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community engagement 
Community engagement is one of the key things that we 
do because there is no resettlement without community 
engagement. 

Often people see integration as a one-way street: 
refugees have to integrate. Well, that's not how it works. 
I think it has to be a dual path where refugees have to 
make progress toward integration, [and] all communities 
have to be open to that integration. 

Another initiative that LSSNCA, our organization, is 
also launching is what we call Refugee Gives Back, and 
that is: let’s go back to refugees that have been here for 
a few years and see how we can get them involved with 
the communities that helped them when they needed it 
the most. And that will be [able to] create a, what could 
be similar to a refugee corps, where, if there are needs 
in the community for volunteers, we can have refugees 
be part of it, so that people can see refugees not just as 
people that need help, but also people that are involved 
in the communities that resettled them. That is, I think, 
one way that we can make them active members of their 
new communities. 

Because what we noticed in the refugee resettlement 
world is that every time we have [a] new family, we 
go to the community and say, we need volunteers. And 
people come out to help. Well, those same refugees have 
skills that the community can benefit from. Why don’t 
we have them volunteer to teach someone Dari, Pashto, 
or Lingala? Why can’t we have them, for those that are 

in IT, why can’t we have them at the libraries helping 
people with navigating the internet or helping them with 
homework? 

access to opportunities 
One of the major hurdles to people being resettled in 
the United States is not the lack of opportunities, [it] is 
access to those opportunities. And what we do through 
all what we provide is really helping remove all of those 
hurdles, to resettlement, to self-sufficiency, as well as 
hurdles to long-term refugee integration. Because after 
all, that's the goal.  

mamadou’s story 
I was myself a former refugee. So I was resettled in 
the United States as a refugee from Mauritania in West 
Africa. In 1989, my family became refugees. So we 
went from having all to lacking all, and we landed at 
Senegal, where I lived in refugee camp for 11 years, and 
pursued my vocation there than I was resettled in the 
United States, and was given basically a second chance.  

The way I put it is always that I have seen the worst 
of humanity and the best of humanity: the worst in 
humanity in being a refugee and being deported from 
your own country by authorities, and then the best of 
humanity by being welcomed in a completely foreign 
land by new communities, and be given the opportunity 
to rebuild that shattered life. So I felt the need to give 
back to the communities that welcomed me when I 
needed it the most.  

Refugee Resettlement Interview

An interview with Mamadou Sy, COO of the Lutheran Social Services 
of the National Capital Area 



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resettlement centers  
What that one-stop-shop did is create one roof under 
which refugees can access all the services that they 
need. It really helped address some of the hurdles to 
accessing services, and that is transportation. So now, 
the resettlement agencies, English as Second Language 
providers, the medical providers, the Department of 
Social Services, were under the same roof and providing 
a gamut of services that refugees needed to access.  

employment  
A lot of people have been unemployed for many years 
when they are in those refugee camps. So it's really 
restored that hope, but also it's really that self-esteem 
that many of them have lost through not getting the 
opportunity to use their skills. Because when you are a 
refugee in another land, in many of these countries, you 
cannot work. Unemployment becomes basically your 
life. Imagine you are you have someone who had held a 
job, deported or fled their country, crossed international 
borders, went to another country to be just told, “well, 
welcome to this country, but guess what: you cannot 
work, so you have to try to live as you can.” And when 
they arrive in the United States, and we help them find 
a job, what we’ve given them is something that many of 
them have not had for many, many years. So it's really 
reconnected them with humanity once again. 

I see employment as a pipeline. If you clog the 
beginning of that pipeline, with both highly skilled and 
low-skilled, then you have less opportunity for the low-
skilled, and then you also [are] preventing those that 
are highly skilled from moving up the ladder. And the 
ones that suffer ultimately [are] not just the families of 
those refugees or the refugees themselves, it's really the 
communities where they live.  

 tailoring resettlement 
Now, with the Afghans, what we have seen is for many 
of these folks, their world collapsed in a matter of days. 

