 Hello, everyone. Welcome to Triple E. Our president, Carol Hinkle, is not here today. I'm Beth Wood. I am on the Triple E board and the program chair, and it's my pleasure to welcome all of you here today and to welcome today's speaker, Jason Dolan. Just a couple of quick housekeeping announcements before we begin. A reminder that if you have not already sent in your feedback for the first part of the semester to Glenn by email, please do so today. And a reminder that we really enjoy and appreciate your questions. So please feel free to type them into the Q&A at any time during the lecture or during the Q&A. Just remember to tap or click on the Q&A button on the bottom of your screen. A little screen will pop up, type in your question, hit send, and it will be there and we will welcome that during the Q&A. It's my great pleasure today to welcome Tracy Dolan. Tracy earned her Bachelor of Science in Health Education from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, her Master of Science in Public Health in the University of Northern British Columbia, and she began her career in Northern Canada, working to reduce the risk of HIV in vulnerable populations. She spent 10 years in international health, primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on HIV AIDS, care and prevention, maternal child health, and youth reproductive health. She also developed and implemented child protection programs in post-conflict communities in Afghanistan and Uganda. She moved to Vermont and served as our Deputy Commissioner of Public Health for 10 years. Most recently, she helped to lead the state's COVID pandemic response, which, of course, made us the most vaccinated state in the nation. You may have heard her regularly on Vermont Public Radio, patiently answering all of Vermont's questions about COVID during the whole first part of the pandemic, or you may have seen her occasionally taking part in the governor's press briefings on television or on radio. On August 30th, she became the Director of the Vermont State Refugee Office, and it's such a crucial time for so many refugees seeking new homes. It's a great pleasure to welcome Tracy Dolan here to talk about her current position and her current work. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you so much, Beth, and welcome to all of the participants. I'm really happy to be here. Like Beth said, I've had a big transition in the last year, going from pandemic response to this work, and I wanna first, and I do this anytime I speak over the last couple of years, I just wanna thank you because I know that so many of you sacrificed so much for your families and for other Vermonters to get us to the place where we are. I know the pandemic is still very real for many of us, and there's still people getting sick. We still have some deaths due to this very damaging pandemic. However, because people like you got vaccinated early, got your booster shots, masked up, and did some very hard isolation, especially in that first year and a half, we are better off as a state. You saved lives, not just your own, but you saved lives of your family members and others in the community. And I just can't thank you enough. And it is this spirit. I think it was one of the health institutes. Kaiser Health Institute just wrote an article about why Vermont is doing so well comparatively. We have one of the lowest hospitalization rates, one of the lowest death rates, and Kaiser said one of the characteristics appears to be Vermonters genuine desire to help each other and to do what they can to protect each other, a real community sense. And that then really extends into this next piece of work, which is the refugee resettlement. And we're already seeing so many wonderful things happening as a result. So I'm gonna pause here and share my screen and get started with just one more moment here. I'll just be, I'll redo that so that I've got sound as well in case I need to, all right. There we go. All right, I think you can see that now. And again, I'm the director of the Vermont State Refugee Office. So for those of you who may not be aware of how Vermont government is structured, we have a variety of agencies. And one of the largest agencies in the state government is the Agency of Human Services. And that is headquartered in Waterbury. And the Agency of Human Services has a lot of departments that you've probably heard of, the Department of Health, of course, you've probably heard a lot about recently, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Children and Families, the Department of Aging and Independent Living, and a couple of others. And my office doesn't sit in any one of those departments, but it does sit in the secretary's office of the agency because it really does cut across all kinds of services when we're welcoming new Americans into our state. All right. I'll go to our next slide. So I'll speak a little bit about the mission. The mission of the State Refugee Office is to promote and provide a safe and welcoming home for refugees and immigrants and to promote their full participation as self-sufficient individuals and families in the economic, social, and civic life of Vermont. So it really is welcoming people here and trying to help them live their best lives by creating an environment where they can do that. Specific to refugee resettlement, the focus there is a little more narrow in that many of the outcomes that were required to report back up to the federal government are really about economic self-sufficiency because that is one of the cornerstones of really being able to make a life here. And so our big focus, particularly in the first year, is that economic self-sufficiency. And so you'll see that when I describe what happens with refugee resettlement here in Vermont. I first wanna give you a definition of what a refugee is. A refugee is someone who's been forced to flee their country of nationality who's unable or unwilling to return because of persecution based on their race or religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or a political opinion or war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution and they've been forced across boundaries and they can't return home safely. War and ethnic tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries. A refugee may also be referred to as an asylum seeker until their granted refugee status. So sometimes we have people arrive in country, not many in Vermont, but we have some and they arrive with no particular refugee