Panelists, from left, in the back row are Jim Kinley and Lauren McArthur In the front, from left, are Mary Bell, Bobby Perez, Monique Weston and Cynthia Poppino. (Provided photo — Naj Wikoff)

Three North Country communities — Keene Valley, Plattsburgh and Willsboro — have taken on welcoming vetted immigrants through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program Welcome Corps. Representatives of the host agencies, or in one case, their proxy, shared their experiences at Keene Arts in Keene on Sunday afternoon, Oct. 20, an event organized by Adirondack Friends of Refugees and Immigrants.

The first to seek a refugee family was a group affiliated with the Keene Valley Congregational Church, one of the first 50 in the country to be approved by Welcome Corps and the smallest and most rural community to do so. Their success and process stimulated the other two to apply for opportunities to host refugees; Plattsburgh, which successfully welcomed a Vietnamese family in 1975, is still waiting for its first placement.

Welcome Corps was launched in 2023. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the program by stating, “Providing a safe haven and a new home for people fleeing war, violence, and persecution is one of America’s noblest traditions, dating back to the founding of our nation. Throughout our history, our country has benefited from the energy, ingenuity and hard work of refugees.”

The responsibility of a sponsor agency or group is to welcome the refugee(s) to their new community, help them build a social network, find employment and housing, and address the challenges of relocating so that they can become self-sufficient to help them develop a sense of belonging. The challenges are myriad; the refugees may need help to speak or read English, living in the North Country requires being able to drive, and living in a rural region far from a major city where more people with a similar heritage may live.

Elizabeth Derr’s daughter saw the initial announcement of the State Department’s launch of the Welcome Corps. She brought it to her mother’s attention, who passed it on to the church’s pastor, the Rev. John Sampson, and friends within the congregation. As the church was one of the first designated as open and affirming in the state and active in raising funds for the World Food Kitchen (and sleeping bags) to support Ukraine and warm clothing for refugees seeking shelter in Canada. The idea of welcoming state-approved refugees was appealing. A planning group was formed, and an application was submitted to the Welcome Corps, one of the 13,000 applications initially received.

Susan Griskonis, assistant attorney general in charge of the attorney general’s regional office in Plattsburgh. (Provided photo — Naj Wikoff)

For AFRI’s founders, the event may seem like closing the circle as it was established as an outcome of a meeting held at the Keene Valley Congregational Church in 2016, a meeting whose focus was assisting Syrian refugees.

“At that meeting, we were so motivated to do something, to not to sit still,” said Bobby Perez, a founder of AFRI. “AFRI came into being because a group of us from the Willsboro-Elizabethtown area who’d known each other from church (St. John’s Episcopal Church in Essex) and being friends, we decided to create our own group separate from Keene Valley. Initially, we wanted to raise awareness of the plight of immigrants and refugees worldwide. It’s a situation that hasn’t been seen since World War II. We wanted to help resettle people.”

In part, because many of the immigrants they support live in Lake Placid, Plattsburgh and Saranac Lake, AFRI is now in the process of becoming based at the Keene Valley Congregational Church, an institution they have partnered with in supporting Ukrainian citizens and refugees heading for Canada until Roxham Road was closed.

Lauren McArthur of KVCC said their group initially desired an immigrant family, one with kids that could attend Keene Central School. However, as the school did not have an English as a second language teacher and could not afford to hire and support one, the group then focused on seeking a couple, possibly one with small children. Instead, Welcome Corps sent two sisters from Sub-Saharan Africa. Their good luck was connecting with a couple at the Recovery Lounge in Upper Jay who spoke Swahili and finding a property that wasn’t being rented they could use to house the sisters.

“When we went to pick up Naomi and Rachel at the airport, we were flabbergasted,” said McArthur. “We expected them in traditional dress. Instead, they were two young ladies from a big city in Uganda. Welcome Corps expected us to have them self-sustaining within three months, but we had barely gotten through all the documentation by then; we hadn’t made any progress with a driver’s license, and one didn’t know how to drive. Living in this area, immigrants have to be able to drive.”

They quickly found work for the two women at school, where one congregant worked, solving the problem of getting to work. Since then, Rachel moved to Cleveland to be near family, and Naomi moved to Saranac Lake, where she is in training as a health worker and working on her driver’s license.

AFRI’s leaders met Mary Bell and Jim Kinley, two former Peace Corps workers fluent in Spanish who offered to help them apply to Welcome Corps, resulting in their welcoming a Venezuelan father and son who had taken refuge in Columbia. A challenge for Welcome Corps was that AFRI members don’t all live in one community; they are spread between Crown Point and Willsboro. But once they successfully made the case that’s everyday life in the North Country, their bid was accepted, and Jose and his son arrived, again from an urban environment. As Mary and Jim had space, Jose and his son stayed with them.

“It was very beneficial for Jose and his son to stay with us, both in terms of language, working through the documentation, and our ability to open doors for them,” said Kinley. “They were very honest that the area was too rural for them. We introduced them to the Lake Placid and Plattsburgh areas, but they felt it wasn’t the best situation. Jose had a fiancee in Denver, an immigrant who had been in the U.S. for two years. The idea had been that she’d move here, but they decided to move to Denver, and their situation is working well.”

The organizers from AFRI and KVCC said that online training to support people who have been traumatized is critical. For us, a helicopter landing in Marcy Field, fireworks displays and noon-time fire sirens are normal, but for immigrants coming from a violent experience, such unanticipated sounds can be traumatizing and trigger bad memories.

All said they are willing to do it again, but not immediately; they are still assisting those who have arrived in different ways, going into great detail about the challenges of lining up health services and dealing with government bureaucracies and red tape. Susan Griskonis, assistant attorney general in charge of the state attorney general’s regional office in Plattsburgh, said they can provide connections for legal support and ensure there is no discrimination by any office or organization from which services are needed.

“In the future, we will seek immigrants from rural communities and who know how to drive,” said Kinley.

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(Naj Wikoff lives in Keene Valley and has been writing his column for the Lake Placid News since 2005.)