DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Syrian Refugees: Success Tales from the Glass City of Toledo, Ohio

Last year, NPR's Ari Shapiro visited Toledo, Ohio, to talk to refugees settling there from Syria's civil war. Recently, he returned to Toledo to check in on the community.

Mohammed Al Refaai is a 23-year-old butcher who fled Syria. He lives in Toledo, Ohio, with three other guys, who are also in their 20s, who decided they wouldn't mind having a refugee for a roommate.

In the year and a half since he moved in, he has learned English from the Americans including the lyrics to some Top 40 hits. In return, he taught them some of his favorite Arabic pop tunes.

They generally avoid talking about more difficult things. But his roommates — Doug Walton, Andrew Trumbull and Johnny Zellers — made an exception during our recent visit to Toledo. While Refaai was at work, they talked about politics and whether he will ever be reunited with his family. "Moh," as they call him, won't really talk about these things, Walton says.

"This is by far the most depth we've ever gone into it, and if Moh was here, we probably wouldn't, because he doesn't like the topic," Walton says.

Refaai's story is atypical. He was the only one of his family allowed into the United States as a refugee. His siblings and parents are still in Jordan, waiting for approvals. They've been there since the family fled Syria in 2011. Refaai is now trying to get a Green Card so if they can't come to the U.S., he can at least go visit them.

The recent presidential election hit especially — and literally — close to home, Zellers says.

"We actually got a flier from Trump, and it had ... three big issues," he says. "The third one was 'Stop the influx of dangerous refugees from Syria' — as ... the biggest bullet point. I was like, 'No, we want more of 'em. ... We have one, I have one in my house right now. ... I can go say hi to him!' "

The guys in this house lean conservative. They all take their Christian faith seriously. None of them voted for Trump; it was a mix of Clinton and third-party votes. They didn't even know who voted for whom until we all started talking about it.

"It is weird to have a vote in a situation that felt like we were voting for people who were helpless. Usually we vote on jobs or whatever, and so for me, I'm like, that's not a big deal. I find a job. I'll make things work, whoever gets elected — they're not going to change things that drastically," Trumbull says.

The guys don't own a TV, so on election night, they all went into Walton's room and huddled around their phones with Refaai to watch the results come in.

"So we were all kind of together just like kind of hugging him and just kind of watching it all go down," Walton says.

"He definitely kind of got sad a little bit just thinking of like, OK, maybe his family may not be able to like ever come here," Zellers says. "That's like the biggest hope that he's had like this past year. ... Now Trump elected it's like, oh, those chances go down like a lot."

An "unusual" situation

Refaii is a butcher at a new Middle Eastern supermarket and restaurant in Toledo.

When we met him a little over a year ago, he barely spoke any English. He had learned the terms that a butcher uses every day — chicken legs, chicken breast, steak, lamb — and that was about it. Today he looks confident. He doesn't use an interpreter when he talks to us.

He video chats with his family in Jordan about once a week. He shows them the snow on the ground in Ohio, and they tell him how proud they are that he's learning English and working.

"I like it they come here, but I don't know how. I need they be safe and close to me, my family, but I can't do anything," he says. "I feel bad for they not with me, but I can't do anything for help him."

We asked the State Department about Refaai's situation. Just like a year ago, they told us they don't comment on specific cases. But veterans of refugee work say his situation is not normal.

"This situation you've described is very unusual," says Eric Schwartz, who ran the State Department's refugee resettlement program earlier in the Obama administration. He's now a dean at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs. He says once you're over 21 like Refaai, your case is considered on its own. But even then, grown children are rarely separated from their parents and siblings.

"And it would be very unusual for them not to be departing and coming to the United States together," he says.

It might have just been an oversight. Schwartz says an immigration lawyer might be able to sort out what happened — but Refaai and his family don't have one.

"This is a program that involves so many tens of thousands of individuals that sometimes mistakes or problems do arise, and the way they get fixed is somebody asks about them and somebody presses them," he says.

Refaai fears that his window is closing as the days tick down to Trump's inauguration. The office that issues Green Cards has told him to stop calling, and that has changed the way the other guys in this house think about their future.

