Inquiry

Welcoming Strangers

How the Church in America ministers to the special needs of refugees from Southeast Asia

By Molly Mulqueen

All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me. (Mt 25:35).

The Rule of St. Benedict 53.1

Immigrants from Southeast Asia are still pouring into the United States, and for many of them, the Catholic Church is the key player in their resettlement and assimilation to life in America.

The United States government, through the Immigration and Naturalization Service, subcontracts with twelve private agencies who assist in the resettlement of refugees, the largest of which is the United States Catholic Conference (USCC). The USCC in turn administers federal grant money through Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement programs in dioceses throughout the United States. Typically, USCC monies fund over half of the resettlement programs in participating diocese. The dioceses themselves, and Catholic charitable agencies, make up the rest.

"In 1995, in 120 dioceses, we assisted 24,000 refugees from all over the world," says John Swenson, executive director of Migration and Refugee Services for the USCC in Washington, DC. Swenson observes that this apostolate is a high priority for the US bishops, citing the continuing work of the Migration Committee of the National Council of Catholic Bishops. "The Church has always had a strong commitment to newcomers. We have been particularly active in the resettlement of refugees for the last twenty years," Swenson says.

It was just over twenty years ago, with the fall of Saigon to the Communists in 1975, that large numbers of refugees from Southeast Asia began to immigrate to the United States. Fewer are arriving now, but the latest figures from the Immigration and Naturalization Service--which date back to 1993--show that 59,614 immigrants came from Vietnam to the United States in the course of that year.

"Big numbers of refugees continue to be from Southeast Asia, and the majority of them come from Vietnam," Swenson reports. Others come from Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and elsewhere in the region.

A CATHOLIC SUPPORT NETWORK

The USCC Department of Migration and Refugee Services maintains a staff of about 100, with offices split among Washington, New York, and Miami. They review the cases of all of the refugees assigned to the USCC and relocate them across the country, where diocesan offices of Catholic Charities take over and their new lives in America begin in earnest.

The refugee cases generally fall into two categories, according Sister Marilyn Orchard, SSND, who heads the Catholic Charities resettlement office in Rochester, in the diocese of Winona, Minnesota. "In 'family reunification' cases, a friend or a family member of varying degree sponsors the people coming over; the USCC tries to settle them with someone that they know," Orchard says. Southeast Asian refugees have settled in every state in the Union, but in recent years, the majority have settled in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and California, where they haved joined family and friends in existing refugee communities.

"Then there is 'free case' status," Orchard continues. In these cases the Catholic agencies seek to find a parish that will help build a home for the immigrants. In these cases, she explains, the placing agency seeks a commitment "for at least six months, but usually it goes on for a year or longer. These sponsors help to provide the in-kind' needs of the refugees--food, clothes, a place to live, used furniture, help in finding a job, getting social security numbers, registering for school.... and also that grass-roots moral support," Orchard concludes.

The USCC also reviews a third category of cases--refugees with serious health problems. In these special cases, the newcomes are settled in dioceses which have the facilities to meet their medical needs. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota is one such facility. Mayo even has interpreters on staff who can assist in care of refugees.

In addition to its other work, the USCC maintains a separately incorporated "Catholic Legal Immigration Network." As John Swenson of the USCC explains, this organization "provides training and other support for immigrants' legal needs, pertaining to their immigration status or any other legal problem they may encounter."

PRACTICAL PROBLEMS IN A NEW LAND

The majority of the Vietnamese refugees currently entering the US are former political prisoners and their families. Many of them have spent several years in a prison camp. Others, like the Hmong, (an ethnic group which migrated from China to the Laotian highlands in the late 19th century), were held in refugee camps in Thailand, some for as long as eight years. The Thai government offered them a temporary safe haven because they had been known allies of the Americans during the Vietnam War. Both of these groups are entering the US under programs that give them an immigration status that does not expire, and will likely lead to permanent residency.

"There is nothing encouraging them to come.... Generally speaking, they are looking to get out of a life-threatening situation," says Tom Kosel, program manager for Migration and Refugee Services for Catholic Charities of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Kosel goes on to explain the extent of his agency's involvement:

The archdiocese has had a resettlement program since 1975. In calendar year 1995, we assisted over 650 people, and 567 of them were Southeast Asians. And we have assisted 500-600 Southeast Asians every year for the past several years. They are coming to join relatives and friends--there are over 40,000 Asians in the Twin Cities now.

