Lancaster Online
Monday April 8, 2019
Fatuma Majendero, viewed on her uncle's phone, is a lifelong Somali refugee now languishing in Nairobi, Kenya, despite passing extensive screenings for resettlement in Lancaster County, where family lives. BLAINE SHAHAN | Staff Photographer
Fatuma Majendero, a 19-year-old refugee from conflict-torn Somalia, counted the days for her turn to fly to America.
Stuck on her own in a dreary apartment near Nairobi, Kenya, Majendero enjoyed video chats with her cousin in Lancaster.
It was the fall of 2017, and cousin Alpha Muya, a former refugee newly graduated from Conestoga Valley and attending HACC, was Majendero’s guide to all things American. The cousins were to share a bedroom in the Muya family’s apartment in East Lampeter Township.
Slated to leave no later than March 2018, Majendero checked a Church World Service resettlement website daily for notification of her travel date.
But that notice never came. Instead, without explanation, the website in November 2017 informed Majendero her resettlement was on hold.
She hoped the delay would last a few weeks or months. She had already passed extensive security and medical screenings.
But today Majendero, 21, still waits in Kenya, where as an outsider who grew up in a refugee camp, she is not permitted to work or go to college, and as a single woman, she faces safety risks. Her dream of nursing school in America is deferred for at least two more years because her clearances have expired and she’ll have to restart the vetting process.
“You just wake up and think why is this thing happening?” Majendero said in a video chat Thursday.
Fewer arrivals
Advocates for refugees are dismayed, too. They say Majendero’s story is a common one under President Trump’s resettlement policies, and they are pressing for change, pointing to the 1.4 million refugees around the world that a United Nations agency said have fled war and persecution and can’t return home.
In October 2017, Trump lifted a ban on resettlements, but subjected those from some countries, including Somalia, to extra review for potential threats.
Then last September, Trump capped the number of arrivals at 30,000, the lowest since the program’s creation in 1980. During President Obama’s last year, the United States received 84,995 refugees.
Now advocates say the Trump administration may fall short of the 30,000 refugees it said it would admit. Six months into the fiscal year, only 12,151 have arrived, according to Church World Services’ national headquarters.
The Muya family were Somali refugees who resettled in Lancaster County. They are, from left, Alpha, Saami, Maryan, Geedi and Omega.They hope to open their home to family member Fatuma Majendero, who remains a refugee in Kenya. Kristin V. Rehder for Church World Service
Local impact
The impact is being felt in Lancaster County, where the welcoming efforts of churches and other groups led the BBC to call the community the nation’s refugee capital. The two agencies that resettle refugees here say arrivals are below where they would be expected at the fiscal year’s midpoint.
Church World Service has resettled only 79 of the 210 refugees it is authorized to resettle. Bethany Christian Services has resettled 54 of the 140 the agency is expecting.
Meanwhile, the number of Somalis coming to Lancaster County has fallen from 90 in 2015-16 to one in 2017-18, state data show.
“It’s troubling when these numbers get so drastically reduced to begin with, and then when we as a nation don’t keep up with our promises to reach those limits,” said the Rev. Greg Davidson Laszakovits of Elizabethtown Church of the Brethren.
In the past decade Laszakovits’ congregation has helped arrivals from Iran, Burma and Democratic Republic of the Congo learn English, find employment and build a future.
“The stereotype can be that immigrants somehow take something away or are a burden,” the pastor said, “but for us the story is clearly the opposite. They have made us a richer community economically, culturally, religiously.”
The Lancaster Chamber would like to see more refugees arriving, said Heather Valudes, community impact director, noting that their skills and attributes “represent significant economic potential” at a time when many industries struggle to find qualified employees.
Bethany workers helped to settle a Sudanese man in Lancaster County four years ago. He drives truck and sends money to Egypt to support his wife and son, who, like Majendero, continue to wait for family reunification.
“The fact is we’re seeing the worst refugee crisis in history, but the United States is pulling back. So we’re part of the problem,” Mark Unger, Bethany’s regional director for Pennsylvania, said.
Last year, Canada eclipsed the United States as the world leader in taking in the most refugees.
“What’s our excuse?” said Sheila Mastropietro, director of Church World Service’s Lancaster office.
Sadness, boredom
Majendero’s uncle, Saami Muya, a supervisor for Goodwill thrift stores, went to Washington a year ago to alert representatives and senators to his niece’s plight.
(LNP asked the staff for U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker of Lancaster County to comment on resettlement policy, but received no response.)
“My life is good,” Muya said. “I became a citizen last July. We are expecting much better.”
But his heart aches for his niece. He listened somberly as Majendero talked to a reporter.
She said that in 2015 she fled to Nairobi from Kakuma refugee camp in northwestern Kenya because a much older man was pressuring her to marry him.
These days, Majendero stays at a house with other young women who can work and who share with her. She is able to volunteer 30 hours a month at a relief agency. Otherwise, her life is circumscribed by poverty and by her status as a non-citizen and single woman.
“I feel sad. I feel frustrated. I’m so bored,” she said. “I feel like you don’t have any country. You don’t belong. You don’t have anyplace to call home.”