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Rugaya Sourein, 26, is a Sudanese refugee who came to the U.S. in 2004. She has spent all of her time in Illinois living in the suburbs, having been placed by World Relief DuPage/Aurora.
New challenges for suburbs as refugees leave city-life
by Gina Harkins
Feb 17, 2011
Gina Harkins/MEDILL
It is estimated that there are currently 136,000 refugees in Illinois with 40 percent, or 54,400, residing in the suburbs.
Gina Harkins/MEDILL
The breakdown of refugees that the U.S. receives changes according to world events. The U.S. is currently seeing an influx of refugees from Iraq.
The countries refugees come from change depending on world events. Tour the areas they have fled since the 1970s. The influx has become more diverse over time.
Refugee makeup in the U.S.
In 2010, the U.S. State Department placed 73,311 refugees across the country.
- The largest number of refugees came from Near East and South Asia. Bhutanese, Iraqi, Iranian and Palestinian refugees made up most of the 35,782 refugees from there.
- East Asians followed with 17,716 refugees coming mainly from Burma and Vietnam.
- African refugees totaled 13,305 with significant numbers coming from Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan.
- The overwhelming majority of the 4,982 Latin American refugees were from Cuba.
- And of the 1,526 European refugees, most were from Ukraine, Russia, Moldova and Uzbekistan.
Illinois receives refugees consistent with this breakdown. Refugees from all over the world have been placed across the state. Some of the suburbs with the highest level of refugee placement include those that have refugee organizations that work with the state to place refugees. These suburbs include Aurora, Wheaton, Glen Elynn, Moline and Rockford.
It is estimated that there are currently 136,000 refugees in Illinois with 40 percent, or 54,400, residing in the suburbs.
Job opportunities, increasing numbers of refugee organizations, desire for better education for their children and a semblance of their homeland contribute to this trend, according to refugee experts.
The U.S. Census Bureau Wednesday released 2010 census data confirming a 10-year exodus from Chicago to the suburbs. Refugees who continue to be part of that wave face intimidating lifestyle changes. Lack of easy access to public transportation and less ethnic and religious diversity can pose challenges for refugees living in suburbs.
World Relief DuPage/Aurora Executive Director Emily Gray said refugee organizations must work to place their clients in communities where there are volunteers who can provide services to them. And suburban communities have to absorb the new refugee families with sensitivity while providing services in schools for their non-English speaking children.
Suburban challenges
Rugaya Sourein, 26, of Northwest suburban Carol Stream, is a Sudanese refugee. World Relief, the nonprofit refugee resettlement agency, helped her family settle in Aurora after they came to the U.S. from Egypt in 2004.
With World Relief’s help, Sourein and her husband took English as a Second Language classes. She said she is now working to earn a General Equivalency Diploma with plans to get her citizenship soon. She said her family no longer requires World Relief’s assistance, but she added she will contact them for help in applying for her citizenship.
Edwin Silverman, chief of the Illinois Bureau of Refugee and Immigrant Services, said approximately 136,000 refugees live in Illinois. Up until five years ago, 85 percent of refugees lived in Chicago. But that has decreased to about 60 percent now, Silverman said.
“Part of the reason is that one organization, World Relief, has offices in Wheaton and Aurora and they have had greater access to jobs,” Silverman said. “So it’s mainly been a jobs issue – because of the recession, refugees have remained unemployed.”
Gray said the group has not seen much of an increase in the area it covers. But Catherine Wilson, a licensed clinical psychologist who has provided mental health services to refugees said some groups form their own communities.
“Laotians began moving to Elgin,” Wilson said. “They liked the river. It reminded them of their home where they had fishing communities. They could engage in activities that they enjoyed.”
“Loss of your homeland is a tremendous loss,” Gray said. She noted that a likeness of home makes sense given all that they have unwillingly left behind.
Relying on local volunteers
Once refugees reach the suburbs, certain services are not as readily available to them as would be in a city.
“Transportation is a suburban challenge,” Gray said. “We had one very good arrangement for the settling of folks in DuPage County where Pace bus systems were discontinued. And even though there is an ethnic community supportive of them, we’ve had to rethink placement to an area linking them to both.”
Sourein said transportation was the biggest challenge she and her family faced in the suburbs.
“It was hard for us because we don’t have cars, and when we got here no one knew how to drive,” Sourein said.
And while the suburbs are experiencing more diversity, prejudices can still exist, Wilson said.
“We expect diversity in the city,” Wilson said. “But they might stand out in the suburbs, and there’s a possibility of misunderstanding.”
“We have folks who, just like anyone on the immigration debate, feel that these people should go home,” said Gray. “But they don’t have a home to go to, and they’re still grieving that loss.”
With most refugee organizations being located in Chicago, suburban organizations rely on private donations and volunteers to provide services to refugees. And location of the volunteers determines where refugees are placed by private resettlement agencies under contract to the federal government.
“World Relief is out here in Wheaton, and it draws on volunteers from churches in the areas,” said Naazish YarKahn of Palatine-based Refugee Assistance Programs. “So it’s going to place people where there are volunteers.”
YarKahn said the main goal of her organization is to help refugees to become self-sufficient.
“Our motto is wings, not crutches,” YarKahn said. “Refugees are not handicapped for their whole life. If we support them at the beginning, they can stand on their own feet.”
Local impact
Suburban organizations also have to work with local government and schools to make sure their towns can handle more refugees each year.
Finding affordable housing for refugees is another issue for organizations to consider.
“It is a challenge. Neither DuPage or Aurora has sufficient housing for people lower on the economic scale,” Gray said. “And even though they come here as physicians or engineers, they are sadly lower here on the spectrum.”
Gray and YarKahn both commended suburban schools for doing a great job in accepting refugee students.
Adey Ali, 15, of Villa Park, is one of those students. Ali came to the U.S. at age 6 from a Somali refugee camp. She said she remembers little about her life in war-torn Somalia, and said she now identifies herself as American.
“We’re one of the only Somali families in our neighborhood,” Ali said. “I identify myself more as an American, but my parents are still traditional and consider themselves Somali.”
Gray said exposure to families like Ali’s only strengthens suburban communities.
“I think we’re better communities when we open up our eyes and our mind,” Gray said. “It helps us to be better people; it helps us to see more clearly and helps us to see that our way of thinking isn’t the only way.”
And Silverman said refugees are good for the local economy.
“Many of them are very entrepreneurial,” said Silverman. “Something people don’t understand about refugees is that they support our labor market. In the last 20 years, about 2 million people who were born in Illinois have moved elsewhere, mainly to the Sunbelt. They’ve been replaced by immigrants and about 10 percent have been refugees.”
