is now hiring,'' ``Vermont Health 
     Connect,'' ``Get a bike--Bike Recycle Vermont,'' ``And 
     Remember, Please Give 15 Days Notice If You Are Quitting A 
     Job.'' The Children's Book of America, edited by William J. 
     Bennett, the Reagan administration secretary of education, 
     rests on a coffee table, its cover illustration a bunch of 
     kids from a kaleidoscope of ethnicities waving American 
     flags.
       Amila Merdzanovic, VRRP's director, came to Vermont in 1995 
     as a Bosnian refugee. She makes the case for resettlement's 
     contributions to Vermont: It brings about 200 working adults 
     a year to a state with a stagnant, aging population. ``We 
     have employers calling us on a daily basis, saying, `We need 
     workers,' she says. Many refugees get jobs at hotels and 
     restaurants. Landlords call, too, despite Burlington's low 
     housing vacancy rate. ``Refugees are hyper-aware of the 
     importance of good credit,'' she says. ``[They] take care of 
     their apartments and their neighborhoods.''
       It's hard to measure refugees' assimilation or happiness. 
     Instead, agencies like VRRP look at self-sufficiency to 
     measure success. Refugees get a one-time payment of $925 to 
     $1,125 to start anew in the U.S. After that, the goal is to 
     help them find a job that pays enough to make them ineligible 
     for state aid. In 2015, Merdzanovic says, 75 percent of 
     employable adults resettled in Vermont were self-sufficient 
     within three months of arriving. By eight months, the figure 
     rose to 88 percent.
       ``[If] we don't hear from them, we know they're working, 
     their kids are in school, they're driving, they have a car 
     and driver's license. That's a success,'' she says.
       In Burlington, refugees' biggest challenge is affordable 
     housing. Timsina, the Bhutanese grocer, says some refugees 
     have moved to Ohio or Pennsylvania because of Burlington's 
     high rents--at least $1,500 a month for a three-bedroom 
     apartment. That's one reason Rutland appealed to VRRP.
       But accepting Rutland's application to become a 
     resettlement site for Syrians has exposed VRRP to something 
     it hasn't dealt with elsewhere: angry opposition. ``It's very 
     different,'' says Merdzanovic. ``It's new waters for all of 
     us.''
       As Rutland Mayor Chris Louras crosses a downtown street 
     corner, an SUV pulls up. ``Hey, Louras!'' shouts the 
     passenger.
       ``Mr. Congressman!'' says the mayor.
       Peter Welch, Vermont's lone member of the House of 
     Representatives, is the passenger, and he's not at all 
     surprised to find the mayor giving an interview about his 
     support for refugees. Welch is quick to say that he and 
     Vermont's senators back Louras' effort.
       ``All three of us support accepting refugees in the 
     country--America needs to do its share--but the real hard 
     work is in the communities where people are going to land and 
     live,'' Welch says.
       It hasn't been easy, but Louras, an Army veteran who still 
     sports a soldier's buzz cut, has a history of charging ahead. 
     That's what Louras did last November, when Vermont Governor 
     Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, announced that he, unlike several 
     Republican governors, would continue to welcome Syrian 
     refugees to his state.

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       ``I saw that as an opportunity,'' Louras says, ``not just 
     to do the right thing--to open our doors to a people who are 
     fleeing for their lives--but also to do the right thing for 
     the community.'' Louras says Syrian refugees could give 
     Rutland a population boost and more cultural and ethnic 
     diversity, which in turn could help the town attract and 
     retain millennials.
       ``Our population is crashing,'' Louras says. Though Rutland 
     is one of Vermont's largest cities, that doesn't mean it's 
     very big. About 16,000 people live there, down from 19,000 in 
     1970. Louras, mayor for nine years, has worked to turn it 
     around. He says downtown occupancy is at 95 percent, up from 
     75 percent when he started. But Rutland has been hit hard by 
     the opioid epidemic and the subprime mortgage crisis. 
     Absentee landlords have neglected their properties, leaving 
     the city to step in with garbage pickup and grass-mowing. 
     Refugees, he says, could revitalize the city's hardest-hit 
     neighborhoods.
