HOUSTON — Texas will not be allowed to ban refugees from resettling in the state after a federal judge halted President Donald Trump’s executive order allowing states to shut the door on new refugees.
The president has not yet announced if he plans to appeal the decision.
It’s an issue that has people divided and confused.
Refugees and migrants are not the same thing. Habitat for Humanity defines them as the following:
Refugees: people fleeing armed conflicts or persecution
Migrants: choose to move not because of a direct threat or persecution but mainly to improve their lives
A Houston man named Mohamedali Ali is a refugee. He fled Eritrea, a country in Africa, in 2010 with his wife and children. He says it was a life or death decision.
“I was born and raised Muslim, and I convert to Christianity,” Ali explained. “The family and relatives they don’t accept that...also the government does not allow protestants to practice their own religion.”
In the middle of the night, he left everything and risked everything, crossing the border into Ethiopia with his family.
“The government had a shooting policy for everyone who escaped,” Ali said.
For the next three years, they lived in a crowded refugee camp awaiting news on where they would be resettled.
According to the UN Refugee Agency, in 2018, there were nearly 30 million refugees worldwide, more than half were children. The United States resettled 22,900.
Refugees have no choice where they’ll end up, and the screening process is rigorous. In the United States a refugee is screened by eight federal agencies before they’re accepted.
“When you resettle one individual, that means you are saving life of the individual,” Ali said.
Ali believes he didn’t have a choice, that the lives of his family depended on him fleeing his home country.
“It was a very dark moment,” Ali said.
Ali and his family were resettled in Houston in 2013.
“Oh, I love Houston because Houston is a very welcoming city!” he said.
Ali is now a case manager at The Alliance, a non-profit that helps resettle other refugees. Its mission is, “to create opportunities for refugees, immigrants, and underserved residents to achieve their goals for self-sufficiency and improve their quality of life.”
Ali and his family are happy, free and thankful for Houston.
“They give us hope and they welcome us," Ali said.
According to Ali, The Alliance helps refugees learn English and integrate into society with a goal of having them employed within three months and self-sufficient soon after.
For more information about The Alliance, click here.
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