Refugee resettlement organizations play a critical role in immigrant integration, providing job training programs, interpretation and translation services, and other educational programming for individuals and businesses. The indefinite pause of the refugee resettlement program by the Trump administration froze funding for many of these organizations, including those with long-established relationships with local communities, employers, and other community-based organizations. This integration infrastructure takes years to build and is often the catalyst that helps foreign-born people move from surviving to thriving.
On this episode of Policy Outsider, we dive into the services provided by one of these organizations, the benefits these services have in the community, and how the organization is navigating a challenging new funding and cultural landscape. Jennifer Rizzo-Choi, the executive director of the International Institute of Buffalo, an organization whose mission is to “make Western New York a better place for, and because of, immigrants and refugees,” speaks with the Institute on Immigrant Integration Research and Policy’s executive director, Dina Refki, and Ken Irish-Bramble, a fellow with the Institute on Immigrant Integration.
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Joel Tirado 0:00
Welcome to policy outsider presented by the Rockefeller Institute of Government. I’m Joel tirado. Refugee resettlement organizations play a critical role in immigrant integration, providing job training programs, interpretation and translation services and other educational programming for individuals and businesses. The indefinite pause of the refugee resettlement program by the Trump administration froze funding for many of these organizations, including those with long established relationships with local communities, employers and other community based organizations. This integration infrastructure takes years to build, and is often the catalyst that helps foreign born people move from surviving to thriving on this episode of policy outsider, we dive into the services provided by one of these organizations, the benefits these services have in the community and how the organization is navigating a challenging new funding and cultural landscape. Jennifer Rizzo-Choi, the executive director of the International Institute of Buffalo, an organization whose mission is to make western New York a better place for and because of immigrants and refugees, speaks with the Institute on immigrant integration research and policies. Executive Director Dina Refki and Ken Irish-Bramble, a fellow with the Institute on immigrant integration. That conversation is up next, but first a quick note. This conversation was recorded on Tuesday, March 18. This is a rapidly changing policy area, with the indefinite pause of the US refugee admissions program being challenged in court, and final ruling still to come. You.
Ken Irish-Bramble 1:52
Today, we’re having a conversation with Jennifer Rizzo-Choi from the International Institute of Buffalo. Hi, Jenny. How are
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 2:02
you today? I’m good. Ken, thanks for having me. Oh,
Ken Irish-Bramble 2:06
it’s absolutely my pleasure. So Jenny, tell us a little bit about the work that you do at the International Institute of Buffalo. Well, the
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 2:14
International Institute of Buffalo has been around for over 100 years. We’re based in Buffalo, New York, we are at hurt a welcoming organization, and that we have always served the foreign born in our community. Our mission is to make western New York a better place for and because of immigrants and refugees, and we do that through a range of services. We provide social services to newly arrived refugees and other immigrants in our community, things like case management. We find them housing. We get their kids enrolled in school. We provide legal services. So legal representation for folks. We run an interpreting and translation business, so you can come to us if you need a document translated or you need an interpreter, and that’s in over 100 languages. And we also provide employment services, and we help a lot of our clients find their first jobs in America.