"Before it's just like 'Oh, Moh is here, his family will come and then I'm like, well, I'll move on with our lives — we'll all move away or get different jobs or, I don't know, and then Moh will have his family. But now it's like his family may never come," Zellers says.

Walton says Refaai won't talk about that.

"He doesn't even want to acknowledge that could happen because thinking about this family being broken up, that like leaves him lost in a sea in a way," Walton says. "But we don't know what's going to happen. So I don't know what's going to be asked of me as his brother, but I guess I'm just more aware that he may have more need for support than even he does now."

Last year, NPR's Ari Shapiro visited Toledo, Ohio, to talk to refugees settling there from Syria's civil war. Recently, he returned to Toledo to check in on the community.

When we first met Omar Al-Awad and his family in the fall of 2015, they were among the newest refugee families from Syria settling in to life in Toledo, Ohio.

Back then, Awad was attending his first English class at a local church and couldn't say much more than his name. Today he's able to haltingly conduct a basic conversation in English.

He and his wife, Hiyam, also had a fourth baby — a boy, Salman, who just turned 1 and is a full-fledged American citizen. The other kids — Taiba, 5, Abdul-Jabar, 7, and Hammam, 10 — are now practically fluent in English.

But Hiyam says overall, this first year in the U.S. was tough.

"We came to a country that is not our country, and everything changed on us: the system, the people the area, the city," she says in Arabic.

Though her husband is trained as a carpenter, for now he is working on a hospital cleaning crew. He says he is happy to be working. But what gives him the most pride is watching his kids flourish in school. Two of his children were just named student of the month. He was so proud he went out and bought them new toys.

Awad has come a long way, too. No longer the newest refugee, he now helps the new ones.

"I go with them to pay bills. There are days I take them to the doctor, bring them stuff from the store," he says in Arabic.

The U.S. never took in a lot of refugees from Syria. With millions of people displaced, the U.S. admitted only 12,000 or so over the past five years. Some cities in Europe took in twice that many in a given week.

But President-elect Donald Trump may stop admitting Syrian refugees altogether, fearing that they could be dangerous.

"We are going to stop the tens of thousands of people coming in from Syria. We have no idea who they are, where they come from. There's no documentation. There's no paperwork," Trump said in September.

Actually, there's a lot of documentation and paperwork. The screening process often takes as long as two years. There are medical tests, background checks and round after round of interviews.

Awad feels lucky to have made it to the U.S. while the door was still open a crack.

"Anyone that is able to get out of these countries — whether it's Jordan, Lebanon or Turkey — of course the situation is better here than to be there," he says.

Those are countries where millions of Syrians sit in refugee camps, waiting to see what comes next. Awad's family spent two years at a refugee camp in Jordan before coming to Toledo.

"Some scary things"

One organization in Toledo works to settle new refugees who arrive here. They help people find housing, furniture and jobs. There's even a new program offering counseling for people who have experienced torture. The group is called US Together.

Recently, at an orientation organized by US Together, a pastor named Luke Lindon from a nearby church spoke to new arrivals from Syria.

"There are some people that you may have heard that may not feel as welcoming. They might be saying some scary things," he says.

Lindon is tall and gentle, with a shaved head. He sprinkles his conversation with "dude" and "blessings." He wants the new refugees not to feel afraid of differences.

"It scares our people here and it scares you all coming in," he tells them. "But I'm here to say that nothing defeats fear like a face."

When he finishes talking to the group, we sit down with him in an office.

"My own grandfather is a Slovakian immigrant who worked in the brickyards, and he recalled a time before World War II that he was not considered white," Lindon says. "He wasn't considered part of the populace. He was a problem. And so knowing that, we want to make sure that history doesn't repeat."

He says it's important to be truthful in talking to refugees about the climate surrounding immigration in the U.S.

"It's a reality. We've got to name the reality. We have to be truthful," he says. "But we also need to reach into this small group and welcome them as well as welcome others who were afraid of the conversation."

