HIAS
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HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, is America’s oldest international migration and refugee resettlement agency. Dedicated to assisting persecuted and oppressed people worldwide and delivering them to countries of safe haven, HIAS has rescued more than 4.5 million people since 1881. Growing from organizations founded in the 1870s and 1880s to assist Jewish migrants arriving in America, HIAS is responsible for the rescue and resettlement into the United States of noted academics, artists, athletes, entertainers, scientists, mayors, governors, and members of United States Congress, as well as everyday people.
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[edit] Aim and inspiration
The central teachings for Jews emphasize offering welcome, protection and love for the Ger (stranger). This is referenced in the Torah 36 times – more than any other teaching. Jewish tradition also includes principles of Piddyon Shevuyim (redeeming the captive), Chesed (kindness), and Hachnasat Orchim (hospitality) that create a solid framework for a compassionate response to the needs of immigrants and refugees. The Jewish tradition is absolute in its support for refugees as seen in the Torah’s insistence that “you shall not turn over to his master a slave who seeks refuge with you…” (Deuteronomy 23:16).
[edit] HIAS around the World
HIAS maintains a presence in key trouble spots around the world, including the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, Africa and Latin America.
[edit] Middle East
In the Middle East, HIAS is involved in issues of three key countries in the region – Iran, Iraq, and Israel, as well as with the resulting currents of tension spreading to places like Pakistan, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.
Today, HIAS provide provides processing and orientation to U.S.-bound Iranian religious minorities seeking a safe haven from religious persecution, including Jews, Baha’is, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Sabaean Mandaeans, through its offices in Vienna. Funded by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), HIAS Vienna is America’s sole refugee processing entity in Western Europe. The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad wrote that the mass emigration of Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews to the USA that is facilitated by the HIAS is due to economic reasons and not to religious persecution.[1]
The displacement of Iraqis has led HIAS to advocate in Washington for a humanitarian-based approach to this crisis – by working to expand protection and assistance in countries abroad and to increase the number of Iraqi refugees admitted to America under the U.S. refugee program – particularly religious minorities and individuals with close ties to America, such as those with family connections and those who served as translators for the U.S. military.
In Israel, via its offices in Tel Aviv, HIAS exemplifies an historic commitment to aliya and aiding olim. As part of its overall HIAS scholarship program, each year the organization awards scholarships to deserving olim and maintains partnerships with the Israeli government and Israeli institutions on humanitarian missions. HIAS assisted in the formulation and conduct of regional tikkun olam efforts involving Israel, including logistical and developmental support for assistance to Darfuri refugees in Chad.
A strong and historic linkage to Israel helps HIAS build the relationships necessary to continue its mission in the Middle East as well as in other parts around the world. For example, in Geneva, HIAS represents the Jewish community’s perspective on refugee protection to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its colleague agencies, and promotes specific Jewish concerns, including Jewish refugees in Israel, assuring that the humanitarian to needs of refugees is paramount and that anti-Israel politics do not contaminate this crucial international humanitarian forum.
[edit] Former Soviet Union
In Moscow and Kiev, HIAS is an implementing partner for the U.S. government and UNHCR, respectively. As it has for several decades, HIAS continues to help Jews and evangelical Christians with their migration to the United States through cultural orientation and migrant counseling programs. HIAS’ extensive experience in the Former Soviet Union has helped it continue to represent Jewish values in other ways as well, including assuring that refugees from other places being absorbed into Ukraine are given appropriate and humane protection. The Ukrainian government, as well as non-government agencies, police and court systems, now seek HIAS’ counsel on best practices to address the needs of incoming refugees.
[edit] Africa
For several years HIAS has been on the ground in Africa where, in Chad, it now provides service in five of that country’s camps for refugees from the Darfur region of Sudan, and in Kenya, where the HIAS operation focuses on the needs of the most critical among the 250,000 people displaced by conflicts in Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The organization provides psychosocial and community services programs, such as peace and conflict resolution training, sexual and gender-based violence education and sensitization, therapeutic play activities for children, and counseling, reaching 90,000 refugees.