Ken Irish-Bramble 3:08
Oh, that’s awesome. Now, you mentioned that you provide services to a wide range of immigrant groups, and you specified, and I think today we’re focusing on refugees quite you know, quite often people aren’t familiar with the distinction of what makes someone a refugee, as opposed to any of the other categories of immigrants. Can you shed some light on that in and in particular, the differences between a refugee and an asylum seeker, sure,
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 3:42
and I’m so glad you asked this question, because you’re right. It is confusing, because there’s sort of the sense that people have of they assume a refugee is someone who has fled their country, which is very true. But then there’s the legal definition that’s applied under US law and international law, and that can make things complicated. So the in the United States, the legal definition of a refugee is someone who has fled his or her homeland and is unable to or unwilling to return on account of persecution that they have suffered in the past or fear in the future on account of their race, nationality, religion, political opinion or particular social group. And so that’s a very spelled out legal definition that someone has to go through an adjudication process to be able to be granted that status. So refugees who are brought into the United States have that adjudication happen overseas. They’ve, they’ve usually fled their country, oftentimes gone to a refugee camp. At some point, they have interacted with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and through that process, they’ve, they’ve met the international law definition of a refugee, and then they had to go through the US law screening of being a refugee, and then they are brought to this country after a long. Weight through a means called resettlement. So the Institute is a refugee resettlement organization, and that we are given roughly 500 refugees a year that we know they’re coming. They’re spaced out in their arrival, and we work to secure them and help integrate them into homes and jobs and communities that is different from someone who shows up at our country, at a border or port of entry and asks for asylum, and this is where the situation gets complicated, because the definition that one has to meet for legal asylum in the United States is the same definition I just spelled out for you. The difference is that the adjudication happens on US soil, and the grant comes under a different section of immigration law, but it’s the same definition. It’s just that instead of being overseas and being processed there, they’re processed here in our country, usually by an immigration officer or immigration court, and it takes, sometimes years before a decision is made. And so people who have applied for asylum are considered asylum seekers, and it is only when they have received an approval on that case that they are asylees and that they can access the wealth of of benefits and social safety supports that are in our country.
Ken Irish-Bramble 6:14
Thank you very much for for clarifying that. Um, can you tell us a little bit about the diversity of of the refugee population that comes to United States, where are they coming from, and what kind of conditions are they usually fleeing? Sure.
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 6:32
So refugees that are coming in for resettlement are coming through the established program, the US refugee admissions program, USRA, which was set up in 1980 actually, we just recently celebrated the 45th anniversary of that yesterday, on March 17. So refugees coming from us rap are determined through the State Department’s populations, where the State Department designates certain populations that it recognizes is a resettlement population and that they are not able to return home. So we’re seeing refugees coming from Africa, places like Sudan, Eritrea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, refugees coming from the Middle East, like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and refugees coming from Asia. Burma in particular has several different ethnic populations that are coming in and sometimes also through South America. We’ve done resettlement of Colombians. So those are resettlement populations, and that number every year is set by presidential determination, and then the population, population numbers as they get, sort of boiled down or determined by the State Department, like per region of the country. So this past year, President Biden had set in an allocation of 125,000 refugees to be allowed in. So that is different from people who are showing up to seek asylum in our country. That varies. Those populations are coming from across the globe. It’s really people who are not able to access that overseas United Nations program, perhaps because they’re not able to get to a camp. It’s not nearby the country where they fled. And so there’s a range of nationalities and populations that are in the asylum system. You know lots of African nations. You know countries like Cameroon, parts of like Southern Africa, Eastern Africa, where there’s been conflict, a range of Middle Eastern populations and Central and South American really, it covers the rest of the globe. USCIS does maintain data on, you know, what countries often get that grant compared to others, but they have to go through a very individualized assessment to see if they meet the legal definition for asylum.
Ken Irish-Bramble 8:44
Wonderful. And how are determinations made, because the program as you’ve described it, or the regime as you’ve described it is quite International, so how are determinations made about where refugees should be resettled so, so how do they decide which refugees, for example, might go to the United States, as opposed to any other receiving country? You
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 9:12
know, that’s a really great question too, because so many people, I think, don’t realize how much people give up and the lack of control over your future you have as a resettlement refugee. So when you end up fleeing your country and signing up with the United Nations, the fate of your future is completely up in the air. You know, if you look at the UN statistics, there are over 40 million refugees that are registered worldwide, and as I mentioned, the United States was taking, on average, like roughly 100,000 a year. So that’s a fraction. There are so many people who are refugees that are never going to end up in permanent resettlement. It’s very sad situation. The UN when they assign out refugees, you know, they look at each country’s quotas and the US. US will have a number we submit every year, as do a lot of the other European nations, Canada, Australia, etc. Once someone’s referred over to the US to the United States, then the US has to go through its screening process. And so United States may take in different refugee populations for resettlement, for example, than Australia May. So that, in itself, is a nuance, depending on what what population you’re coming from. Then, when the US goes through its decision and screening you once, if you are approved, and you are so lucky to be granted the status, you do not have very much control on where you end up in the United States. If you happen to have a family member or someone that you know could have been somebody from your community. It could have been you know, let’s say, a Peace Corps worker you’ve ever met before, and you’re in contact with them, you can designate them as a US tie and ask to be sent to the city where they are, but that is not a guarantee. So the reality is that you could be sent anywhere in the country, and there’s no guarantee you would end up in like, an Albany or a buffalo. You could end up, you know, in Indiana. And we do see, oftentimes large families separated, where, like, grandma and grandpa may end up going to Michigan, and, you know, Mom Dad and three kids end up going to Texas. That does happen. Okay,
Ken Irish-Bramble 11:18
I’m curious, curious about hearing a little bit more about how those determinations are made domestically in terms of identifying geographic spaces that might be appropriate for refugee resettlement. Now, since 1976 there have been about 3.6 million refugees who have resettled here in the United States. How large is the resettlement population in upstate New York, in the areas that you serve?