Toledo has seen generations of immigrants, including decades of Middle Eastern immigration. So when we went from one blue-collar bar to another, the openness to refugees was striking.

One bartender told us as long as the Statue of Liberty is still standing, refugees should be welcome in Toledo. Others had harsh things to say off the record.

One woman who wouldn't speak on tape said, "They've got their own country; they should stay there."

Then we met Jon Johnstone, who was in the Navy.

He's suspicious of people who continue to wear headscarves and speak in Arabic.

"If you want to come here and turn the United States into Syria, I'm against that. If you want to come here and speak English, you want to assimilate, you want to have a pizza, you want to eat a chicken wing, I'm all for it," he says.

Corine Dehabey has heard it all. Her family is Syrian-American, her father was a U.S. fighter pilot, and she runs US Together. She stays focused on the positive. Last year more Syrian refugees arrived than she ever expected. She says the group had budgeted for 75; it ended up helping to settle 131 from October 2015 through November 2016.

She says those families still need help. Their needs keep her busy enough that she doesn't dwell on what will happen after Trump's inauguration.

She says maybe his speeches about cutting off refugees were just political talk, empty promises.

If the refugees do stop coming, then Toledo's long history of integrating generations of people from other countries may have a pause.

He was the only one of his family allowed into the United States as a refugee. His siblings and parents are still in Jordan, waiting for approvals.

Come on, rocket. You know we're only allowed to post the bad about egufeess around here.

Posting the facts that show the majority of refugees who make here in America goes against everything a lot of people on this board stand for.

Nice provocative post! Even Trump himself is OK with refugees if they're properly vetted.

Nice provocative post! Even Trump himself is OK with refugees if they're properly vetted.

MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR

MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR

"We need to ban all Muslims"

Yea, and Ted, so much for feelings over facts, right?

Your boy didn't say that? Go ahead and say otherwise.

Come on, rocket. You know we're only allowed to post the bad about egufeess around here.

Posting the facts that show the majority of refugees who make here in America goes against everything a lot of people on this board stand for.

You conveniently left out the part where he said "until we have a system in place to properly vet them".

I stand for unity, peace, and equality.

So you're telling me to stick that where the sun don't shine?

Ok, just don't ever call yourself a patriot. Because obviously you don't agree with what I stand for. You and a few other posters around here are backwards as all hell.

And what did I say previously that was below the belt?

They should be vetted and then, once an American family signs a form of responsibility for them, be allowed to come to America to live with that family.
You will make new friends and help refugees assimilate into our society.

Right where the sun don't shine Swish ....

I can't call myself a patriot ... *LOL* ... OK Swish .. i will never make that mistake again ... ...

Someone thinks a wee bit much of themselves .... *LOL* ...

Black/Turkish/rican.

8 years active, 4 deployments. Speak 2 languages, working on the third (German). 5 years in a different country as an adult, being raised all around the world. Lots of cash invested into the market.

Black/Turkish/rican.

You should think highly of yourself but I gots a question...

Are you also a DNA scientist? Over the years your Race/Heritage has changed many times. Rican again huh? I remembered that from back in the day but never asked you about it.

Black/Turkish/rican.

8 years active, 4 deployments. Speak 2 languages, working on the third (German). 5 years in a different country as an adult, being raised all around the world. Lots of cash invested into the market.

Yea, I do think highly of myself. Not my problem you don't have the credentials to keep up.

And nothing I said was wrong. Look at what the majority of posters say about refugees throughout the years.

All I posted was facts. I guess facts triggered you, huh?

I'm trying to be nice to you this year, but if you wanna start your nonsense, then I won't let up.

Choice is yours. You started off with that ridiculous post about sticking it wherever, and now I'm on attack mode.

So what's it gonna be? I'll stop when you stop.

40, Swish is a trans white person actually.

Well somebody needs to take those jobs Americans refuse to do.

It's never changed. Ever.

but that's a nice attempt at a shot though. You've been bring up race in your discussions a lot this year so far. Feeling a kind of way?

Feeling....like your losing a grip on your superiority? Too much progress in equality for you?