       ``In Burlington and Winooski, new Americans really take 
     pride in where they live and become very engaged community 
     members.'' Besides, he says, the town's economy needs 
     workers: Unemployment is below 4 percent in Rutland County, 
     and the region's top employers, Rutland Regional Medical 
     Center and a GE aviation plant, have trouble finding new 
     employees.
       So, after talking with State Department and Homeland 
     Security officials, VRRP, the local school district and major 
     regional employers, Louras announced in April that Rutland 
     would apply to welcome 100 refugees a year, starting with 100 
     Syrians. A supportive group, Rutland Welcomes, organized 
     almost immediately to prepare for the Syrians' arrival. So 
     did opposition.
       ``These are the same people or many of the same who danced 
     in the street celebrating 9/11, the same people who hate 
     us,'' read a change.org petition against the resettlement, 
     with more than 400 supporters. Another group, Rutland First, 
     also launched fierce criticisms of the refugee resettlement 
     plan and hosted national anti-immigration speakers Philip 
     Haney and James Simpson in September.
       Some critics complained that Louras had acted secretly by 
     not informing the city's board of aldermen. ``To keep it a 
     big, fat, frickin' secret until it's too late obviously 
     breeds mistrust,'' says Rutland City Treasurer Wendy Wilton.
       In a July meeting, the aldermen narrowly rejected a 
     petition to hold a nonbinding citywide referendum on refugee 
     resettlement. Instead, they voted to send a letter to the 
     State Department saying they weren't ready to endorse the 
     idea.
       ``The last thing I wanted was for Rutland to be tarred [as] 
     the community that voted on whether or not Muslims could be 
     our neighbors,'' says Will Notte, president of the aldermen, 
     who supports resettlement. ``We never voted on Italians 
     coming. We didn't vote on the Poles. This is not something 
     that is meant to be decided at the ballot box.''
       Rutland alderman Scott Tommola, who voted to send the 
     question to the ballot, says he's not opposed to taking in 
     refugees. ``I've met very few who are adamantly opposed to 
     this,'' Tommola says. ``The majority of people I talk to are 
     cautiously optimistic.'' But he isn't convinced that the city 
     has the jobs, housing and education capacity to take in 100 
     refugees a year. ``Show me these jobs and the housing that's 
     adequate,'' he says.
       In August, at a Rutland First meeting, Wilton claimed that 
     taking in refugees will cause Rutland's property taxes to 
     rise. She predicts they'll drive up English-language learning 
     costs in local schools, and their housing needs will require 
     the city to spend more on community development. ``It could 
     be much more difficult than we think to help these folks,'' 
     she says. Louras and others have disputed Wilton's figures. 
     The mayor says taking in refugees won't cost City Hall a 
     thing, and the schools superintendent says the district has 
     excess capacity for teaching English.
       Wilton, like Rutland First, says she isn't completely 
     opposed to taking in refugees--maybe 25 a year would be OK, 
     she says. But she's concerned that they'll take jobs from 
     native Vermonters and that there aren't enough middle-class 
     jobs in town to offer economic mobility. She also has 
     security concerns about admitting Syrians to the U.S., citing 
     intelligence concerns that ISIS can generate fake passports 
     and may try to infiltrate the West through refugee flows. 
     ``We're more than likely to end up, out of 10,000, 20,000 
     people, to have some folks here that don't have our best 
     interests at heart,'' she says.
       Louras says he's confident that the federal vetting process 
     is solid: ``Individuals who want to do us harm are not going 
     to come through refugee resettlement.''
       In late September, the State Department approved Rutland as 
     a new home for refugees. Louras says 75 Syrians from either 
     the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan or camps in Lebanon, plus 
     25 Iraqis, should arrive in December or January.
       Notte says he's confident that most Rutland residents 
     support the refugees' arrival. He says meetings of Rutland 
     Welcomes attract much larger audiences than resettlement's 
     vocal opponents. The refugees' supporters have organized a 
     furniture donation drive and begun holding free weekly Arabic 
     lessons at the Unitarian Universalist Church.
       ``Vermont is desperately in need of young working people,'' 
     Notte says. ``It's a match made in heaven.''

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