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 11:53
It is rather large. You know, we average about 1500 to 2000 refugees a year coming in for resettlement. In recent years, under the last administration, under President Biden, and refugee resettlement as a whole began booming. I’d say in Buffalo by like the late 2000s early 2000 10s, Buffalo has four resettlement centers. The Institute is one of the four. So you have four national pipelines, if you will, coming in here that are resettling refugees in terms of actual numbers. The things that we like to point to in Buffalo are the fact that with the 2020 census, for the first time in 50 years, Buffalo had population growth, and it was attributed specifically to the foreign born. That’s a big thing for a city that was sort of on a, you know, the dying trend of the industrial age, and we continue to lose population to finally see population growth. You also see that that spark of progress across rest of upstate, like Rochester, Syracuse, Utica. I was recently in Albany and talking to the executive director of the Utica resettlement center, and she told me that 30% of the city of Utica population is foreign born. So that’s specifically attributed to refugee resettlement, which is booming there. So, you know, it’s it’s really contributed to a rebirth for Upstate and has helped to spark our economies. So
Ken Irish-Bramble 13:18
these regions in upstate New York. How are they identified? So how? Why is Buffalo, for example, considered to be a good area for relocating or resettling? Excuse me, refugees?
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 13:32
Well, you have to have a social service organization like the International Institute of Buffalo, that can be a receiving organization. So we don’t have a direct contract with the federal government. We subcontract through a national office. Ours is us committee for refugees and immigrants. So we have to have that sort of that’s the pipeline I referred to. And then from there, your city has to be welcoming. I mean, that’s very important. And your city has to have a safety support net in place, to be able to bring in and resettle people. So when you look at how, what do
Ken Irish-Bramble 14:07
you mean by the city being welcoming? So what does that entail?
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 14:13
Well, welcoming is so many things. It’s, it’s spoken and unspoken. Welcoming means that it’s it’s not just that you’re going to roll new arrivals in social services and enroll their kids in school. It’s the school system has academic coaches in the school system, that way your child, who doesn’t speak English yet and is learning, can learn the material and the teachers can interact with the parents. It’s your city having language access laws in place, and, you know, designating the top five or top 10 spoken languages and making sure that public documents are available in those languages. It’s, you know, recognizing that these communities are settling in and they’re going to need. Supports in place, but that people are friendly to them, and that employers in the region are willing to hire and also have their their employee base go through a cultural competency training, so that way they understand who their new co workers are and what they had gone through. So welcoming is more than just saying, yes, we want to welcome you in because we have jobs you need to do. It’s a community ethos, and I think that Buffalo has long been doing that because we are, and have always been, a city of immigrants. And as each immigration wave has come here, it has contributed to improving Buffalo and the people who live here.
Dina Refki 15:36
And it also seems, Jenny, that one of the consideration that you cited is the loss of population. So there is kind of an economic consideration of the geographic area itself that also goes is a factor that goes into the decision making of where to settle refugees. Definitely.
