Urging Action to Help Refugees

From Neerlandia (Alta.) CRC to Loop Church in Chicago, Ill., and from Christ Community CRC in Tualatin, Ore., to Jubilee Fellowship CRC in St. Catharines, Ont., Christian Reformed congregations are showing love to refugee neighbors through resettlement action. And there is more to be done.

The Office of Social Justice and the Christian Reformed Centre for Public Dialogue are calling on members of the CRC to support resettlement work by advocating for refugees. This binational effort comes at a time when both the United States and Canada are deciding on the number of refugees they will aim to admit for the coming year.

For decades, CRC congregations on both sides of the border have been committed to the faithful work of welcoming refugees.

Carol Bremer-Bennett, U.S. director of World Renew, recalls World Renew’s work of serving thousands of Cuban refugees escaping political oppression in the 1960s. “Our ministry is rooted in ‘welcoming the stranger’ and providing refuge to vulnerable populations,” she said.

World Renew also helped congregations resettle many Vietnamese refugees in Canada in the 1970s. This was the beginning of Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program (PSRP).

World Renew has had an agreement with the Government of Canada since the inception of this program and has continued to work with congregations across the country to sponsor refugees of many backgrounds and to help them as they resettle in their new home.

Even though many churches have welcomed thousands of refugees to Canada since the beginning of the program and even though Canada’s PSRP is highly regarded internationally, there are long delays between the time a church submits a sponsorship application and the immigrants’ arrival.

The wait times have been frustrating and disheartening for these congregations as well as for the refugees, who are in immediate need of protection and resettlement.

In 2017 the Canadian government promised to clear the backlog of private sponsorship applications by 2019 to reduce the long processing times.

The Government-Assisted Refugees system is another avenue through which refugees enter Canada. In 2016 the Canadian government welcomed almost 25,000 of these refugees, due to international outcry about the crisis in the Middle East.

But in 2017 that number plummeted to 7,500 Government-Assisted Refugees. These refugees are selected by the United Nations because of significant need and vulnerability and then go through an intensive screening process in order to enter Canada.

The Canadian Council for Refugees, of which World Renew is a member, is advocating for an increase to those numbers for 2018, to respond to the great needs worldwide.

Each year in the United States, the president determines how many refugees the U.S. intends to admit. On September 27, the Trump administration announced that it would set the annual refugee admissions cap at 45,000 individuals--the lowest refugee resettlement goal in U.S. history.

Since 1980, the average resettlement goal has been 96,229 with the lowest cap at 67,000 in 1986.

“The U.S. has a tradition of taking into account the global situation when determining the annual cap. That’s why in 1980 alone the United States welcomed 231,700 refugees and in 1993 another 142,000 individuals,” said Kelsey Herbert of the CRC’s Office of Social Justice.

“The world is facing the largest refugee crisis in modern history — this is another moment to increase our refugee admission numbers, not drastically decrease them,” Herbert added.

As Synod 2010 affirmed in the report of its Committee to Study the Migration of Workers, “God’s Word consistently directs the people of God to be welcoming toward the strangers in their midst and to extend special care to those most vulnerable to social or economic conditions that threaten their ability to survive.”

In response to the directives of synod and the global refugee crisis, a U.S. action alert from OSJ encourages people to call on Congress to urge the Trump administration to raise the refugee admissions cap to at least 75,000 individuals for the next year.

A similar Canada action alert calls for the Canadian government to follow through on its promise to address long wait times in the Private Sponsorship Program and to set strong resettlement levels for Government-Assisted Refugees.

CRC congregations in both the U.S. and Canada have supported refugee families from around the world and have been moved to advocate.

Pam Henager from Family of Faith CRC in Kennewick, Wash., is one CRC member who has responded to the action alert to urge Congress to ask President Trump to increase the refugee admissions cap.

She says, “I work with refugees every day, and I’ve seen firsthand the incredible impact resettlement has on refugee families -- it truly is a life-saving program. But I know that for every family we work with, there are tens of thousands of vulnerable people living in great insecurity, unclear what their futures hold.

“As a Christian, I am called to show compassion to ‘the least of these’ — one way I do this is through advocacy. The recently announced cap is the lowest in our history, so I felt like I needed to contact my representative and senators and ask them to advocate for a more appropriate number, given the refugee crisis.”

Jessica Banninga of Meadowlands CRC in Ancaster, Ont., adds, “I took the refugee action alert because I believe that we should act in taking care of the poor, marginalized, and oppressed people of the world in response to being good global citizens and citizens of the kingdom of God.”