HIAS has created a cadre of refugees in each camp to serve as community mobilizers. Refugees are trained to identify and intervene appropriately in cases of need resulting in a sustainable, community-based program to help refugees to help refugees.
The HIAS Refugee Trust of Kenya assists vulnerable people in Kenya and Uganda in their resettlement to Canada, Australia and the U.S. The refugees most benefiting from HIAS’ work in Kenya are those who need resettlement assistance but might otherwise have fallen through cracks in a system overwhelmed by the complications inherent in serving large, diverse populations of Congolese, Ethiopians, Somalis, and Rwandans in desperate need. The HIAS operation puts into action one of the tenets of the Jewish value system: “to save one life is to save the world.”
Also in Kenya, refugees receive social services, including home visits, emergency housing, medical assessments and referrals for medical care, and the Psychosocial Project, passport photos, and counseling on a range of issues from cultural orientation, voluntary repatriation, and case rejection.
[edit] Latin America
In Latin America, through regional offices in Buenos Aires, HIAS provides full-service counseling for Colombian refugees fleeing to Ecuador and to Venezuela, including psycho-social counseling, legal assistance, integration assistance, and humanitarian assistance. HIAS’ work with the UNHCR and the Jewish community of Argentina has helped facilitate that country’s resettlement program for Colombian refugees. The HIAS humanitarian program in Ecuador involves the distribution of basic supplies to thousands of vulnerable refugees. This new program has dramatically changed HIAS structure and logistics in the country.
[edit] HIAS in America
HIAS brings home the work of its overseas programs by resettling refugees from trouble spots around the world, through a national affiliate network of local Jewish community partners. HIAS affiliates in New York, Boston, Chicago and elsewhere have resettled Jews from the former Soviet Union for several generations now. Affiliates in California have for several years resettled Iranian Jews and other religious minorities. In the summer of 2007 the San Diego Jewish community began to resettle the first arrivals of Iraqi refugees.
The resettlement process – a key component of the HIAS core mission since 1881 – includes not only helping refugees to make the actual move to their new cities in America, but also involves providing them, in their first months, with food and shelter, basic orientation to American life, and help in getting the first job in the U.S. As they adjust to their new lives here and ultimately, naturalize, HIAS helps them become full participants in the democratic process.
In the New York metropolitan area HIAS provides direct assistance – mostly to former refugees to prepare various immigration applications, such as Adjustment of Status (green cards), Naturalization, and Immigrant Relative Petitions. At naturalization interviews, HIAS provides legal representation – especially for the elderly, many of whom are Russian-speaking.
Russian-Speaking Americans are already well connected to HIAS by virtue of the organization’s historic relationship with refugees from the former Soviet Union, and through its LOREO and CVEI programs. The LOREO (Local Russian Émigré Organizations) “Road to Success” program provides technical assistance, develops material, participates and supports national events, helps in leadership development, and has created an informational clearinghouse for grassroots organizations and the community at large. CVEI (Civic and Voter Education Initiative) is a nationwide project of HIAS-LOREO participants and the World Congress of Russian Jewry. Membership in CVEI includes more than 60 Russian-speaking grassroots and community-based organizations.
[edit] Advocacy
Another key component of HIAS’ domestic mission is advocacy for generous immigration policies that maintain America’s historic and deserved status as a welcoming and humanitarian nation. HIAS’ advocacy work has earned the organization a reputation as the American Jewish community’s “voice” in Washington on all matters pertaining to immigration and refugees.
[edit] Extending SSI
Since 2004, HIAS has been intensely involved in legislative advocacy and public education campaigns surrounding the dire conditions of hundreds of elderly Jews, who make up the largest subset of a growing Supplemental Security Income (SSI) problem.
In 1996 Congress severely restricted legal immigrants’ access to public assistance. A key provision was that refugees living in the U.S. for seven years but who did not become citizens in that time would lose SSI, the life-sustaining public benefits program that provides a basic monthly income to people who are age 65 or older, disabled, or blind.