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 15:57
I mean cities that are interested in refugee populations often have had population loss and are struggling to hire for jobs. And so it’s funny, Buffalo has been contacted before by other communities out out west, in Pennsylvania, we’ve even had some delegations come in and sort of do the tour of Buffalo and learn and see how did we have this renaissance? And, you know, a lot of what we show them is like, this isn’t built in a day. You know, there’s resettlement centers, but after that, you’ve got to make sure that your schools are ready for this population, and your hospitals are ready, and your employers are open minded. And you know, your city is accessible by bus transit or public transportation in some way. And so, you know, we do see other communities wanting to emulate this. But it is, it is. It definitely takes decades to build and for people to feel comfortable enough to want to stay and make that home. One thing that Buffalo has benefited from is something called secondary migration, where refugees were resettled in other states that were not as supportive of refugees and their initial resettlement and didn’t provide as many services as New York State does. And so the refugees finished out their, you know, their their welcome money, their their support that they got from their resettlement agency, and then they relocated to New York State and to Buffalo because they knew that there was an extensive social safety net here.
Ken Irish-Bramble 17:20
Fantastic. So you mentioned quite a bit about the availability of services. Many of our listeners may think of hosting refugees as a drain on American resources, but you have argued, in fact, you mentioned it a little bit earlier that there are positive impacts on American on the American economy and on the economies of the areas where refugees are resettled. Can you please share with us a little bit more, some additional insights on how refugee resettlement has contributed in the New York areas that you serve? Sure?
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 17:58
Well, I would point first to a national study that was done by the US Department of Health and Human Services, which looked at the US rap us refugee admissions program in terms of the investments made into refugees and asylees, those who were granted asylum. And they found that over a 15 year period, that when you take all the money that was invested into these individuals through social services and public benefits. And, you know, organizations like ours, and then you look at the contribution that they made to the economy, that there was a net fiscal benefit of $124 billion over a 15 year period. So, you know, it’s not just theoretical that this is good for business in an economy, there’s actual statistics that like underscore that that is the case. Beyond that, what I’d say is, you know, you see in Buffalo, at least, communities that are revitalizing. We have refugees buying homes and improving neighborhoods. You know, they’re buying properties and rebuilding there or fixing up homes that were vacant. They’re starting small businesses. They are also contributing to employers that, you know, we hear many times from employers who have struggled to if they’re like a manufacturing site, for instance, run the third shift. They can only staff the first and second shift, and they’re so happy to be able to hire refugees because they’re finally able to produce at the rate that their business was set up to be. So there’s a lot of instances where Buffalo’s economy has grown due to a ready and reliable and hard working workforce that has shown up. Here are there
Ken Irish-Bramble 19:41
pre established, you know, pipelines that help connect these new immigrants with employment opportunities and other resources to ensure their success? Yes,
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 19:53
there are. I mean, the resettlement agencies would be the first part of that pipeline. So the International Institute. Being one of them, since we have an employment program, but beyond that, a lot of employers have taken out initiative on their own to to have their own pipeline set up, so they’ll work with an agency like ours to have specialized ESL classes, so that way new hires that don’t speak a lot of English can learn the vocab, the vernacular of that industry and learn the English language words for some of the things they need to know. There are employers who now do their own sourcing. And, you know, have been able to do specialized training and pay for education because they, you know, they needed mechanics, and they found someone who was a mechanic from back home, but they just needed to get certification classes. And, you know, it’s there’s been investments in various ways. I think the big part of it is the case management support. So that way, as someone adapts to life in the US, they’re able to be successful in that new job and grow in their career. So
Dina Refki 20:57
Jenny, it’s wonderful to have those pipelines. We know that there is an issue with the credentialing of foreign obtained degrees, and so a number of refugees come in with plenty of expertise and experiences as well as foreign obtained foreign obtained degrees, they’re not able to find jobs that are commensurate with their experience because of that credentialing issue, and because sometimes it’s the English language proficiency. And so this leads to a phenomenon known as under skilling or de skilling. What is the institute to the International Institute of Buffalo, doing in this regard to avoid this phenomenon from affecting refugees. And also, you know, is there, from your opinion, a a pressure to achieve self sustain sufficiency that really there’s a sense of urgency to have the refugee population become economically independent and self sufficient. So that may contribute also to the idea to the notion of deep skilling or under skilling. What is your perspectives on that?