status but depending on their case, they can try to seek asylum and put in an application for asylum. In the United States, a refugee once admitted can apply in one year for permanent resident status. So they can apply for a green card or they can apply to become US citizens. So that's the definition of a refugee. And I'm really highlighting that definition because sometimes people believe that when people arrive here or refugees arrive here, they're simply arriving because they want a better life or maybe financially it was difficult where they are. So they're coming here because maybe they could make more money, things like that. And while certainly that might be true for people in the world who might wanna come here, refugees are different. It's not a choice where they're saying, you know, it's okay here but I'd really like to go to the US because maybe I could do better. Refugees are fleeing a desperate situation. I wanted to play this poem for you to really highlight this. This woman wore sunshine. She is a refugee. She came over from Kenya, I believe she's Ethiopian. And she, her parents came over as refugees. And so she was really able to witness a lot of what happened. And I think her poem will really speak to the nature, the really desperate nature of what it means to be a refugee. No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. You only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well. Your neighbors running faster than you, breath, bloody in their floats. And the boy you went to school with who kissed your dizzy behind the old tin factories holding a gun bigger than his body. You only leave home when home won't let you stay. No one leaves home unless home chases you, fire under feet, hot blood in your belly. And even then you carry the anthem under your breath only tearing up your passport in airport toilets, sobbing as each mouthful of paper made it clear that you would not be going back. You have to understand no one would put their children in a boat unless the sea is safer than the land. No one burns their palms under trains beneath carriages. No one spends days and nights in the gallbladder of a truck feeding on newspaper unless the miles traveled means something more than journey. No one crawls under fences, wants to be beaten, wants to be pitied. No one chooses refugee camps or strip searches where your body is left aching or prison because prison is safer than a city or fire and one prison guard in the night is safer than 14 men who look like your father. No one could take it, could stomach it. No one's skin would be tough enough to go home blacks, refugees, dirty immigrants, asylum seekers, sucking our country dry, niggers with their hands out. They smell strange, savage, messed up their own country and now they wanna mess up ours. How do the words dirty looks roll off your back and maybe it's because the blow is softer than a limb torn off or the words are more tender than 14 men between your legs or the insults are easier to swallow than rubble, than bone, than your child's body in pieces. I wanna go home but home is the mouth of a shark. Home is the barrel of a gun and no one would leave home unless home chase you to the shore unless home told you to quicken your legs. Leave your clothes behind, crawl through the desert, wait for the oceans, drown, save, be hungry, beg, forget pride, your survival is more important. No one leaves home unless home is a sweaty voice in your ear saying leave, run away from me now. I don't know what I've become, but I know that anywhere is safer than here. So thank you for listening with me to that. I'm gonna give you a little more information about Worson Shire. She is actually a British writer and poet, editor and teacher. She was born to Somali parents in Kenya. So often refugees are living in camps or temporary, almost temporary refugee cities in neighboring countries before they end up in a place like the United States. And so her parents were there and she was born in Kenya in an environment like that. I imagine her parents were the ones who probably left Somalia very quickly. And she is now an award-winning poet. She was awarded the inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize and she has been lauded for her incredibly beautiful poetry. This isn't the only one of hers, Worson Shire, if you ever want to look her up. But it really highlights what I was mentioning, which is in case we ever think that people are making some kind of choice, it's a choice of desperation. And so when they arrive here, there's often great trauma. So how many refugees get settled? Now, what we've seen in Afghanistan more recently is unusual. Usually people are refugees for a very long time before they resettle permanently in a new country. So most people, when they're displaced from their homes, they remain in a protracted, extended situation that lasts five years or more. And then at the average length of time, a person will remain a refugee is actually 17 years. So you have families and next generations growing, reproducing in internal displaced persons camps, IDP camps, refugee camps in other countries who keep applying for a permanent life somewhere and less than 1% of them will ever be resettled permanently in a new country. So to get the okay to come to a place like the US or to come to Canada or a place in Europe or any more developed country is like a lottery. And it's an amazing thing that happens, but it's also not that common. Some people ask, why is it that we do so much? Why don't neighboring countries help? You hear this a lot also when there are problems, particularly in a country whose culture is very different than ours, like a primarily Muslim country. People may say, well, why don't the other Muslim countries help? They do low and middle income countries actually host most of the world's refugees. 