Due to lengthy backlogs and security checks, many refugees were unable to complete the citizenship process in within seven years. Some who have been granted political asylum faced a backlog of up to 15 years to get their green cards. Others found the challenge of learning English at an advanced age to be too difficult and could not pass the naturalization exam, which is administered in English.
Significant encouragement for HIAS’ advocacy efforts came in 2007 when the United States House of Representatives passed “SSI Extension for Elderly and Disabled Refugees.” The bill would extend SSI eligibility for elderly and disabled refugees, asylees and other humanitarian immigrants, from seven, to nine years, and included a provision to cover those who had already lost their benefits due to the time limit. It also contained a provision to allow humanitarian immigrants with a naturalization application pending with the Department of Homeland Security to receive a tenth year of eligibility.
[edit] Comprehensive immigration reform
HIAS has also found itself in the thick of the comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) debate, to rally Jewish community (organized as well as grass-roots) involvement and playing an integral part in the national interfaith efforts. CIR would include border security, as well as a thoughtful, integrated system of humanely handling the millions of people already living in the country, who are working and contributing to the U.S. economy. The issue also involves a number of other immigration-related and security factors.
[edit] Material support
Another top HIAS priority has involved convincing Congress and the administration to amend overreaching provisions of laws, known collectively as “material support for terrorist activity,” that bar legitimate refugees from admission to the United States. The bar was included in the USA PATRIOT Act and the REAL ID Act to ensure that supporters of terrorism would not be admitted to the United States. The language of the bar, however, was so broad that it also denied admission to the U.S. for victims of terrorists – individuals who survived rape, robbery, extortion, mutilation – for “knowingly” – even if unwillingly – providing “material support” to the terrorists who persecuted them. The bar also denied admission to those who supported – even on the sidelines – efforts to overthrow the most brutal of regimes.
[edit] History and education
A new and developing focus for HIAS in recent years involves a concerted effort to enhance its service to immigrants by helping to connect the Jewish community, one generation to the next. This growing area taps into the community’s traditional focus on history and education. While HIAS continues to re-establish its ties with past clients – many of them Holocaust survivors – the organization is also developing new ties to a younger constituency by helping them to reconnect to their migrant ancestries and Jewish identity.
The HIAS Location and Family History program reunites families that have been separated for many decades. As the interest in genealogy grows, more people are turning to HIAS for help assembling their family trees, and “connecting the dots” of their life stories. This program has been helped by HIAS’ vast collection of immigrant arrival records that date back to the early 1900s.
Accessing this rich resource of information will be critical for generations to come – so the organization has started a campaign to ensure the preservation of HIAS materials in its collections as well as those housed in other institutions worldwide. A new Internet-based initiative – mystory.hias.org – was launched on the 40th anniversary of the “Let My People Go” movement and will help tell the story of that period through the stories of Russian Jews who lived through the campaign for Soviet Jewry – the movement which helped more than two million Jews break through the Iron Curtain and start a new life in Israel, Western Europe, Australia and North America, where they resettled with the assistance of HIAS. Registered users of the new site will be able to create a personal page, on which they can record their experiences, memoirs, stories or anecdotes related to their emigration from the USSR or arrival to America.
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ Thomas Erdbrink (2008-03-29). Voor 3.000 dollar weg uit Iran naar de VS:Iran houdt langzamerhand geen christenen, joden, zoroastriërs of baha’i meer over (Dutch). NRC Handelsblad. Retrieved on 2008-03-29. “"Religieuze vervolging is niet de beweegreden voor het massale vertrek van niet-islamitische Iraniërs. De slechte economie en de lokroep van geëmigreerde familieleden en permanente Amerikaanse verblijfsvergunning zijn de drijvende krachten."English translation: "Religious persecution is not the reason for the massive emigration of non-Muslim Iranians. The bad economy and the luring call of emigrated family members and the permanent American residence permit are the driving forces."”
