A refugee is a person who has been forced to flee his or her country due to past persecution, or a well-founded fear of future persecution, because of political opinion, race, religion, nationality, or particular social group.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) determines refugee status. According to UNHCR, there are currently about 15,000,000 refugees in the world. There are also an additional 29,000,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs). IDPs are people in refugee-like situations who have not managed to cross the border to another country.
There are 3 durable solutions for refugees.
• The first choice is that the refugee can return to his or her home country because of changed country conditions.
• The second choice is that the person can be permanently resettled within the region of his or her own country. Permanent resettlement means that the person would have a pathway to citizenship within the host country.
• The last choice is third-country resettlement. This option is only considered when the first two options are not viable.
Less than one-half of one percent of the world’s refugees receive third-country resettlement.
The U.S. resettles approximately 80,000 refugees per year, more than 3 times as many refugees through third-country resettlement as the rest of the world combined. Currently there are approximately 25,000 refugees living in Utah, 99% live in the Salt Lake Valley. Between 1000 and 1100 new refugees arrive to Utah each year.
The above information is found at http://refugee.utah.gov/home/index.html
The refugees who work for us are from Burma, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Bagdad, and Nepal. A few of our refugees are from Burma but moved to Malaysia prior to relocating to the US. Others have parents from Burma but were born in refugee camps in Nepal.
We are optimistic for a hard working crew as many of them have shown ambition for learning new skills and a desire to be teachable. However, there have been some challenges training a crew who for the most part didn’t even know what golf was, let alone how to operate machinery. Communication with the refugees has been difficult. Most of the refugees speak little English, a good number are learning English. During the hiring process we had to make sure that we had one person who spoke each language and English proficiently enough to translate when necessary. It has also been interesting to discover what cultural difference we share. Expectations in the U.S. and at Glenwild require additional training. We are hopeful that this group can adopt our practices. We have been encouraged the last week or so and feel hopeful they might be figuring this all out.