70% of them are actually in low and middle income countries. Many countries that have scarce resources themselves take people in. So that is the situation that we see. Now, I'm gonna speak a little bit about what happened with Afghanistan because like I said, normally it's years after a conflict or years after someone's been forced out that they might end up, for example, in the United States or even in Vermont. But in Afghanistan, that was an unusual situation because the United States had been there and had been working with Afghanistan, Afghans, helping the military, helping with the non-governmental organizations. When they left and then they saw the Taliban come in right away and take over and saw that everyone they had worked with would be at risk because they worked with the United States military. They felt a responsibility, the United States government, and recognized that those people could be killed or persecuted or jailed or harmed very quickly and thousands of them. And so the US made a decision to quickly remove a lot of those folks. Now, some of them had been in the process of getting special visas because they worked with the US military. Had that process been smooth, had that process had the capacity and the speed, that would have started probably a couple of years before and you might have been able to process many people through that. But that process was not particularly smooth. It started late. And so by the time the US left and by the time the Taliban came in, which was within days, there were tens of thousands of Afghans who had not even entered that visa system. And so the US made a decision to give these people the status of humanitarian parolee. And that's not really a refugee status, but I'm gonna use the word refugee in this general topic. And we are treating them like refugees here for the most part, but it's not exactly refugee status. It's a very precarious status, humanitarian parolee. We did it a couple of other times. We did it after the Vietnam War and we lifted and removed many people who are at risk then in part who had worked with their forces. And it's happened a couple of other times. It happened also when we helped many Cubans who were also at risk because of their association with the United States. So it has happened a few times where we've brought people over. And so that's what happened here. Some of the Afghans who arrived here had a visa, a special immigrant visa, or were in the process. Many were under this humanitarian parole status. And so I'm calling them refugees, but officially they are humanitarian parolees. Luckily, the services that we would normally give to refugees, we are able to give to these Afghan arrivals. The Congress passed an act a few months ago that said we will treat them like refugees for the purposes of all of these services. And I'll describe that in a minute. But one way that they're different is that because they have this unique status, they do not have an easy path to permanent residency or to citizenship. Right now, their only next step to stay is to apply for asylum. The application is difficult. It can take years, although Congress says that they will prioritize them. But between me and you, there's a very big backlog already of these cases who are not Afghans. But normally it takes years and then that gets them to the next step if they're in a, so then they become an assaili. So let's say that takes a few years, then they have an opportunity maybe to apply for a green card and then for citizenship. It's not an easy path. So one thing that's happening right now is that people are lobbying Congress to pass a special act to help these Afghans not have to go through all that. It's called the Afghan Adjustment Act. If an Afghan Adjustment Act were to be passed, those Afghans who are here under this particular humanitarian parole status, which is most of them, would automatically be able to be given refugee status so then they could go ahead and directly apply for a green card or for citizenship. So we're hopeful that that's going to happen, but there's no real sign for sure that it will happen. So in the meantime, we're doing a lot of work to see if we can help the Afghans who are here apply for asylum. Now you might think, well, I guess there are a lot of lawyers who know how to do that. There aren't a lot of lawyers who know how to do that because there aren't that many asylum seekers. So in states all across the country, lawyers who are taking this on, first of all, they don't get paid much for it because there's not much money for it. So they tend to be pro bono, which means working for free. And there's only a handful of them who are expert in it. So here in Vermont, we only have a couple of lawyers who even do this pro bono. So we're having to figure out, how do we train people to help the Afghans to fill out the applications? And where might we be able to find more lawyer help? Could we mentor lawyers so that the ones who do know how to do it can help others? And is there a way to encourage more people to help? So we don't have an easy solution there. So all of that to say, let me sum up. Normally a refugee comes here after many years. Most refugees go to countries nearby, middle-income, low-income countries. But in this case, for Afghans, they came here immediately. So they were not in camps for years like most would be. A lot of them were living in nice homes. They had their car, their job, their usual things. And they were very rapidly, within days, running for their lives and then arriving at bases, military bases in the US and in some other countries, staying there for a few months with nothing and now suddenly arriving with really nothing. And so it's already hard enough to be a refugee with all the trauma that you're running from. But for everything to happen so quickly, they are really in that shocked phase right now. Sometimes we have refugees who arrive here who have been in camps for years. That's difficult too, but the shock of it may not be as extreme because they've already been living that difficult life. I think what we're seeing right now is for some of the Afghans arriving here, the shock of it feels very extreme. I wanna talk to you a little bit about how it all works. So in each state, so I'll give an example, Vermont, the State Department asks the refugee resettlement agencies, so they don't ask the governor, they ask the refugee resettlement agencies, how many refugees can you take this year? And the resettlement agencies look to see what their capacity is, they look at their staffing, they look around at the community, and then they also consult with the state, which is me. They consult with the state refugee office and I check in with the governor, but they really make that decision on their own. And for the most part, my office will say that makes sense unless we think there's a big problem. And so every year that happens, and that happens after the president determines what the overall number is. So in 2021, President Biden issued the presidential determination on refugee admissions. So this is something a president does every year. And he raised that target to 125,000 for this fiscal year. And