Meet three refugees who help make Aurora the most diverse city in Colorado.
interpreters began speaking eight different languages every time one of the candidates on the November 7 ballot explained why they were fit to run the city they all called home: Aurora.
After Coffman spoke, moderator Whitney Traylor asked the speakers to"slow down a little bit" and the interpreters to "try to interpret as quiet as you can.""Our diversity is a big thing. Our diversity is really unique. We are by far the most diverse city in Colorado. We're one of the most diverse in the country," says Coffman."We always try to capitalize on that. Twenty percent of our overall population was born outside the United States.
One of President Jimmy Carter's last political acts was signing a bill to standardize the system for bringing refugees into the U.S. Until then, refugee resettlement was typically done through charities, private organizations and community groups set up by local institutions such as churches and universities. The 1980 Refugee Resettlement Act standardized the process and funneled resources to official resettlement agencies.
"We want to provide tools, the resources and the information so refugees and immigrants can understand how to navigate the city," Gambetta adds."You need legal assistance, you need housing, you need information on how to enroll your kids in school, how to open a checking account, how to ride the bus, how to call the police. We empower them with this information."
Gasimba"grew up there," she says, and got her entire education in the camp. It was located on"one big mountain," and she and her family lived in a tent hardly wider than a sidewalk."Sometimes you sleep the head inside, the legs outside," she says, and laughs."Sometimes, the parents chose to stay up all night so the children can sleep on the mud, on the floor, no mattress, no nothing.
"They showed me where I'm going to live, where I can buy food, things like that," she recalls."They are very helpful. They work closely with you for the first three months that you are here." Lutheran Family Services, like other resettlement agencies, only assisted with her integration for three months. Then"you're on your own," she says. "You start going to work, go to school, just to help yourself."
Gasimba feels that"everybody is welcome" in the U.S. and particularly Aurora, and she tries to be the same way."I'm very friendly, so anybody who wants to stay with me, we will stay together and we will be friends," she says."I don't select people. I have so many Mexican friends. When I go to work, I make friends. Anything in common, I make friends. I have a lot of friends.
Gasimba had dealt with similar issues; the air conditioning and heating don't work in her apartment, and it gets so hot that her little boy can't stand wearing clothes in summer months."Imagine him spending all day naked because he's too hot and he can't handle the heat. That is not something good," she says. And when it's cold,"I have to put over me like three blankets.
After all, her native country"is still on fire. They're still fighting," Gasimba says. She has aunts and uncles living in the refugee camp in Rwanda; her parents are trying to bring them to Colorado. Gasimba stays in touch with her relatives in Africa on WhatsApp, usually sending messages in Kinyarwanda and sometimes in Swahili.
"They start kicking out everyone who is not supporting them," Onosa says."The government we had from ’89 to a couple years ago, if you don't belong to the government, they cannot survive in Sudan." His family gave him money to take a bus to the border, where he bribed Sudanese officials so that he could continue on to Cairo, the capital of neighboring Egypt, where he lived for a couple of years."I stayed there, and I applied as a refugee," he says."And they gave me a chance to go to Canada or the United States or Australia during that time."
He asked the resettlement agency that had brought him to Texas to help him move to Colorado, and a month later, he arrived in Aurora. A friend in the Mines admissions office helped him learn the dialect. He also wrote an affidavit of support, telling immigration officials that he'd support Onosa's family financially if they came to the U.S."They want to make sure you can support your family if they are here, or if not, they want to make sure someone with a good income will support your family to come," Onosa says."And he got that for me."Finally, he was able to bring his wife to the U.S.
They decided to start a"sanduk," a Sudanese tradition in which members of a group put a portion of their earnings in a box each month until they reach a goal."At the end of the month, I have to participate $200, like a bill," Onosa explains."One day we figure out we have close to $40,000 after two years. But we had a commitment: Nobody touch it."
At one point, though, revenue started to decline, and some friends pulled out their initial investments."A lot of them, they feel like the company is not going in the right direction, so they stop: 'I want my share,'" Onosa remembers."We just give them the money until we get close to eleven, some of them also at the end. They said, 'We don't want the company, you can have it, just give us our money.
Facing off against Onosa's Sudanese team in the finals on October 15 was the Congolese team, the African Union team. In the stands that night were Gasimba and her two young children, who watched as refugees from Sudan triumphed over those from Congo., it was late at night and cold. He couldn't see anything in the dark. He'd come to the U.S. with his wife and three sons; the trip fromhad taken a month.
His experience and his fluency in Dari Persian and Pashto helped him get work in 2020 with the U.S. Institute of Peace, an organization founded by Congress for peacekeeping and conflict resolution around the world. As the U.S. began to withdraw, the difference"was black and white," he recalls. The last eleven days that Milad, his wife and three sons were in Afghanistan, they saw the Taliban enter the city."Kabul was colorful, everything was colorful, coffee shops were full, these were the signs of development. With the fall of Kabul in August 2021, people had another type of feeling — that not only a public government collapsed, but also a nation has collapsed.
Milad and his family were resettled in Aurora by the International Rescue Committee. While Milad searched for work, a community engagement position opened at the IRC, which called for meeting with refugees across metro Denver and helping them get adjusted as they resettled. It sounded like Milad's old job in Afghanistan, and he got it just two months after arriving in Aurora.
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