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 22:19
Those are all great questions. Dr ruffey, you’re right, when someone comes here, you know a refugee life is a life interrupted. It was someone who was a professor or business owner or a lawyer or doctor, and all that was taken away from them when their country fell apart and they had to flee. And so when they get here. Self sufficiency is the goal that resettlement centers work toward immediately, because you get the family enrolled in public assistance and the cost of life, the cost of housing, that’s very difficult to find housing and get people to be able to live at an adequate level just based on public assistance alone. So the first job that we work with them on is a sufficiency job. And oftentimes people are going into under skilled areas. You’ll see a lot of like light, manufacturing, housekeeping, landscaping, construction trades. That’s that’s the type of first job for people, especially if English language is a needed skill and they don’t have it yet. The resettlement agencies always work to get at least one, if not both, parents, into English classes so they can be learning and we happen to have funding through New York states to do some upskilling through the Office of New Americans. New York State’s Office of New Americans did give us a grant. So we can actually help those who have higher credentialing. We can pay for some classes, for people to go back and get their additional training or skilling, also people who have degrees. We can get those translated if those are things that are missing. So there is a there is some focus on trying to get people back to their career path like re career pathing, if you will. But it is not, oftentimes, something that happens immediately because of the need for the family to get settled immediately and have life begin again and be able to pay bills.
Ken Irish-Bramble 24:14
I’m curious what the success rate is of attaining that self sufficiency. So can you tell us a little bit about what that employment what the employment numbers look like for this particular population? How successful are they generally, in terms of getting off public assistance and becoming those self sufficient members of our communities that that you referenced.
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 24:45
So for every new arrival family we we require one member of the household to go into our employment program and attend job club. You know, with some exceptions, if there’s disability or very small children. Uh, nearly every household has at least one member attending job Club, which is an eight week program that we put on here at the Institute, and it’s paired with ESL, and it goes through training. We help screen you figure out what skills you have, even if they weren’t formalized skills, like someone may know how to sew, for instance, and that’s a skill that a lot of Americans don’t have today, and that may make you appropriate to go work for Clothier or like the baseball cap making company in Buffalo. So we work and help them develop their resume. We work on soft skills like interviewing and business cards, and they are actually put all the way through the program to a graduation at the end. We do keep track of our placements, and so job club last year had about 250 enrollees, and we had an 85% placement rate upon graduation. That’s largely due to the fact that we have a network of about 50 employers in our region that we work with who are happy to hire foreign born and refugees, and have already worked with us to understand what type of flexibility they would need to be able to integrate that population into their workforce. And they’re asking for for more placements. So we do have a lot of success with with placing people in their first jobs. There’s a big desire on behalf of resettlement clients to work. The thing that really needs more investment, in my opinion, is getting people from that first self sufficiency job to to a higher level of employment to more gainful and purposeful employment, especially that which would mirror what they had before they became a refugee. Awesome.
Ken Irish-Bramble 26:34
I’m going to segue into some somewhat more political, I guess. QUESTION So you mentioned the fluctuating numbers, or target numbers for refugees, which are set annually by the executive branch. And you also referenced the peak numbers recently under the Biden administration, having reached 120 I believe you said 1000 annually. On January 20, President Trump reduced that number down to, in essence, zero. How is this impacting the work that that you do in an organization such as yours.
