Name: Margaret MacGillivray
Social Justice Group: Refugees
Date of Fieldwork: November 21, 2017
Name of Organization: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Tina Hinh
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did:
We interviewed Ms. Hinh about how refugees come into the United States, and what specifically the UNHCR does to help Refugees once they are in the United States.
What I learned:
Throughout our visit, we learned many things about refugees to create a strong basis for our project. The first thing we learned is that the UNHCR favors people who are facing discrimination in their countries, such as LGBTQ members and people with medical needs. Women relate greatly to this in the sense that many of the women seeking asylum are single mothers with children, making it harder for them to live in their countries. This puts many women high up in the list for people who the UNHCR will accept to our country, because of the hardships they face in their own countries. There are five grounds of things the UNHCR considers: Race, religion, nationality, political opinion, and if you’re a member of a particular social group. We also learned that because of the new political climate, things with refugees have changed. The president chooses how many refugees can enter our country, and our new president has chosen an extremely low number of acceptance: 45,000 when the average is 60,000-80,000. Barack Obama tried to break the record of amount of refugees let into our country, while Donald Trump set the all time least. Though 80,000 refugees seems like a lot, only around 1% of refugees get to be resettled, and the UNHCR works with many different organizations to bring that percentage up. A common illusion is that all refugees want to leave their homes, when in reality, most would like to stay, but their many of their homes have been stripped of it’s security and the refugees cannot stay there anymore. Refugees who don’t get resettled stay in refugee camps. Many refugees in our nation have been able to go back to their homes after their countries have regained their strength and have become safe again. When the United States is choosing refugees, they try to stick to “quantity over quality.” Other countries help refugees settle more, but handles less of them. Each of these models have their ups and downs. The U.S. does expect refugees to get jobs, even though they might face more discrimination in the field. We also learned that New York City isn’t a great place for refugees to live. This is because rent is extremely high, making more suburban areas a better place for refugees to get settled into their new homes. Overall, it is very hard to get volunteer opportunities with refugees because many refugee organizations have too many volunteers and not enough refugees, so interviews are more effective. Overall, the U.S. refugee system is good, but could be improved to ensure we focus on “quality and quantity.”
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
I was supersized during our interview when Ms. Hinh stated that there are too many volunteers willing to help out in the area of refugees. I realized that with some social justice topics, volunteering isn’t needed but instead your full support of those being discriminated against. I used to be struck with the illusion that the way to help out a topic you care about is by volunteering, but signing petitions and showing your support is just as important. The volunteering comes before the overall inequality is faced. You cannot only volunteer at a soup kitchen, but in addition face the larger issue and try to get more people off the street and on their feet. Social justice is so much more than just helping out – its about coming together as a whole and changing the issue altogether.