Whereas in other refugee populations, it took years for 
the individual to experience war, to go through it, to 
flee their country, go to a first country of asylum, and 
stay there for years before they were settled. With the 
Afghans, [it] all happened in a matter of days. So many 
of these folks went to the office, and by midday are 
basically forced to leave their country. There was no 
time to plan for taking off all of those degrees that you 
have hanging on the wall, there was no time to reach out 
to your college and get your transcript, there was not 
even time to get your family to join you at the airport. 
It was a hasty exit. And because of that reason, many of 
them had some challenges, some trauma that also needs 
to be addressed. 

I think the best approach to resettlement would be 
to acknowledge that all of them have gone through 
hardships, but also that the needs and the services have 
to be tailored to the individual for it to be a successful 
experience.  

congregations  
As you know, the history of resettlement in the United 
States cannot be understood without the contribution 
of congregations. Congregations have played—all 
denominations, all faiths—have played a major role. 

[T]he Good Neighbor Program … is an initiative that we 
created a few years ago, and we said, “You know what, 
we need to get people from the community involved in 
the resettlement so that refugees are not seen as refugees 
of the agencies, but refugees of the communities.” And 
for that to happen, let's go through the Good Neighbor 
Program, and recruit, vet and train congregations to be 
part of resettlement. 
 
So, it really shows that the resettlement is really a tripod, 
where you need the federal government involvement 
through funding, you need resettlement agencies [for] 
their expertise. But also you need the community 
involvement. And congregations have always been 



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the backbone of resettlement, even when there [was] 
no great involvement from the federal government, 
congregations have always stood up to be the one to 
help. And we leverage those. 

Our mission is really to bring people from all walks of 
life and to help work with those refugees as they make 
progress toward rebuilding their lives. And through that 
family, what I saw is really the resilience of refugees and 
their determination to be part of the fabric of this nation 
for not just now, but for generations to come. 

transportation  
One of the hindrances to employment is not just the 
language, but also is the transportation. Because we 
know that when you are limited in transportation, you 
are limited in opportunities. By giving them access to a 
reliable means of transportation, we have just increased 
the sphere of opportunity for that family. So now they 
can take their kids to the park, they can use their car 
to go shopping, and that dictates how much food they 
can carry and bring home versus if they were riding on 
public transport.  

education  
[H]ow can we make sure that these thousands of highly 
qualified folks are able to find a way back to their field 
of expertise? … If you look at what we traditionally 
see, we have systems that were built for what I call non-
immigrant populations, and now, rather than changing 
the frame, what we want to do is often force people 
into prebuilt frames that don't work. Well, if someone 
is [a] refugee, what it means is that they have fled their 
country for a reason. … For instance, if you look at the 
most recent case of Afghans that left a couple-after the 
fall of Kabul in August of last year, how can we expect 
that those people can reach out to the Taliban and ask 
them to express mail or FedEx them their degrees? That 
does not make sense. So we need to find in the United 
States ways that we can that evaluate the credentials 
without requiring that those come from the same 

countries or the same governments that forced them to 
flee the first place. 

I think [education for refugees] has to be a public/private 
partnership, one that would require the involvement 
of academic institutions, the state, with the federal 
government, so that there [are] some pathways for these 
folks to get access to education. And this is not just for 
what I call the most recent wave of refugees, but also 
even those that have been here for much longer. … 
[W]hen someone arrives in this country, the first few 
months, are not focused on education. It's really how 
can I get a place to call home? I need a first job so I 
can take care of my family. And then it is really, maybe 
after that first year, [when] you see now that they have 
settled, they are looking at expanding that sphere of 
opportunities. 

“from harm to home”   
I left home in 1989—so 30-some years ago—and I have 
not set foot [back in Mauritania] yet, and the likelihood 
of that happening soon is slim to none. Many of the 
people that experienced the same plight with me back 
then are still in the United States or somewhere else in 
Europe and cannot go back to their country. They have 
rebuilt their lives, they have moved on, and that’s what I 
call, from harm to home, and home is where you’re at. 