just for you to know, the federal fiscal year runs from October through the end of September of next year. So right now we're in federal fiscal year 22. The year before that number was as low as 15,000. And I'll show you in a minute what our numbers looked like and how different federal administrations and presidents can impact that. So the president raised it to 125,000, huge jump from 15,000. But because of the Afghan crisis and everything that had to be stood up, they kind of bumped out a lot of the other refugees. COVID also had an impact because some people weren't able to travel because of COVID. So realistically this year, we probably aren't gonna reach 125,000. It might be closer to about 65 or 75,000. So I'm gonna speak a little bit about how it's worked in Vermont in terms of the numbers. I've got here the year's fiscal year 16. So that's the federal fiscal year up to fiscal year 21. I don't have this current year on the chart. So you can see back in fiscal year 2016, if you look at the bottom of this chart, we had a total of 386 refugees. If I were to make this chart longer going backwards, you would see that from about 2008 to about 2016 we regularly had more than 350 refugees between 350 and 400. But then you can see the drop begins in 2017. That was a change in administration. That is when the Trump administration came in. And the Trump administration was very clear that they wanted to reduce the refugee program. They wanted fewer refugees in the country and they set up many more procedures to slow down the whole process. And so you can see how that affected us in a state. So we went from 235 and then the next year, the next number, 133, 115, 23. So you could see it was until February fiscal year 21 when we got new leadership that that number starts to go up. You see the number 47 there. In a minute now, I will show you what it's looking like for this year. The other thing you can see in this chart is where people come from. You can see back in 2016, we had a lot of bootleys. And again, if you look back, you will see that there was war and strife at that time, but also previously because there's a lag period between the major conflict and when people arrive here. We also had big numbers from Congo. Congo has continued to have brutal civil strife. And so you see those numbers coming in constantly. And we had big numbers out of Somalia. Again, I don't know if you can recall back, but Somalia was very much in the news years ago and continues to be off and on for their significant civil strife. So those are some of the big numbers that we had. Now, when I add the column FY22 to this, you will see Afghanistan will be far and away our biggest number. We have had some other refugees who are more traditional refugees coming this year, but very small numbers. Mostly Congo and Sudan, I believe. So that's what it looks like generally. Now I'm gonna talk here, let me go here. We're gonna talk a little bit about what we're seeing now. So back in November, we started receiving refugees into Vermont. We received one family a little earlier, but back in November, we have two resettlement agencies in Vermont. And remember I told you earlier, it's the resettlement agencies who are the primary drivers of how many refugees we get and they are the primary people who are providing that service, especially in that first few months, the first year. So up in Colchester, we have USCRI, and I forget what it stands for. Sorry, sometimes they even forget what it stands for. It used to be called VRRP, the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program. So they received 130 Afghan refugees so far and they started in November. And this is a lot of refugees to receive in a very short period because the refugees only arrived until February 15th. So that's many every week. Normally we just get maybe one refugee family every couple of weeks throughout the year. So this is a really rapid arrival at a really short time. And if you remember in our chart, you could see there were not many refugees before. So of course there weren't a lot of staff anymore because you didn't need a lot of staff if you were only helping 30 people. So we had a lot of people arriving, a brand new population we've never had, a brand new language, and we hardly had any Afghans in Vermont who can speak who help to help interpret when they arrive and very few staff. So it's a lot happening at once. Another organization which is brand new in the southern part of Vermont is called ECDC. It's another resettlement agency. It stands for the Ethiopian Community Development Council. But the fact that it's Ethiopian has nothing to do with refugee resettlement. It was just founded by Ethiopians. So they received in the Brattle, Borough, Bennington area 90 refugees. And again, even more challenging than Colchester because this was a region of Vermont who's never received refugees. So the health providers have not had training before in how to do medical exams for refugees. All the service providers aren't used to it. We have a school system that's not used to receiving a big influx of new people who don't speak the language. And so that's what we had. And as I mentioned, in addition, about 20 or 30 refugees have arrived slowly from other countries through the usual program. I feel fortunate that I had a background. I was in Afghanistan soon after 9-11 and after the Taliban fell there. So the Taliban were conquered right after 9-11 and I was there in early 2002. And part of my job was to help set up schools and other kind of normalizing activities for children. Somewhere kids could go and feel like their day is normal. They weren't very fancy or highly academic schools and they weren't qualified teachers, but we basically went around to communities. We showed up with some balls, some equipment. We showed up with like those beach mats so that they could lay them down for flooring like a tatami mat and some food and notebooks and a little bit of money. And we would train teachers for a few days and training teachers meant we would find anyone who could read and write, which was mostly mulas, mostly men. We would learn that there are sometimes women who could read and write, but it was difficult to access them because culturally the men tend to control who is available for things like that. So anyway, we quickly trained teachers and provided some materials and helped them make a schedule and the girls and the boys had to be separate. So we would say, let's do girls school for a few hours on