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 27:22
Yeah, it has had a big impact. Yeah, the height of the emission ceiling height was 125,000 under President Joe Biden. And that would have taken us all the way through fiscal year 2025, however, on January 20, when President Trump entered office, he issued an executive order that suspended the US refugee admissions program. So travel that was booked. We had people booked to that we knew would be coming in February, were was immediately canceled, and we have not had a single arrival since january 15. So there’s had, there’s been several effects that happened. Number one, future clients you know, have are not arriving on the number two, on January 24 the State Department and the secretary of state issued a stop work order to all 10 national resettlement offices, all of which have subcontract ease, you know, the Institute being one of them. And so that stop work order was tied in with the stop work on the foreign aid funding, the executive order that was issued on issued on that. And so that essentially froze the funding that we would we had, or we were supposed to receive, for the clients who had already just arrived. Our initial money for resettlement comes from State Department funding, and that’s considered the first 90 days of funding. So the Institute has not received any payment for any work performed in December and January, and we were told to stop working when we really would have been paid to provide services. From January 20 all the way to April 20, we have continued on providing services just out of our own reserves, because we felt that that was necessary and important, given that people were not fully integrated and weren’t connected to employment and housing yet, so that that felt absolutely essential, that we continue to do that, but that that has definitely proven to be quite a hardship for us financially. The other date that I’d like to point out that has come to be very significant in our world was February 26 the Trump administration formally terminated the contracts for all 10 resettlement sites nationally, all 10 national organizations that do resettlement, so that effectively closed off or ended the US refugee admissions program with contract termination as well as the terminating the contracts for the overseas refugee. Service centers, which are the beginning of the pipeline for the UN to hand off refugees to the US for processing. They go through an RSC before they get connected, you know, to a national office in the US. So those are very significant changes. So we do have refugees who have been brought in for resettlement in Buffalo that were brought in before all of these changes. But looking forward, it doesn’t seem that there will be any new refugees coming in for resettlement, at least at this time.
Ken Irish-Bramble 30:32
You mentioned earlier that you had some support from New York State, all right, from the Office of New Americans. To what degree will New York State be able to make up some of the loss of financial support that organizations like yours are suffering under this new administration?
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 30:57
Well, the on a does fund us, not in a huge amount, but it definitely funds other resettlement centers across upstate New York. There are 14 resettlement organizations across New York state. So you know, on a is one state supportive area of revenue. There’s also money that comes through OTA that has been specifically set aside for resettlement. It’s called niceserp New York State enhanced services for refugees program, and that was created during the first Trump administration to distribute money to resettlement agencies because they had suffered greatly during due to the federal cuts that had happened. So we we have been asking our state lawmakers to look at resettlement and find a way to fund it and continue to fund it through the state budget, because it has, you know, had such a positive impact in New York State and population growth and economic impact, and looking to see if they can, in some way step in to help keep these organizations alive and in existence, to provide that social safety net that I’ve talked about, I do not think that state money, in any way could step in and fill the gap that’s been created by the federal government. That’s a huge funding void that was turned off by President Trump. So we would have to see if the community and the larger public feel that the US refugee admissions program is worthy of being resumed, because I think that that is otherwise not a funding gap that New York State, nor many states, could totally fill.
Dina Refki 32:30
And Jenny, you know, it’s such a shame that you are losing the funds when you’ve created these infrastructures that you talked about and said it took decades to build, and the loss of funds are really threatening that infrastructure of social and economic integration that already exists in the city. And I wanted to segue to that infrastructure and and have you elaborate, if you can on on that, because it seems to me that it’s the perfect infrastructure for social integration in particular. So that infrastructure is is incredibly important. It takes years to build, and it seems to me that a lot of other cities are looking to you to emulate, to to replicate that model. So if you could talk elaborate more on on that infrastructure, the theme for this year, for the Institute, is social integration in particular, and you are focusing not just on the refugees, but really on on narrowing the distance between the refugee and the native born, so that there are no chance for the cultivation of stereotypes and distance between these two populations. So you’re doing partnerships with industry and partnerships with the native one. Can you talk a little bit about these programs that you have that attempts to narrow the distance between these two populations and foster social integration?
