Rolling out the welcome mat for migrants and refugees

By Barb Arland-Fye
The Catholic Messenger

Their journeys began from different starting points but the three Iowa women featured in this story share a common passion for accompanying refugees striving to rebuild their lives in Iowa. We share their stories to raise awareness about National Migration Week, Sept. 23-29, which culminates with the World Day of Migrants and Refugees (WDMR) on Sept. 29. Some 43.4 million refugees are among 120 million people forcibly displaced as of May 2024, USA for the UN Refugee Agency reports.

World Day of Migrants and Refugees “is an opportunity for the global Church and the Catholic faithful to engage in prayer, reflection, and action on behalf of our brothers and sisters who are forced to flee their homes,” Justice for Immigrants  states. “This year’s theme is ‘God walks with his people,’ which ‘focuses on the itinerant dimension of the Church, with special attention to migrant brothers and sisters, who are a contemporary icon of the Church on the move.’” Justice for Immigrants (justiceforimmigrants.org) is a part of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

A roof over their heads

Iowa City Mayor Pro Tem Mazahir Salih remembers a cold November day 26 years ago in Virginia not long after she immigrated to the United States from Sudan and needed a place to stay. At one house where she sought help, she received permission to sleep on the open-air front porch. Ex­haus­ted and freezing the next morning, she walked to a nearby McDonald’s around 5 a.m. to rest and warm up. Later that day she headed to another McDonald’s for her work shift. “I won’t forget that day. It was a horrible day for me,” says Mazahir, executive director of Immigrant Welcome Network of Johnson County (IWNJC).

 Her struggle at that time as a single, young immigrant with a university education trying to navigate potential resources to find a home, food and other necessities left a lasting impression. “That experience deeply shaped my commitment in supporting immigrants and refugees” in their efforts to survive and thrive.

Mazahir married and began a family in Virginia before moving to Iowa in 2012 where immigrants and refugees sought her advice. With other advocates, she founded Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa in Iowa City to address injustices in the workplace, abusive landlords and lack of access to information in residents’ native languages (cwjiowa.org). 

Through that advocacy work, Mazahir became passionate about ensuring housing for immigrants and refugees. “I believe housing comes first,” she said. People need “a roof over their heads” in order to get a job, health care and other necessities. She knew that to be true from her personal experience. As a Muslim, she felt committed to follow Islam’s call to hospitality and to “welcome people who don’t look like you.”

IWNJC (iwnjc.org) provides temporary housing, employment assistance, community resources, permanent housing support, empowerment programs and advocacy initiatives. “My dream is to have a welcome center,” Mazahir said. “I have spoken with elected officials about my dream.”

Build on patience

 Deb Hueser and her husband, Steve, opened their spacious Muscatine home two years ago to a Ukrainian refugee family, Zhanna Slyviak and her mother Mariia and Zhanna’s two children, Yeva, 10, and Artem, 5. The Muscatine couple and their guests experienced the joys and challenges of living together under one roof.

“It’s exciting to have people from another country coming to stay with us. We can learn about each other. That’s one of the things I enjoyed,” said Deb, a member of Muscatine Sister Cities, Inc. and Musca­tine Action Committee for Ukraine. She is also grateful that her fellow Muscatine Action Committee member Walter Conlon, a parishioner of Ss. Mary & Mathias Parish in Muscatine, handled the paperwork that the U.S. government requires in resettling refugees.

Zhanna and Mariia loved to cook, another joy for Deb, who does not like to cook. “They basically took over our kitchen.” One compromise: “My husband and I like spicy foods,” which the Ukrainian family did not. “We didn’t cook things that were too spicy,” Deb said.

Homesickness was among the challenges. Yeva, now 12, longed to return to Ukraine initially, but has adjusted well and is thriving at school, as is her brother Artem, Deb said. “The kids love going to school and being with other kids. The kids picked up the language so fast. The parents lag behind,” Deb said, referring to refugees in general.

The language barrier and governmental paperwork frustrated Zhanna and Mariia, who wanted to get jobs and live in their own home, which required patience on everyone’s part. The two used their ingenuity and decided to make and sell Ukrainian dumplings out of the Hueser home, with Deb doing the marketing.

Today, Zhanna and her family are living in their own apartment and doing well. “She started her own business, a cleaning business,” Deb said. Mariia is returning to Ukraine to reunite with her husband. “She is convinced her daughter is going to be just fine.”

Their experiences and those of other refugee families and their hosts in Muscatine provided invaluable guidance for the civic organizations and governmental agencies committed to integrating refugees into the community, Deb added.

Tapping into amazing skills

Ann McGlynn was working as communications director for St. Paul Lutheran Church in Davenport when the church welcomed a refugee family of seven from Democratic Republic of the Congo to the Quad Cities in September 2016. “We learned that the Quad Cities had some gaps in terms of welcoming people well,” Ann said, one of the most common being the language barrier. “It can be pretty hard to navigate all sorts of systems — healthcare, housing, education, getting a driver’s license, meeting basic needs.”

As the church met other refugee families also struggling to rebuild their lives in the U.S., “We learned that many families come with some pretty amazing farming skills,” said Ann, who grew up on a farm in Clinton County. After completing her master’s degree in business administration, she filed the paperwork to start the nonprofit Tapestry Farms.

Tapestry Farms (tapestryfarms.org) harnesses those “amazing farming skills” and much more through an urban farm system that reclaims underutilized land to grow culturally specific produce and flowers. Refugees and volunteers work together tending the plots, using regenerative techniques. Tapestry Farms distributes the produce to people in the Quad Cities with limited resources and sells some of the produce at a farmers’ market.

Many of the people with whom Tapestry Farm works are from East and Central Africa, Syria, Afghanistan and Haiti, Ann said. “We work really hard to be a ‘big tent’ organization, which means we want people from different life sets to be a part of our work. I like to ask people who genuinely wish to understand better the people who are coming here as refugees to spend time with someone who has come here as a refugee.”

Ann invites volunteers to help with an urban farm plot, take refugees to English lessons or deliver groceries to them. “There are many ways for someone who wants to learn more about refugees to engage in meaningful and positive ways. One of my favorite quotes is ‘fear cannot survive proximity.’”

Deacon Kent Ferris, director of Social Action for the Diocese of Davenport, considers Mazahir, Deb and Ann as “good neighbors” of the diocese. “Our office appreciates their efforts at welcoming the stranger and we maintain contact with them because they have direct relationships and know of the specific needs of refugees. Informing our parishioners of this work results in our folks donating their time, talent and treasure to these efforts,” Deacon Ferris said. “Such examples help others imagine in what ways we might be part of even more such efforts.”