Monday and Wednesday and let's do boys school for a few hours on Tuesday and Thursday. And so that's the kind of work we did. We did some other work too, but that was the main thrust of it, really focusing on children. So I got to know a lot of Afghans and so when this tragedy occurred and I happened to be appointed at the same time as the refugee director, it felt like a pretty wonderful blessing, a perfect storm in a way for me and a good way of kind of my background and coming out of the pandemic, that emergency kind of response feeling and then knowing that I had that connection. I was able to reach out to a former interpreter I had whose family was actually stuck in Afghanistan. They had just gone home to visit because they have green cards. They had just gone home to visit for a little bit. His wife and children visit their family in Afghanistan. And then this happened and they couldn't get to the airport and they were stuck there for months. And so we actually reached out to Senator Leahy to try to expedite their case because we knew that in addition to air lifting people out the United States was also trying to get out citizens and green card holders. So I'm happy to say a few months later he texted me one night and said my wife and my four daughters just arrived at the airport in Washington which was pretty amazing because they had not been leaving their apartment for fear of the Taliban. So that's the situation. We've got people who are afraid to leave who are over there and then we've got folks who were lucky enough to get out and they're here. A lot of the people arriving here still have family back home. For the families who come, they have extended family. We have single men who arrived whose families, brothers and sisters or maybe even whose wives and children are over there and there is no easy path for them to get out right now. I don't know that the US government is going to do another major initiative at this time. I know little by little people are working on getting people out but it is not straightforward at all. So now I'm going to talk a little bit about an update on the arrivals. I'm just going to pause and check the Q and A if there's anything. There is one question that I could answer just while I'm in it, if you don't mind. And the question was how long do you think it would take them to get a green card? And I will, I'll talk a little bit about the services in just a minute. So if they have to go through asylum, once they get asylum, the green card application I believe is relatively quick, could be within a year. What we don't know is how long it will take them to get granted asylum. We have heard through Congress or through the United States immigration service that they're going to try to expedite it but we're not sure, we're not sure that that's going to happen. Okay, so update on Afghan arrivals. So normally when refugees arrive here in Vermont, usually we know well in advance that they're coming, the resettlement agencies can find housing for them. They're picked up at the airport, they're given that first warm, culturally appropriate meal and then they're brought directly to their new apartment, not new as in newly built, but new to them. But in the Afghan arrival situation, we had very little notice they were coming. Many of them were arriving at once and we have a housing crisis in Vermont. And so we knew that we would not be able to just slide them right into a place. And we also know that a lot of families coming from other cultures are big and it's difficult to find three bedroom houses. And as you know, I'm sure you're hearing about the housing crisis. People are having trouble buying houses, people are having trouble renting houses, especially affordable ones. So a couple of strategies were used. One strategy used was the host family strategy. And that's where, and that was mostly in the Chittenden area. And that's where families arrived and they were placed with a host family for maybe a month, maybe even up to two months, although usually a month. And while the resettlement agency, so USCRI looked for a place for them. Now we thought, how are we gonna find housing? It's already so difficult because of course you can't push other people out of the way because we have new arrivals. That's not fair. Everybody's looking for housing. But we had a lot of landlords who stepped up who said, you know, I was holding or I wasn't sure, but I really wanna help and I wanna release my unit. And USCRI also already works with a small group of landlords who have had good experiences with refugees and continue to want to rent to them. So that's going okay. It's still hard and tight, but it's happening. We've heard from other states where people are in hotels for months and months because they can't find housing. So we are relatively lucky. Up in Brattleboro, rather than go to host families, they did something a little different. They used a large college campus. There's a big organization in Brattleboro called the School for International Training, which is handy because they are used to doing English as a second language training. They're used to doing cultural orientation for people because it's an international kind of college. So they partnered and said, let's open up our campus. We'll be able to provide food. They can stay here. They can get their cultural orientation here. And then, you know, we'll look for places. So that's what's happening up in Brattleboro. About 50% of the folks in Brattleboro, Bennington area are actually moving out by the end of this weekend into houses, which is great. They started arriving in January. So it's been about two months. And about 90% of the people who arrived in the Chittenden area are moving out and finding places. Employment. So I'm gonna back up here and just talk a little bit about the services. If I can back up, let's see. Just give me one moment. There we go. I just have to hit it a little harder. I'm gonna cruise through this. Oh, sorry. I just stopped sharing. So I'm gonna share again. All right. Thank you. I'm gonna see if I can. It's a little tricky to go back. So let's see if I can get to this spot here. I'm gonna talk a little bit about the services. So some of the core services were refugees. Again, provided primarily about the resettlement agencies. Also by another agency called the Association of Africans Living in Vermont. So employment services. They get some workshops on what it means to be employed. They learn about sick time, how to dress, the hours of