My wife, Carol Tavris, began her volunteer work at the Washington, DC, Catholic Charities Refugee Center in 2004, and has been working very hard for them since that time. Her work involves helping out refugees and asylum seekers to the United States from all over the world, which she does primarily by hunting for and obtaining for them crucially needed necessities, such as winter clothing. She also caters events held by the Center.
Here is the
mission statement of the DC Catholic Charities Refugee Center:
Catholic Charities mission commits us to caring for those of us who are poor, sheltering those of us who are homeless, and protecting those of us who are vulnerable and oppressed by helping people in need strengthen and rebuild their lives. Catholic Charities Refugee Service Center lives out that mission through our service to refugee families and asylees residing in the Archdiocese of Washington, DC. In serving these vulnerable people, we commit ourselves to welcoming refugees as they rebuild thier lives and families so that we may empower refugees as they seek healing for the past, help in the present and hope for the future.
In 2008 Carol received a Caritas Award for her volunteer work. Here is an excerpt from the
article that contains the short story on her award:
Each year, the Caritas Awards Mass is held to honor all volunteers and recognize several key people whose dedication to Catholic Charities has made an especially deep impact in the lives of others. This year’s Caritas recipients were Jim and Joan Sullivan, Joaquin Hangen and Carol Tavris…
At the Refugee Center, Carol Tavris is known for her energy, outstanding culinary skills and bargain hunting abilities. Carol and her husband have opened their home as sponsors for three (actually it’s two, not three) different individuals seeking asylum in the US, as well as led many projects at the center.
I’m very proud of her.
Since Carol began working for Catholic Charities we’ve sponsored and housed two asylum seekers, who have some very interesting stories that I believe are symptomatic of the prejudice that too many U.S. government officials harbor against black people. I’ll describe them here:
Kenyan* asylum seeker jailed as suspected terroristI’ll refer to her as Hope because “Hope against hope” is her DU screen name.
In December 2005 Hope was a 32 year old woman who fled to the United States from Kenya in 2002 because her husband was trying to have her killed because she gave birth to four daughters and no sons. She sought and obtained asylum here in 2004. She worked as a pharmacy technician after arriving here, and she hopes to soon become a U.S. citizen. My wife and I took her into our home in the fall of 2005 so that she could save up enough money to have her four daughters, then living in Kenya, come to this country to live with her. While living with us she worked full time while taking college courses at the University of Maryland.
Arrest and imprisonmentIn December 2005, Hope planned to fly to Africa to retrieve her daughters. Stopping at her bank to withdraw $2000 for her trip a few hours before her scheduled departure, she was pulled over by a police car after having driven about a mile from her bank. Here is a paraphrase of the conversation that ensued between Hope and the man in plain clothes from the police car, who was apparently an FBI agent:
Agent: Did you just withdraw $2000 from your bank?
Hope: Yes
Agent: You’re under arrest. You’ll have to give me the money and come with us.
Hope: Why? What did I do?
Agent: You have no right to ask me that. Do you see my badge?
Hope: I have to catch a plane this evening. Will I be allowed to do that?
Agent: Are you going to come on your own, or do we have to come in there and get you?
So Hope gave the agent her $2000, got out of her car, was handcuffed, went into the police car, and was driven to Baltimore, where she was put in a small prison cell. At no time was she read her rights, nor was she given any reason for her arrest prior to arriving at her prison cell. Once in prison she was told that the reason for her arrest was that she was suspected of terrorism. She asked if she could call her home (where she was living with my wife and me), and she was told that the only people she could call were her employer and her lawyer. She was also told that her employer would have to vouch for her employment, and her lawyer would also have to vouch for her before she could be released from prison.
Fortunately for Hope, she was able to reach both her lawyer and her employer by phone, and they both came to the Baltimore prison where she was being held, to vouch for her. She was in prison for about four hours before being released.
Attempt to go to Africa to retrieve her childrenCarol then rushed Hope to the airport. On her way there, I talked with Hope by cell phone. It was very difficult for me to hear clearly what she was saying because she was crying uncontrollably. But I did manage to hear a few things between her sobs. This is a paraphrase of some of what Hope said to me:
We have to tell the DU about this.
The United States could be (or used to be) such a great country.
We have to impeach Bush.
Hope arrived at the airport barely in time to make her flight. However, as she attempted to board the plane she was told that she was not cleared to fly because of her recent arrest. She had to take a taxi home because Carol had left her at the airport, assuming there was no problem.
The next day Hope saw her lawyer, and he got her record cleared so that she could leave for Africa the next evening. She then flew to Africa to attempt to retrieve her children. The ensuing adventure was a nightmarish ordeal, in which Hope and her children were lucky to come out alive.
I hope to get the relevant details some day, and with Hope’s permission tell the story on DU. Hope is now living in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her four daughters. We will be visiting them later this month, on our way to Florida for a vacation.
* In my previous post on this subject I referred to her as an Angolan refugee – just in case the FBI happened to read my post and had any intention of blocking Hope’s efforts to retrieve her children. Cameroonian Human Rights/ Election Reform Activist Granted Asylum in US I’ll refer to him as Paul. In October 2005 Paul was a 38 year old English speaking male who was born and raised in Cameroon and who practiced law there for several years.
In the early 1990’s he began to engage in political protests (non-violent, except for government action against the protesters) against the corruption of the Cameroonian government, especially involving its human rights abuses. His leadership in these activities, including his founding of a non-governmental organization, led to his arrest and imprisonment on at least ten occasions over the next ten years, prior to 2002. During many of these imprisonments he underwent daily torture.
