Rise & Shine - October 20

A Follow Up on Our Local Look at Immigration Issues.

Rise & Shine, October 20^th

The Rise and Shine discussion group meets Sunday mornings at 9:00 am in the Parlor. Adults from the 8:00 & 10:00 services gather for discussions that are relevant to their lives through the lens of a current topic and scriptural references. This week's discussion outline can be read or downloaded below.

Click HERE to download a copy of this week's discussion outline

Hebrews 13:1-2
Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

Questions:

1. What is one thing you recently became aware of concerning immigrants or refugees that you didn’t know before?
2. How, if at all, should Redeemer take a more active role in the care of immigrants and refugees?
3. Our baptismal covenant asks us to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving [our] neighbor as [ourselves].” How does this clash or merge with your idea of immigrant and refugee resettlement?

In the News

Ohio, Kentucky among top states for refugees

Ohio and Kentucky were both among the top states for refugee resettlement in fiscal 2019, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of State Department data. Kentucky ranks as fifth in the United States for refugee resettlement, and Ohio ranks sixth for the 2019 fiscal year.

The Trump administration announced last month that it will reduce the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States to a historic low of 18,000 in the fiscal year 2020.

Refugee resettlement in the U.S. had already begun to drop before this announcement and the U.S. is no longer the world’s top country for refugee admissions, according to the analysis .

Texas, Washington, New York and California resettled almost a quarter of all refugees in fiscal 2019, according to Pew Research Center.

Ohio has consistently ranked fifth or sixth for refugee resettlement in the U.S. for the past five years, with the majority of refugees living in five counties: Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Montgomery and Summit, according to the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services.

At Fugees Family in Columbus, a non-profit focused on leveling the playing field for young refugees, 100% of the students are refugees that still have family members waiting to see if they will be admitted into the United States.

"I think we’re feeling a lot of survivor’s guilt in our schools because the people that get to come to the United States, I mean, they won the lottery, they’re alive," said Luma Mufleh, the CEO and founder of Fugees Family. “… when you’ve cut it down to 18,000, the likelihood of those family members coming is even lower."

Mufleh is referring to the Trump Administration plan to cap the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. for fiscal year 2020 to 18,000. That would be the lowest figure since the refugee resettlement program started nearly 40 years. Just a few years ago, in fiscal year 2017, Barack Obama set the cap at 110,000. When President Trump took office, he lowered the cap to 50,000. The following year, it was down to 45,000 and then 30,000.

Who is a refugee?

A refugee is a person unable or unwilling to return to their home county because a “well founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. This definition was decided by the United Nations 1951 Convention relation to the Status of Refugees.

There is sometimes confusion between what designates a person a migrant, refugee, or asylum seeker. Migrant is an umbrella term for people who leave their homes and cross international borders, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Asylum seekers are those who meet refugee status but apply from within the U.S. or at ports of entry and is awaiting the determination of his or her status.

How the does the refugee resettlement program work?

Every fall, the U.S. president announces the maximum number of refugees who can enter the country in a fiscal year. For fiscal 2020, which started Oct. 1, 2019, and will end on Sept. 30, 2020, Trump has set a ceiling of 18,000 refugees.

Overall, the U.S. has admitted 76,200 refugees under the Trump administration ( Jan. 20, 2017, to Sept. 30, 2019). By comparison, the U.S. admitted nearly 85,000 refugees in fiscal 2016, the last full fiscal year of the Obama administration, according to Pew Research.