work, all the cultural things. They get some assistance with securing housing. They get a one-time payment for basic needs. So the resettlement agency for them, get some money, spends it on their behalf to buy direct items. And if anything is leftover, they get that direct too. So it goes to both. They also get cash assistance if they are eligible for reach-up, which all of them are if they're in a family. If you're a single, you get the equivalent of reach-up, which is refugee cash assistance. And for those of you who don't know, reach-up is basically like the welfare assistance that the state provides for families who are lower income and who need it while they get their feet on the ground. So that's the same thing that's offered to refugees. It's not something special or extra. It's the same that we would give to any lower income Vermonter who is eligible. They also get Medicaid, just like we would give to any other Vermonter who's eligible. And they also get some English language instruction. They're actually required to take English for the first several months as part of receiving that cash assistance. So they also get some training and job development. They can also get vocational training. The federal government has some unique programs there that we can access. There's also interpretation and translation. If you go to the doctor and you speak a different language, the hospital or the medical practice is required to provide interpretation. But if you go to the bank or to the school, the refugee resettlement agency will send an interpreter to help with that. So that's another interesting part, school registration. A lot of folks who come are also children, school children, usually about 50% are school children. In the case of the Afghans, it's about 40%. So they enroll in school and it's amazing. You'll get a five year old showing up who doesn't speak any English and by the time they hit first grade, they speak. And then you'll get a 16 year old who doesn't speak and that's harder. And so they're given a lot more English language, kind of intensive learning, separate from the other kids. And then eventually they try to integrate the classroom. So there are special programs for that. And they also get citizenship classes. Now, in the case of the Afghans, that won't be offered for a while because it won't be relevant. But for most of the refugees, if they've been here for five years and they get their green card, they can then apply for citizenship. I wanna speak a little bit about health and mental health. There are a lot of mental health challenges generally in the world right now, I would say, and in Vermont related to the pandemic and everything else. But when you arrive from another country, particularly so rapidly having to leave like this, you arrive here, you have nothing. You can't speak the language. You feel isolated. You feel poor. You have your extended family at home and you are worried about them because if you were associated with the US military and you were being persecuted or a target, perhaps they are too, there is a famine occurring right now in Afghanistan because the Taliban has not been able to manage what they were given and for other reasons. And the medical emergency. So there's just a lot and then they themselves may have been tortured or imprisoned before they came. So there's so much trauma and, but there are many cultures that do not think of mental health as a valid reason to get help. And so when we use phrases like mental health in other cultures, they might think we're asking them, are you crazy? So if we say, do you think you need a mental health referral, they might say, no, because they think of mental health as someone they knew who was out walking in the winter with no shoes down the middle of the highway. So sometimes we have to use different words like, do you feel sad? Do you feel stressed? And when we use that language, we get a much better response. So we are finding that the Afghans arriving here are open to getting some mental health support and we are approaching it that way. And they are stressed. So it's not like a hidden way of trying to get at it. I mean, the reality is it's very stressful. Our challenge, of course, is that our health system and our mental health system is maxed out. So we're doing everything we can to get people in to see a primary care doctor. Dentistry is a big issue. We are maxed out with our dental issues, with our dental capacity in Vermont, but a lot of people in lower income countries have never had much dental work. So there's often a lot of work if you choose to get that when you arrive. So we're doing everything we can to help in that way. So I think I've talked about some of the challenges. The language, of course, transportation, buying a car, ensuring a car and keeping a car fueled up is expensive. In other states, you place refugees in a city preferably near a good transportation system. For example, in Southern Vermont, we don't have great transportation, public transportation systems. So we're working with some of the bus systems to make that easier, but really people are pretty isolated. And so we have to figure out, how do you get to work if you don't have a car? Can you ride share? And if the head of the household goes to work, let's say the man, the woman is at home, she's with the kids, but she may not be really nearby other Afghan women. Even though we try to keep them close together, they might not be within walking distance. So it can be very isolating. In some cases, the community comes together and actually buys an old car and that can be helpful. There's also cultural acclimation. There are some really big cultural differences. We notice that the children, when they arrive, the children are very polite. They don't speak back to their parents. They would never raise their voice to an adult. But then they go into the school system and our culture is very different. There are children who are shouting out, who are sometimes talking back to adults and that can be confusing. And sometimes the child might bring that back home and that is not well received back in the home of the refugee family. And we also have challenges where in some cultures, men may be able to hit women and that's very accepted in the culture. It's not okay, but it's accepted. In our culture, it's not accepted. And we have to be very clear at the beginning. Not only is it wrong in our culture, it could result in your children being removed from you if you hit your children. That