We are many in terms of our stories, our cultures, and 
our experiences, but one in being refugees and the desire 
to be successful in the United States. What I see often 
through those stories is really not just the desire for the 
person to share their own experience, but also a desire 
to help decision makers and the rest of the world see 
how what they do can impact lives in a very sometimes 
traumatic way. Many refugees will tell you that their 
path to getting to the United States was not very easy, 
so many of them have lived in a refugee camp for ten 
years, twenty years before they are resettled in the 
United States. And once they are on this end and have 
gone from harm to home, and that home happened to be 



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traumatic way. Many refugees will tell you that their 
path to getting to the United States was not very easy, 
so many of them have lived in a refugee camp for ten 
years, twenty years before they are resettled in the 
United States. And once they are on this end and have 
gone from harm to home, and that home happened to be 
the United States, then they really want to share, want 
to advocate. We know that advocacy would help, both 
in terms of educating people that those refugees will be 
joining, but also in helping, hopefully, people to impact 
some of the policies that often have also led to people 
being forced to flee their own countries. 

But my hope … is that we will, as a nation, remember 
that people do not choose to become refugees. It’s 
actions or inactions of other people that force them to 
flee their country, to uproot themselves from everything 
they have known, and then go for the unknown with 
the hope of being able to rebuild their lives. If we get to 
a point where we know from all faith that we were all 
refugees, all of us, it’s just a matter of when and how 
we arrived in this country—if we fall to that position, 
we will see refugee resettlement as a continuation of 
what we’ve been doing, and that is to welcome the most 
vulnerable among us and give them an opportunity to 
rebuild their lives. Hold their hand, assist them as they 
struggle. Struggle with them. Support them. And when 
they are successful it is us, as a nation, that becomes 
successful. 

The U.S. history is really a history of people fleeing 
harm and seeking to better their lives. It’s just a 
matter of when and how people are arriving in this 
country, but we are all migrants. If we use that as our 
common denominator, then the question is, how can 
we make sure that the folks that are arriving now are 
welcomed just as the people that arrived before them. 
How can we make sure that the same opportunities 
that we have, we’re extending those opportunities to 
the people that are arriving now—people that have not 
chosen to leave home, but that were forced into exile, 

forced to become refugees, forced to go to a foreign land 
and to start anew. How can we welcome them?  

role of politics  
I have seen a lot of refugees in my life, and I have yet 
to come across one that went to bed planning to become 
a refugee the next day. It is often the actions of other 
people or the lack thereof that force people to not pack 
anything and leave. 

Refugee resettlement in the United States has 
historically been shielded from the political divide, 
and it has benefited from support from both ends—
Republicans, as well as the Democrats. And that is the 
way it’s supposed to be. I know that not everybody 
supports refugees [and] refugee resettlement, that’s 
known; but on the Hill, what we have seen is really 
bipartisan support to the program. 

Now, if you look at the folks that are crossing the 
southern border to the United States, in any other part 
of the world we would have called them refugees. 
Why? Because [firstly,] they have well-founded fear 
of persecution; second, they crossed an international 
border. That’s what the Geneva Convention defined as 
refugees. We never call them refugees, we call them 
“migrants,” we called them...whatever. I think it’s 
definitely some different labels that being applied to 
people that are experiencing the same plight and the 
same sufferings, but applied differently based on who’s 
applying that label. 



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Related Readings

Bloom, M. (2019, February 7). ‘Just 
an outsider’: Refugee doctors, 
nurses face widespread underem-
ployment. KUNC. https://www.
kunc.org/news/2019-02-07/
just-an-outsider-refugee-doc-
tors-nurses-face-widespread-under-
employment   
 
Bridekirk, J., Hynie, M., & SyRIA.lth. 
(2021). The impact of education and 
employment on self-rated mental 
health among Syrian refugees in 
Canada. Journal of Immigrant and 
Minority Health 23, 290-297. https://
doi.org/10.1007/s10903-020-01108-
0  
 
Disney, L. R. (2021, March). ‘We know 
more than that’: The underemploy-
ment experiences of college-edu-
cated Iraqi refugees living in the US. 
Journal of Refugee Studies 34(1), 
1168-1184. https://doi.org/10.1093/
jrs/feaa128 
 
Newman, A., Bimrose, J., Nielsen, I., 
& Zacher, H. (2018, April). Vocational 
behavior of refugees: How do refu-
gees seek employment, overcome 
work-related challenges, and navi-
gate their careers. Journal of Voca-
tional Behavior 105, 1-5. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.jvb.2018.01.007  
 
Sy, M. I. (2019) Erlit: A refugee's 
story.