Once they find a place to call home, the most formidable challenges facing the refugees are learning English and finding a job. In most places, an "English as a Second Language" program is offered to the refugees by the public-school system. If not, Catholic Charities usually sponsors such a program. Most jobs require at least some basic English, even to fill out an application.

Until they are employed, if they are unable to support themselves, the refugees can qualify for financial assistance. "They have a cushion of about eight months when they are eligible for federal AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependant Children), " Kosel says. After that, if necessary, they can resort to state programs for assistance, especially if they have minor children.

"The Vietnamese are generally men in their 40s or 50s and do not frequently have minor children. They come with adult unmarried children," Kosel notes. The parents and adult children can usually all work, and together support their family. The Hmong families are generally younger, and include have five or six young children. Even if adults are able to find work, these families face difficult economic prospects. A typical first job for a refugee family might pay between $6 and $7 per hour. "That is not enough for large families," Kosel observes.

Some of the refugees worked as professional--doctors, engineers, or architects--in their native countries. But in addition to the language barrier and the difficulties in becoming re-certified in a new professional world, they also must contend with the fact that in their native land, they worked with comparatively simple technologies; here in the US they must master entirely new skills. So many of these refugees are forced to accept jobs which are considerably beneath the professional level at which they once operated.

URGENT PASTORAL NEEDS

And what of the refugees' spiritual needs? The USCC and Catholic Charities help to resettle refugees regardless of their religious affiliation. But for those who are Catholic, dioceses try to provide a parish life that will be respectful to their language and culture. (In addition to the aforementioned work with refugee resettlement, the USCC also maintains a separate department for Pastoral Care to Immigrants and Refugees.)

Like the German, Polish, Irish, and Mexican parishes designated for those refugees earlier in this century, there are now Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, and Hmong parishes peppered across the United States. But very few American priests speak the Southeast Asian languages. Moreover, the pastors of these immigrant churches find that they are faced with substantial cultural differences between their long-time parishioners and the new refugee families.

Father Richard Broach is the pastor of St. Rose of Lima, a predominately Hispanic parish in Milwaukee; he also assists at St. Michael's parish, which serves Laotian and Hmong refugees. His congregation there is so diverse that the weekly bulletin at St. Michael's is printed in four different languages. Father Broach feels a great responsibility to serve each culture's unique needs and celebrate the people's special feasts, without offending the others. And as newcomers, the Hmong parishioners often have very pressing needs.

"This is a tremendous challenge," Father Broach reports. "It takes an awful lot of energy. Anything we do has to be checked out multi-culturally and multi-lingually. Our parish leadership is all done with representatives of all cultures sitting at the same table."

Father Broach speaks English and Spanish, "but I know only enough Hmong to preside at the liturgy. So, we usually have communal penance," he says. A Hmong deacon can act as translator for face-to-face confessions, and that practice is allowed by Church law. (The deacon, or any other translator, is naturally bound by the same confessional seal that binds the priest.)

However, Father Broach also reports that the practice of confession has not yet become an important element of religious life for the Hmong families. Their faith is still heavily influenced by a native animism, which emphasizes "keeping the spirits in balance;" according to that tradition, family leaders are expected to resolve conflicts. Father Broach says that he is trying to build on that traditional belief as he seeks to encourage the use of the sacrament of reconciliation. " In animism, it is up to you to put injured peoples' spirits at rest," he explains. "It is one of the tie-overs between animist and Catholic beliefs that we are working on."

As so often happens in these parishes, the language gap here is bridged by parishioners dedicated to serving their community. Blong Yang is a Hmong refugee who became a permanent deacon in 1988. In 1992, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee hired him to be a full-time minster to Hmong Catholics in the area. Sister Alice Thepouthay serves as the Laotian minister at St. Michael's.

"The Hmong people are very organized and self-motivated, " Broach says. "They have annual national conventions and will have a national catechist-training session in Milwaukee in spring 1996."

"Hmong migration is tapering off," Broach observes. "So now our primary focus is helping the people respect the integrity of both the Hmong and American cultural systems." The Hmong culture contains some customs that prove problematic in contemporary American culture--for example, the young women traditionally marry at age 12 or 13, and often have 5 children by the time they are 18. Many marriages are arranged. Sometimes, the man takes the girl away to marry her, which is technically illegal in the United States considering the girls' age.