could be a huge change for some. And so that's a message we try to get out there. Also, things like safety. Think about for some of us who were raised, maybe in the 50s, 40s or even 60s, you get in a car and you don't have to wear a seatbelt when your friend is riding on a bike or motorcycle, you get up on the handlebars. There wasn't a lot of safety. A lot of countries where refugees are coming from, it's still kind of like that. There's not a lot of safety rules. And so things like that here in the US, you might be seen as negligent, whereas in your culture, that might be normal. So all the little things, cultural acclimation. And then I mentioned the history of trauma arriving in a new country. I'm gonna just go for a couple more minutes then we'll pause for discussion. Just wanted to really speak about the workforce. Governor Scott is very supportive of refugees coming into Vermont. The biggest reason being that it's the right thing to do. But a secondary reason also is that we have a huge workforce shortage here. And these people arriving very much want to work. It's the first thing they ask, when can I go to work? So this does fill labor shortages and we've had nothing but positive responses from employers saying, please, we'd love to hire some new Americans, some refugees. I'm using the word refugee a lot in this presentation, but were I speaking about employers and in a more broad way, I would probably use the phrase new Americans, new Vermonters. And so they come in, they do slide into a lot of the lower skill jobs, but not all. We've got accountants, we've got nurses, we've got health professionals arriving. So we've got a mix. And when people have a higher skill level, we try to get them in a job using that higher skill level. English language is the key to getting a better job. So we really push the English language learning if they don't have it. Just a little example here, here are two refugees who were former refugees and who are business people now here in Vermont. We actually find that refugees coming to this country actually have a higher entrepreneurship rate than people who are born in this country. So a real hunger. And I gave a few examples, Google, WhatsApp, PayPal, those are all companies that were actually started by immigrants or refugees. The men tend to participate in the labor force the same as American born men would, but the women, it takes them a while. After about 10 years, they are participating at the same rate, but it does take a little while. And what is needed, this might need to be updated, but long-term housing is still needed. If you know people, that would be wonderful. Gift cards, while we get a lot of donations, it's wonderful to be able to give a cash card for coals or for somewhere or for the grocery store so people can choose their own things. And then cash is always the best donation because it lets the resettlement agency spend it on whatever urgent need comes up. So thank you so much for listening. I am gonna put myself on mute for a minute and I'll turn it over to Beth maybe to get some questions or discussion. Yes, we have some additional questions for you. Does your office have a policy towards refugees who settle in Vermont obtain housing and support services from local and state organizations here and then decide to move to another state? Is there a minimum stay in Vermont required or expected? There is no minimum stay. When refugees arrive in the US, they are free to go wherever they like. They are assigned to agencies. And so they are told that is the best place to go because that's where you'll get the services you need. But if they choose to go somewhere else, they can. The services might not be as strong and there might not be as much coordination. Normally when people arrive here, they tend to stay at least through the first eight months. Probably 60, 70% stay very long-term. Our challenge is more when they go into more rural areas. Historically, if we place a small number of families in a more rural area, they don't stay long because they don't have a sense of community and there's not a lot of services. So we'll have to see how it goes with the Afghans. We are really trying to cluster them so they have a sense of community. Okay, another question. Do Vermodgers who arrived here as refugees some decades ago, such as those from Vietnam or Bosnia, play an active role in welcoming and assisting newly arrived refugees from other parts of the world? They sure do. In fact, there is a former refugee who on her own dime and we've asked if she would like money for it, she cooks the first meal for every single family that arrives at the airport. Even if it's back to back, a family of eight, one day, a family of five, the next, she sets up in her kitchen and she cooks culturally appropriate food because she's Muslim and they need halal meat and she brings it up to the airport and they bring that to their home. So that's one woman. I can tell you, I met a family at the airport a few weeks ago. We brought them to their new home. That home was the second rental property of a Bosnian woman who arrived here when she was six years old with her mother. And out at the airport, this woman held the hands of a six year old Afghan girl and she said, I was you. And then she brought that family to their new home and we actually walked around with the family and the little girls, they would open the door and see a new room and they would put their thumbs up and look at us and say, yes, every time they saw the next room. So it was wonderful. Yes. Okay. Do we have enough translators in Vermont to assist all the refugees? If not, what are the alternatives? We do not have enough translators or interpreters to assist the refugees. The alternatives are not great. We have telephonic interpretation. So every medical provider is required to provide interpretation if there isn't somebody in person and they do use telephonic. The state also uses telephonic. So you call and they get a translator on the phone, but we don't have enough and we do what we can. And it means sometimes, and this is probably for every language group, people have to struggle through sometimes on their own or with sign language and other things, but we do it for the most important ones. We do it for the most important appointments, but often it isn't as adequate as we would like. Are there professionals who are stepping up in providing inexpensive or pro bono services for these refugees? Dentists, optometrists, eyeglasses, hearing aids, et