Refugee Moving Day – the sequel
Move #4…
Every resettlement brings about different issues. Each becomes its own story. Each varies somehow in its outcome.
Our current resettlement case is still underway. We’re more than 3 months in at this point and we’ve reached an interesting milestone… 4 moves. That is we’ve moved the family, or parts of the family, into 4 different living quarters.
Well, to be fair, I should state that our case really consisted of two family units. So, maybe that’s only two each. In that case it’s not bad. If you’re following along, the playbook looks like this…
- Pick up 8 family members at the airport. There was much tiredness as the trip from Thailand to Milwaukee is arduous.
- Same day, move them all into a close relative’s apartment in Milwaukee. There was much joy in the reuniting. (move 1)
- A few weeks later, unpack the sardine-like situation, moving the recent 8 arrivals into a house in Waukesha. There were mixed emotions of separation and settling down. (move 2)
- A couple months later, split the family in half, with the parents and siblings of the relative in Milwaukee wanting to move back to Milwaukee and away from the others. Meanwhile the related family unit in Waukesha wanted their separation, and found reason to stay in Waukesha. This was mostly happy, though I think a couple that moved would have been better off staying and one who stayed really wanted to move. (move 3)
- With the expense of renting a house on their own completely unaffordable at this point, the family remaining in Waukesha had to downsize. Today we moved them into an apartment. I think they were happy about this. (move 4)
So there you have it. Four moves – a single resettlement. With any luck the present situation becomes stable.
I am writing this so that you have awareness that refugee resettlement is not always predictable…
There is a “system” in place in which we have to abide. (Regardless of my feelings about the system at various points in time, the only way to navigate it successfully in any given moment is to go with the flow.) There are personalities of the refugees and personalities of the resettlement team members. Everyone involved, best as I can tell, is human. That makes us fallible. We do our best with the information we have and discover the consequences at future points.
This is all to say that as much as we would like to follow a simple checklist of “do this then that,” it doesn’t always work out that way. For example, my list says, “move them into an apartment where they can live until they decide to move themselves.” And, there is only one alternative which states, “move them into some temporary housing until the apartment is available.” That’s it, two moves.
Some may be disappointed that we have extra work to do. Some feel bad for those of us who have to do the same activity over again. But neither of those is necessary. We have chosen to help refugees get started with a new life here. If it takes 4 moves to get it right, then so be it! We want to get it right.
By the way, we had enough help to get everything moved out of the house into a pickup truck and several minivans, a couple trips back and forth, and we were done in 2 hours.
Now if we can stop moving, let’s get focused on employment!
[…] I just came across a new post at Jeffrey Kirk’s blog, Refugee Resettlement Support, where his group is moving their Burmese refugee family again. I say coincidentally because one […]