"We do not want to canonize US culture as good just because it is American, " Broach said. "But we are trying to encourage them to look critically at both cultures on issues such as family, discipline, and marriage, and build a new culture that is neither Hmong nor US American, but both Hmong and US American."

A PARISH REJUVENATED

The influx of new Vietnamese parishioners is credited with saving St. Adalbert parish in St. Paul, Minnesota. The parish, which had been the Polish parish in the Twin Cities's neighborhood known as "Frog Town," was on the brink of being closed five years ago, as the neighborhood declined and the congregation dwindled.

"We were nearly done. The future of our parish was in serious doubt," says the pastor, Father Tim Kernan, who is beginning his ninth year at St. Adalbert. "On the Feast of the Epiphany this year, I said in my homily that we should give thanks for the brave people from the East who gave us a gift of life and a future."

When the first Vietnamese families began entering the parish five years ago, Kernan could not minister to them in their own language. So he called a Vietnamese deacon in Minneapolis for help. "The deacon said, 'Sure, and would your parish sponsor another Vietnamese family?' " Kernan recalls. New Vietnamese parishioners kept coming. Soon the archdiocese assigned a Vietnamese priest, Father Peter Kwan Lee, as associate pastor of St. Adalbert's.

Father Kernan said that he is still struggling with his Vietnamese. "They laugh and applaud my attempt to speak Vietnamese," Kernan said. The majority of St. Adalbert's Vietnamese parishioners are new arrivals, and most of the men spent time in prison camps. The old parish school, which has been closed for years, now houses 'English as a Second Language' classes and the Frog Town food pantry.

St. Adalbert's has experienced some problems in assimilating cultures within the parish. There have been incidents when their different styles of worship have clashed. The Vietnamese attend Mass more regularly than some of the veteran families, and changes made to accommodate the newcomers have caused some friction. "We are trying to meld Latino, Polish, and Vietnamese parishioners," Kernan said. "We try to do things that involve everybody."

One example of that inclusive effort would be this year's parish picnic, which featured both a pinata and egg rolls. The parish council includes bi-lingual representatives from all four cultures. At the 9:30 a.m. Sunday Mass, the first reading and the Gospel are read in both English and Vietnamese. Father Kernan and Father Lee split the homily time. The 'Our Father' is chanted in Vietnamese. The parish also has a Vietnamese Youth Choir which sings Vietnamese words to western melodies.

"The Vietnamese are traditional, strong Catholics," Kernan says. "Their Catholic roots go back to the 16th century to Francis Xavier and other missionaries in Asia. They are strong people. They have a beautiful faith."

Molly Mulqueen is a free-lance writer based in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

ANOTHER "FIRST" FOR AN IMMIGRANT GROUP

The first Hmong priest in the United States was ordained in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Archdiocese in 1992. Father Chu Ying Vang took over as pastor of St. Vincent de Paul parish this past January.

Father Vang came to the United States in 1980 at the age of 16, and first settled in Rochester, Minnesota. He later attended St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota. "He is one of only four Hmong ordained priests in the world that we know of," according to Father Tim Kernan, pastor of St. Adalbert parish in St. Paul.

The ordination is a very positive sign for Hmong Catholics. Father Daniel Taillez, OMI, chaplain for the Hmong American National Catholic Association, said that there are about 7,000 Hmong Catholics (out of 130,000 Hmong immigrants) in the United States. About 20,000 Hmong belong to the Evangelical Christian Missionary Alliance.

"Unlike Vietnam, where the people opened their hearts to the Gospel maybe 300 years ago, and have 500 of their own clergy in the United States, the first Hmong Catholic baptism happened in Laos in 1954," Father Taillez points out.

Taillez, a French priest who was a missionary in Laos from 1964 to 1975, has worked with Hmong and Laotians in the US since 1981. He travels all over the country from his base in St. Paul, Minnesota to visit Hmong Catholics and celebrate Mass in Hmong and Laotian. He publishes a newsletter for Hmong Catholics entitled, Let Us Build A New Life. "It is important for the Church to be in touch with them," Taillez said.