In 2002 he traveled to the United States to attend an International Peace training conference/workshop. During this conference he became good friends with one of the conference leaders, a former U.S. Ambassador (I’ll call him Ron), who was deeply impressed with Paul’s leadership abilities and skills.
Following the conference he returned to Cameroon and continued his leadership of government opposition activities. As the 2004 elections approached, President Paul Biya had been
in power for 22 years, and all indications were that the 2004 elections would be no more free of fraud than previous elections during Biya’s tenure. Consequently, government repression of opposition groups intensified, so Paul began to experience more and more pressure. It became so bad that in the fall of 2004 he had his wife and three children move out of his house for safety reasons.
One month later, as he returned from work and was about to enter his home, a fire bomb went off inside the home, destroying his house and almost all of his worldly possessions and cash. This near brush with death was the final straw that broke the camel’s back for Paul, and he immediately began to make plans to flee the country. With the help of his church he was hidden until he could be spirited away on a plane for the United States, where upon his arrival he was imprisoned for lack of the necessary travel documents.
While imprisoned in Virginia, Paul came to the attention of the Catholic Charities Refugee Center of DC, which put him in touch with his friend Ron, who helped Paul obtain the services of a law firm, which took on Paul’s case on a pro bono basis. He remained in prison until his lawyers were able to obtain a sponsor for him (Carol and I) and complete all the necessary formalities, after which he came to live with Carol and me in early February of 2005, pending the results of his asylum hearing.
The HearingsFollowing numerous bureaucratic obstacles, the initial hearing was set for early July. Before the hearing could begin, the government lawyer alleged that Paul had lied about a peripherally related matter involving an alleged brother. In order to defend himself against the allegations, Paul had to produce the “brother”, which he couldn’t do because he had no idea where this person was, and in any event it was unlikely that he really was Paul’s brother. The judge gave the court a sanctimonious lecture about how common it is for asylum seekers to lie, and how none of Paul’s testimony could be given credence if he wouldn’t “come clean” about his brother. The hearing was then postponed until October to give Paul a chance to produce the “brother”. I thought at that time that there was no way this judge would ever grant asylum to Paul.
Eventually, however, after numerous attempts by Paul to find his missing “brother”, the matter was cleared up when the lazy arrogant judge finally read the case documents which had been presented to him by Paul’s lawyers.
The actual hearing finally transpired on October 17th. Paul’s lawyers presented four witnesses: Depositions by two physicians, and two live witnesses, including Paul himself, and his friend Ron, the former U.S. Ambassador. The two physicians corroborated Paul’s allegations that he had been repeatedly tortured. Paul’s testimony included the story noted above, but in great detail. He then underwent a lengthy cross-examination by the government lawyer, who failed to make any dents in Paul’s direct testimony.
Ron then testified that during Paul’s attendance at the 2002 training conference he exhibited exceptional leadership skills; that Paul could have, at that point, sought asylum in the United States or simply left the conference and blended into the U.S. population, but instead he decided to return to Cameroon to continue his fight and thus face grave dangers; and, that continuing e-mail correspondence with Paul after his return to Cameroon was entirely consistent with Paul’s stated reasons for seeking asylum in the United States.
Having failed to put a dent in Paul’s testimony during cross-examination, and not eager to take on the testimony of a former U.S. Ambassador, the government lawyer resorted to impugning Paul’s testimony with the following stupid arguments: 1) There was no public record of the alleged fire bombing of Paul’s home; 2) The whole story was implausible because the Cambodian government surely could have found a quieter and surer way to kill Paul; 3) Paul’s story was also implausible because the fire bombing of his house wouldn’t have scared him enough to flee to the United States, given that he had endured numerous imprisonments with torture without seeking asylum earlier.
The judge, who had acted with so much hostility to Paul at the initial hearing in July, did a 180 degree about face of his attitude at the October hearing, as a result of the testimony of Paul’s friend Ron, the former U.S. Ambassador. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the government lawyer took a totally new tack, claiming that Paul was a bigamist. The judge rejected that argument out of hand, and with that, Paul was granted asylum.
Ted Kennedy on Immigration reform – in the forward to his brother’s 1958 book Probably no U.S. President was more passionately concerned about immigration reform than John F. Kennedy. More specifically, he advocated for the development of a more flexible U.S. policy on immigration, which would not discriminate by race or national origin. His premature death prevented his immigration reform plans from coming to fruition. But he did write a book on the subject when he was a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, titled “
A Nation of Immigrants”. His brother Ted summarized JFK’s philosophy on immigration in the most recent preface to that book. Here are some excerpts:
My brother Jack wrote A Nation of Immigrants in 1958… No one spoke more eloquently about our history and heritage as a nation of immigrants or fought harder on behalf of fair and rational immigration laws than President Kennedy.
One of his last acts as president was to propose a major series of immigration reforms to end the ugly race-based national origins quota system, which had defined our admissions policies in that era. As he told Congress in July of 1963: “The enactment of this legislation will… provide a sound basis upon which we can build in developing an immigration law that serves the national interest and reflects in every detail the principles of equality and human dignity to which our nation subscribes” …
We would not be a great nation today without them (immigrants). But whether we remain true to that history and heritage is a major challenge. There is no question that the immigration system needs to be reformed to meet the challenges of the 21st century… We know the high price of continuing inaction. Raids and other enforcement action will escalate, terrorizing our communities and businesses… State and local governments will take matters into their own hands and pass a maze of conflicting laws that hurt our post-9/11 world. Immigration reform is an opportunity to be true to our ideals as a nation… Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream that children would be judged solely by “the content of their character.”… I believe that we will soon succeed in enacting the kind of reform that our ideals and national security demand…
With these challenges in mind, I commend this volume. Written five decades ago, its powerful vision still guides us.
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