cetera? All of the healthcare providers, so all of these arrivals are eligible for Medicaid, but some of them, the benefits were put in a little late because some of the offices were new and the staff were new. So all that to say, even when they don't have their Medicaid card yet, doctors and others in Vermont are really stepping up and providing them the service and trusting that they will get reimbursed by Medicaid. Is anyone doing it free of charge? Certainly they're putting in a lot of extra time than they would at a regular appointment. A regular appointment time is 15 minutes. These appointments are a lot longer than 15 minutes. So I would say they're certainly putting in some personal time, but they are also mostly getting the Medicaid billing rate. The pro bono place is really all the volunteers coming out. Also the pro bono lawyers helping out, but in the medical system, I can't speak to it beyond that I know they're doing their best, but they are billing Medicaid, which would be appropriate. What might be a good source of cars? Good news garage? Yeah, good news garage is great. Used car prices are brutal right now, unfortunately, but I mean, if somebody has an extra car and they were thinking of selling it, but instead would be willing to donate it, the two places to reach out to would be USCRI and ECDC, and they might be able to then connect you with a group of volunteers who's working with the one of the families or something like that. Will we be receiving refugees from Ukraine? I don't think we will, certainly not in the near future. Like I said before, Afghanistan was an exception in that we saw the tragedy and they arrived here months later. Usually there's a conflict and it takes years for people to arrive in their final destination country and the nearby countries help in the meantime. In the case of the Ukraine, I would think it's unlikely that the US would be airlifting people in on a special status. It does take a long time to get this status and I would guess that Europe will probably absorb most, but who knows, there could be an emergency declaration and that could change, but at this time when we spoke to the US government last Friday right now, there are no plans for a major resettlement effort. And tied into that, Canada has just announced that they will take an unlimited number of refugees from Ukraine. Is there a reason that the US can't sort of pivot and do the same? I can't speak to the federal policy. There might be a difference between what a country says they're willing to do and the timing. So Canada may do that. It could still take years depending on what their process is, but I can't speak more to the federal guidance on that other than to say what we were told was we shouldn't expect Ukrainians anytime soon. Do you think it would have anything to do with the fact that Canada has such a large population of Ukrainian descent? Well, I think that might be the difference. There's a difference between refugees and people who come in through a visa. So if you already have relatives here, yes, your Ukrainian relative could start working on a visa. That's different. Arriving as a refugee would be fleeing from persecution and arriving on that status. That's a different process. So I'm not sure what Canada's proclamation was, but I would certainly think we may start receiving people through the visa process possibly. Okay. How easy or difficult is it for professional people moving here to pick up the same career and practice that here? If they don't have strong English, it's difficult and depending on the credentialing. So we are trying to do better with that, but the US, a lot of the professional organizations do not recognize credentials from countries that tend to be lower income, to be honest. They're often not seen as equivalent. And one thing that I was actually working with the Office of Professional Development on this before all of this happened, they do have someone now who's focused on trying to figure out what we could accept as an equivalent. But if you were at something very high level that required licensing in Ukraine, if you were an engineer, you might not be able to slide into an engineering job here if it requires a certain certification. It happens, it's more difficult, but the English is huge. If you come in here and you're fluent with English, you might be able to, might be able to challenge the exam, submit for a license here. The English really is the game changer, I think. Okay. And someone is asking if we wish to provide money or make a donation, where should it be sent? Where are some good organizations to send the donations to? So Beth, I can send you the link to the web page for the State Refugee Office. And then there's a section under How Can I Help? And there are donate links there for the organizations. Can I do that for you? If you wanna pause, I could put it in the chat right now if you wanted to take one minute or I can send it to you after. I think probably best to send it to me after because the chat closes off like in two minutes. And people won't have access to see it after that. So they can write really quickly. Okay. Can refugees ever choose where they'd like to go? Yes, they can choose where they'd like to go. They can choose where they'd like to go when they arrive, to be honest. They're assigned to places because that's where we're gonna be able to provide good services, but they could decide tomorrow I'm flying to California and they could go there. Now there might not be a place there for them in terms of an organization that can help them. If they walk into a resettlement agency, they'll do their best, but they tend to be assigned to places where we think there's space, capacity. They often go to places where they know family and friends. That was one of the challenges of Vermont. People were not initially choosing Vermont because we don't have a population here already of Afghans, but eventually a lot of places filled up. And now there are some families who wanna come here to be with the families here. So we'll see how that goes. Okay. Well, I think we're just about out of time, but I wanna thank you so much for helping to inform us about the evolution of the refugee program in Vermont and where we are and where we may be headed. And also to thank you for your work that you did with the Department of Health. So it's been a great pleasure to have you here today. So on behalf of Tripoli, thanks so much. Tracy Dolan. Thank you very much. Take care. Take care, everybody.