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 34:11
Sure, you’re right. You know, these, these social supports, are so important for someone to be able to be really successful and thrive in our country. And you know, people who come here are just looking for a chance to have safety and security and happiness for their family. You know that’s that’s all they’re asking for in terms of being able to be here and be safe. But you know, there’s so much a community can do that can help people get faster to that, that thriving state, versus, just like basic self sufficiency. You know, the Institute has a range of employment programming where, you know, we help you find that first job that may be in light manufacturing, and it’s an hourly rate, and you don’t have to have English, but you can keep coming back to us for services and. We can get you into English language classes, and we can help customize your learning and your vocabulary so that way you can go to the field that you’ve been trained in, and we can get you a job there. We have a professional mentorship program with leadership buffalo, where we pair folks who are in our Career Pathways program with professionals in their industry and area, and that those individuals act as like social navigators for them and help them to, you know, go and meet people, shadow them at work, go for coffee and get them to the place that they will once they have the RE credentialing done, be able to be applying for jobs in that area and get out of sort of the self sufficiency job that they had been in. We work with parents and the kids to do, you know, not just new arrival stuff, like, how do you do your basic budget, but we do additional learning and training, so that way they have a lot of fluid financial literacy. We’ve got a great partnership with some of our local banks. They come in and run financial literacy classes. You know, this goes beyond just how do I pay my bills, it’s, how do I build credit? How do I, you know, get a credit line so that way I can eventually finance a car. What are what is it like to apply to college? What is the FAFSA? How do I work on accessing that for my kids, you know, and Buffalo has affordable housing, and you can buy a house in Buffalo, sometimes surprises people from out of the area. But you know, for, you know, 180,000 $200,000 you can get a house in the city of Buffalo, you know, that’s a three or four bedroom with a two car garage, maybe even for less if you want to get a fixer up. Or you can get something in the 80 to $100,000 range, but that still does mean that you’ve got to be credit worthy and mortgage ready and all those things. And so we work with people on building that it’s not just about serving somebody who arrived here in the first 90 days. It’s about having a relationship with that family. So that way we see them all the way through as their kids grow up and beyond. You know, we also want to make sure everybody is ready to apply for citizenship at the five year point, because that’s when they can seek that. And it’s pretty common at the institute when, you know, once or twice a month someone will pop in, and they’re a long time family we’ve been serving for 10 years, and they stop in to let us know that their kid graduated high school, or that one of their kids got accepted to college, or that they just bought their first car, those are all things that we celebrate, because it’s just a large, extended family for us, and that’s built by being present for people in our community every single day.
Dina Refki 37:36
And so one follow up question, Jenny, do you see any backlash in an environment that is that really ostracizes Diversity, Equity and Inclusion? Do you see any backlash? And do you see any any of the industries and employers that you work with change their policies or their attitudes around hiring of refugees and opening their doors for this population.
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 38:08
I think that every day is a learning ground for how to navigate the new world that we’re in. And you know, we’re everyone’s trying to process and understand a lot of the changes that are coming down at the federal level. We have had employers who’ve reached out, who are scared for their employees. They are worried that ice may show up and do raids, and they know they employ people with legal status that’s valid, and they want to know how to handle that. There’s been a host of, know your rights trainings that have happened in our community as everyone tries to navigate. You know, what does it mean when immigration enforcement actions are happening to try to identify immigrants who are out of status or who are criminal aliens, and the government is prioritizing to remove so, you know, schools, employers, all those people are asking questions and wanting to still find ways that they can be supportive and welcoming while also complying with, you know, whatever federal laws that are coming down. But you know, we’re definitely just watching and trying to see where we can still provide support and be there for our clients. You know, we are certainly concerned that our federal funding has been stopped and that we have been paid for all of it, and we really hope that we are going to be able to find ways to pivot our services, to continue to serve the clients who are still here, all the immigrants and refugees who have valid legal status to be in this country, that we can continue to provide them with support services, so that way they they reach successful integration in Western New York.
Ken Irish-Bramble 39:48
Jenny, I want to return to the question of funding, because it’s, you know, just such an important conversation to have, especially in this current political. Environment? Can you tell me a little bit about the refugee partnership of Western New York and the Crisis Response Fund? From my understanding, you have a goal of raising approximately 1.5 million to support your continued work. How are those fundraising efforts progressing, and how can people, including members of our audience, support the work that you’re doing and contribute?
