Cincinnati

Samantha Searles works for the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC) which is currently headquartered in the Peaslee Neighborhood Community Center. The IJPC was founded in 1985 by five communities of religious women who wanted to do something for their community in the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area. It currently works on issues relating to human trafficking, immigration, and the death penalty while also focusing on education, advocacy, leadership development, and coalition building with programs such as the Youth Educating Society (YES) and the Immigrant Dignity Coalition. Samantha walked our group through the pathways to citizenship and was the first person we met so she laid the groundwork for our understanding of immigration in the United States and how exactly it functions at a basic level.

Samantha also introduced us to issues that were specifically occurring in Cincinnati at this very moment such as the Affordable Housing Crisis which is making it so undocumented individuals as well as lower income people are being heavily affected by gentrification and are unable to find affordable housing, the racial tension between the Guatemalan immigrant community and Black individuals leading to the immigrant led movement called "Basta" that is protesting the violence perpetrated by some members of the community and the persistent robberies that the immigrant population are victim to, and she also touched on the part that local law enforcement is playing by refusing to call for interpreters when dealing with an individual who doesn't speak English and finding that party to be the guilty one while also taking undocumented individuals in for minor crimes which often leads to their status being discovered.

We then had the pleasure of hearing from Sandra M, a DACA recipient from Mexico and former member of the YES program, whose father moved to the United States first to earn money for his family before she was able to join him here. Sandra talked about DACA having been a recipient of it since the age of 16 when her father applied for it for her and was very informative when talking about the ways in which DACA has improved her life but isn't the solution to any of the problems regarding immigration. With DACA some people are able to get drivers licenses and attend universities unlike undocumented individuals and Sandra described DACA as an "app upgrade that can give you a boost but until another upgrade passes you'll never have anything more or better." And while things like advanced parole can help people because it will allow them to leave the US then return and gain legal entry, Dreamers have had to get used to the hardships of living somewhere between citizen and undocumented individuals as things such as the newer Real IDS that are used as passports that seem commonplace to other citizens can negatively impact Dreamers. During the Trump reign DACA was being rescinded and threatened. Even now, the red tape that a Dreamer has to go through every two years to reapply and keep their status is discouraging and the consequence for being late on getting through the red tape is never being able to apply for and receive DACA again. Finally Sandra touched on a very serious topic that was addressed in other meetings about the mental toll that immigration can have on a person and even children, as Dreamers are all children of undocumented individuals.

IJPC can be reached on instagram at @ijpccincinnati. The national coalition they and others work with is called We Are Home. It works on undoing the cruelty of the Trump era, building a new immigration system, and creating a new and better path to citizenship. It can also be found online.

The Clifton Methodist Church is one of the 50 congregations that are part of an inter-religious coalition called the Cincinnati Sanctuary Congregation Coalition who work to provide sanctuary and house asylees in Cincinnati. Their vision was to house undocumented, immigrant families but in order to do that the families had to be completely open about not only their status but where they'd be exactly, and none were willing to do that because of the extreme vulnerability it required, so the congregation now houses asylees in the space that they converted into a livable apartment, and while I don't know how many other congregations in the coalition are capable of housing those who need it, Reverend David Meredith said that the mosque was the first to say they'd provide sanctuary, so there may be others housing people in the coalition, and those who aren't housing them are actively involved in collecting donations for and obtaining resources/supplies for those who come into their care. And the furniture they use to furnish the apartment gets to be given to the families that used them for their own apartments when they move out so that they don't have to worry about buying it themselves, and they can focus more on starting their own homes than on how it is going to be furnished.

Reverend David Meredith and Nicole, a volunteer, introduced us to Titina, the woman pictured with two of her daughters, who lived with her husband and daughters in the Clifton Methodist Church for two years after leaving the Democratic Republic of Congo and making their way here in order to seek asylum. Titina and her husband, Pepé, were forced to flee the DRC in 2018 after her husband was arrested and almost killed following his attendance at a political meeting, because the current government didn't want him to bad mouth them and the former president. Their friends offered to help get them out of the country by giving them and their youngest daughter at the time their family's passports which helped Titina and her husband get to Brazil where they were able to go to the DRC's embassy and obtain new passports for themselves there. They were forced to leave behind the rest of their family: their parents and their twin daughters, as they couldn't find them fake passports on such short notice. Titina misses them greatly, but traveling with young girls in addition to their youngest daughter would have made the journey all the more difficult, because not only was her husband badly injured from having been arrested, but after living in Brazil for 8-9 months and starting their asylum there, Titina and her family began the trek up to the United States. Titina and her family went from Brazil to Peru to Ecuador to Colombia to Panama, where they had a difficult month because of difficulties with food, money, and the long walks, then to Costa Rica to Nicaragua to Honduras to Guatemala to Mexico to finally Texas before being flown to Ohio where they could begin their actual US asylum process. Their whole journey to the United States took them about 11 months to complete. During that time Titina had to learn Portuguese in order to survive since her native languages were Lingala and French. Since coming to Ohio, Titina and Pepé have had another daughter and have finally been able to move out of the church into their own apartment. While they are still waiting on their official asylum status and have been unable to secure work permits, it seemed as though things were hopeful because they've been able to start a life in Ohio with their own place, their daughter in school, and once asylum status is officially granted, they will be able to apply to have their twin daughters brought to the United States for them to finally be reunited.

