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player ready...“… Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
— from the poem “The New Colossus”
Emma Lazarus is turning over in her grave. Indentured servants from England, potato famines in Ireland, the near-annihilation of European Jews, and Chinese track gangs helped populate this country.
I’m second-generation Italian. You go back far enough, Albanian. My people grew rocks. But the Turks were slaughtering them so the Manes family and six other families sailed around the boot of Italy (purposely taking the long way around the barn fearing they would be followed) and settled on a mountain they named Falconara in Calabria. For 500 years, they lived in Italy. In 1910, at the age of 10, my grandfather, Vito Manes, came to Ellis Island, then Chicago, and eventually hacked it out in Lake Village during the Great Depression.
Tony Burrell, 38, lives in Munster and is director of Chicagoland Immigrant Welcome Network located in Hammond.
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Education?
“Munster High School and Indiana University. I have a degree in psychology.”
Life after IU?
“I spent three years in the country of Kosovo soon after their war. I’m fluent in Albanian. We were a nongovernment organization that did some humanitarian work. Mostly, we met with students and listened to their stories regarding the war. We got the gospel to people who wanted to hear it. I also worked with Albanians who lived in Macedonia for three years.”
Interesting. What do you do here?
“The Welcome Network is a faith-based organization. I founded it in 2014. We’re a not-for-profit. We work with area churches. Each of these churches has something called a Good Neighbor Team. They can meet the needs of immigrants and refugees as we come in contact with them.
“Our two main priorities are to be a legal clinic and a refugee resettlement. I’ve gone through several hundred hours of immigration training. I’ve shadowed people while they were doing cases. Our plan is, or was, to start resettling Syrian families.”
Give me an example of how you can help someone through the legal end of your organization.
“I have a client who came into the country on a fiancee visa. She’s from a Central American country. She met an American guy online. She ended up getting engaged to the guy. She came to the United States to get married and found that the guy was already married and had probably done that to other women. He kept my client in a hotel for six or eight weeks. She was not technically locked up, but she didn’t know the language and she didn’t have any money or transportation. The guy kept telling her he was going to leave his wife.”
Yeah, right.
“He was manipulating my client. She eventually got out of that situation, but returning to her country is not an option. She is now out of status or undocumented or illegal or whatever you want to say. If the law decides that she has been a victim of a crime by this guy, then we can pursue a green card for her.”
Here in Northwest Indiana, do you deal mostly with Hispanics?
“I would have thought that, but less than 10 percent of my clients are Spanish-speaking. We’ve done consultations with people from India, Pakistan, Serbia … .
“If you look at the census statistics for Lake County you’ll find that about half of the immigrant population is in Hammond or East Chicago. But the other half is really spread throughout the county. There are 1,500 immigrants in Munster. There are 2,000 immigrants in Crown Point. Lowell has 300. The census calls them foreign-born.”
I’m sure you’ve seen some sad and desperate cases.
“There’s this 70-year-old Indian guy who did everything the right way. He waited 12 years to get his green card. He’s been here five years. He’s had heart surgery while in this country. In India, he was an engineer. Here, he’s a night motel desk clerk. He came here to take care of his sister. Then she ended up passing away.”
Let’s discuss the refugee side of Welcome Network.
“First off, our government highly vets them despite what some people are saying. There’s a lot of rhetoric going around with the upcoming elections. There are many things I disagree with as far as our president, but I do agree with Barack Obama when he says that we need to continue accepting refugees. When somebody talks about ‘Obama’s Resettlement Plan,’ that in itself, tells me the person is highly uniformed. The Refugee Resettlement Program has been around for decades. Since the 1970s, we’ve resettled more than 3 million refugees into this country. Not one of them has ever committed a terrorist act — zero. One of about 20,000 Americans commit murder.
“Is the system perfect? No. But it’s not Obama’s system. In fact, it was thoroughly revamped after 9/11 under George W. Bush. People like the 33 governors who say Syrian refugees are not welcome in their respective states are politically posturing and not very well informed.”
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Continue, please.
“I believe we as Christians have to be careful of letting fear drive us and not compassion. Compassion needs to trump fear.”
What would Jesus do?
“Jeff, refugees are the ones who have the right to be fearful. They’ve fled their country because they are being shot down in the streets. It takes about 18 to 24 months for a refugee to get to a second country in a camp somewhere and eventually to a third country like America. If we’re talking Syrians, the camp is probably located in Turkey, Lebanon or Jordan. Through the United Nations, these people can apply to become considered a refugee. Only 1 percent of refugees end up being place in another country.
“Once America gets a referral, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, Health & Human Services, the FBI and the Counter Terrorism Unit all do background checks. Of all of the different options for getting in this country, it’s the most thoroughly screened process. None of the 9/11 terrorists or the brothers behind the Boston Marathon bombings went through the refugee process.”
Yeah, most of 9/11 terrorists came in as tourists.
“Jeff, I never thought the word refugee would become a dirty word. We recently met with the owner of the Mirage Grill in Merrillville. He’s an American-born Syrian. His parents were born in Syria. We also met with a Syrian family at Mirage Grill who had recently settled in Illinois. The mother came with her children because the father was working the night shift at Wal-Mart or somewhere. The woman hopes she will one day be able to go back to Syria. She thought that the streets would literally be paved with gold here. Her children are getting bullied at school — they can’t speak English yet.”
How many Syrian families live in Lake or Porter counties?
“A couple hundred.”
Final thoughts?
“Every person is made with dignity. We’re made in God’s image. We’ve been given so much here. We have the responsibility to continue to welcome the stranger. Christ said when you walk with the stranger, you walk with me.”
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Shame on our governor.
Again.
Jeff Manes is a freelance columnist for the Post-Tribune.
Learn more
Chicagoland Immigrant Welcome Network in Hammond: 219-276-3764 or [email protected].