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 40:32
Yes, so the refugee partnership is a consortium made up of the four resettlement agencies in Buffalo and one other refugee serving agency. So those agencies are the International Institute of Buffalo, Catholic Charities of buffalo journeys and refugee services of Buffalo, Jewish Family Services of Western New York and Jericho Road community ministries, which is a medical center that serves refugees. So those five organizations, we formed this consortium. It’s informally met for years, but three years ago, we decided to brand ourselves as the refugee partnership. And you know, we are all in the same boat on a lot of these issues and on the funding cuts, and we as executives, we meet weekly. I just had a meeting earlier today with those executives on a zoom call. So we decided, when the first executive orders rolled out that looked like they were going to be, you know, a big blow to our services. We decided that we should collectively work together to fundraise, rather than, you know, confuse the public and have each of us doing different efforts. We combined our efforts and created the Crisis Response Fund, and we all estimated what our loss of funding would be, not our complete loss of funding, because that’s continued to grow and has been significant. But when we looked at specifically the stop work order that was issued by the State Department on our initial resettlement funding, we each totaled up that number, and that’s how we got to 1.5 million, and that money possibly could be paid back to us someday, if lawsuits play out in our favor. But the reality is that no one has received that money to date, and we all continue to serve our clients after the stop work order because people weren’t housed and weren’t employed and their kids weren’t enrolled in school, and we felt that that was essential, that we do that and not drop the ball on them. So the Crisis Response Fund has it ran as a campaign for 30 days. You can find out more about it by googling the refugee partnership or visiting our website, www.ii buffalo.org, where you can link to that website, we have actually, to date, raised $1.2 million which is amazing. And we will be splitting that four ways between the four resettlement agencies, and it will go to cover the funding loss that was caused by the State Department’s breach of contract. So we, I plan to use it toward housing costs for we’ve paid client rent, client utilities, client bus passes, and we’ve continued staff on people, on staff, and to be able to provide those case management services so it will cover those pieces, and if we are ever paid by the government in the future, if that is decided by the courts, then the money will then be applied just to continuing case management services for refugees and immigrants that we already serve.
Ken Irish-Bramble 43:32
Awesome and congratulations on having almost attained that $1.5 million goal we’re going to wrap up the conversation here today, but before we close out, I just want to say thank you very much, Jenny for joining us, and I want to applaud you and your staff for all of the work that You are doing in supporting these new immigrants integrating into communities throughout New York with that, I’m going to hand it over to Dr refki for any closing remarks. Dr refki,
Dina Refki 44:11
Jenny, thank you so much again. You provide an incredible infrastructure that we all really aspire to replicate and to to scale up to other communities. Please keep up the good work and know that we are incredibly supportive of of the efforts that you do. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank
Jennifer Rizzo-Choi 44:36
you, Dr refki and Ken for having us and thank you to your listeners for, you know, sitting and listening to a podcast like this and educating yourselves about it, you know, the closure of the US Refugee Admissions Program is a big loss to our country, and I’m hoping that as people get educated about the value of it, that there will be some pressure to be able to resume that program, because it is so critically important to our nation. You.
Joel Tirado 45:01
Thanks again to Jennifer Rizzo-Choi, Executive Director of the International Institute of Buffalo, Dina Refki, executive director of the Institute on immigrant integration research and policy, and Ken Irish-Bramble, fellow at the Institute on immigrant integration, for taking the time to examine and explain how agencies such as the International Institute of buffalo do their work, thanks also to institute on immigrant integration, Deputy Director and intergovernmental liaison Guillermo Martinez for his work coordinating this conversation. If you liked this episode, please rate, subscribe, and share. It will help others find the podcast and help us deliver the latest in public policy research. All of our episodes are available for free wherever you stream your podcasts and transcripts are available on our website. I’m Joel Tirado; until next time.
Joel Tirado 45:57
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