La Sagrada Familia's Church Congregation allowed our field school to come in and join their service and also took time out of their night afterwards to speak to us about their experiences in immigrating to the United States as well as their pride to be here and their reasons for immigrating. Reina, one of the community leaders within the congregation, helped to set this up and also organizes with "Basta" or "Enough," the movement that is advocating for something to be done about the string of robberies that Latin American immigrants are becoming victims of, as people see them as easy targets with cash, but outside of increasing police presence, because the police getting involved actually wouldn't help their situation at all.

When we walked into the room that the service was being held in, an elementary school cafeteria, the rows of chairs were pretty full and there were children running around while their parents took part in the service. That night the lesson of the sermon was "Love thy enemy" which was fitting because afterwards the people who spoke to us talked about while many in the United States, and Ohio especially, don't embrace immigrants and sometimes have very prejudiced views towards them, these people still loved the United States and their lives here despite all the hardships. Many of the people we talked to after the service talked about their reasons for emigrating to the United States, such as the lack of opportunities and access to jobs and education in their home countries, and it was a very intimate and emotional situation, because we were being walked through such hard and personal moments in their lives. One of the most emotional things that someone in the congregation said was that when they all leave that church they say goodbye as if it's their last time to say it, because with people of mixed status they aren't sure if they'll get to see one another again and when that time will be the last time you see them. Some of these people who have family that they provide for have also talked about wanting to provide better opportunities not just for themselves but for their children as well and how emigrating to the United States was the only way for them to do that.

Despite many of them only speaking Spanish and the vulnerability it took to talk about their hardships, many of these community members seemed to be glad to talk about their experiences and one even said that he didn't mind to tell us because we could tell others and be the voice for them that they don't have. Many immigrant communities feel invisible and voiceless in the United States, so by telling us their stories these people are hoping that they might be able to gain a voice. For these people to be so open about their experiences to strangers and to be so vulnerable meant so much to me and others and this experience was such an amazing opportunity to speak to these community members.

Sheryl Rajbhandari is the founder and the director of the non-profit organization called Heartfelt Tidbits that's based in Cincinnati that focuses on helping refugees get settled into the community and extend aid past the short-term welcome aid that they receive from the US government.

In 2008 Sheryl saw the need to provide long term aid and welcome efforts to refugees after meeting a family of refugees from Bhutan who were victims of the genocide there and had fled to Nepal where they lived for 20+ years before being relocated to the United States. Sheryl's husband is Nepalese and was able to communicate with this family when they were locked in their apartment and help them adjust to the United States because they had to get used to a lot of things here that they'd never had in the refugee camp they were living in. The adjustment was so hard for them at first that they'd wanted to actually go back to the refugee camp despite their relocation because the refugee camp was all that they had ever known. She was able to secure them a rental property so that they could have their own space in Cincinnati and where she could check in on them and help them settle into their new home in Ohio. This family is only one of the 80 thousand refugees from Bhutan that have been resettled in the United States which speaks to the need for organizations like Heartfelt Tidbits that provide aid and help during the transition period following relocation.

Since 2008 Sheryl has left her corporate job to dedicate all of her time and effort into Heartfelt Tidbits which officially become a 501c3 non profit in 2016. She spoke about her various community efforts to make the refugees that she helps feel integrated into the community which provides them with support systems and the confidence to start their lives here in Ohio knowing that there are people who don't just see them as victims or refugees but as capable, productive, intelligent individuals. She also created community programs that helped reduce anxiety and focus on improving health issues after talking to doctors about the mental and physical health of the refugees she was helping. She also works to get the refugees jobs and education as well and sees her non-profit as a "hand up and not a hand out".

While Sheryl is doing good work for refugees and now she's started to work with undocumented individuals as well as Casa de Paz in Cincinnati, I think it is important to acknowledge that in her programs the people she works with have to attend all their English courses in order to continue receiving help from her which opens the conversation about aid but at what cost and her concepts of what a hand out is feels as though she doesn't acknowledge the need for some government programs that do give "hand outs" to those who need it due to their own circumstances. It's important to acknowledge all of her amazing work in conversation with these other things and I don't want to take away from all of the great things she's done and is doing but I felt the need to talk about this to provide a full picture of the non profit.