Refugees: Changing the cultural fabric of Fargo-Moorhead
Natives of Fargo-Moorhead who come home after several decades tend to find it a far different community from the one in which they were raised. It’s not just that Fargo-Moorhead is growing by leaps and bounds, or that we have better restaurants, or that Fargo boasts a vibrant, eclectic downtown that’s received rave reviews in national publications.
Now, Fargo-Moorhead is becoming a global community, thanks largely to the resettlement of refugees from around the world. With them have come their languages, their dress, their music, religions and food. While F-M remains mostly white, with its citizens descended largely from German and Scandinavian immigrants, the community is increasingly diverse — in color, in ethnicity, in religion, in language, in life experience.
Volunteers and New Americans join together to work in the community garden. Photo courtesy of Growing Together Facebook page. Read the story here.
Not a day passes that residents don’t hear an international language on the street or in the grocery store. A crisis in nearly any part of the world personally affects people who now call Fargo-Moorhead home. Where once ethnic dining meant American-Chinese, now adventurous diners can choose from Ethiopian, East African, Caribbean, Bosnian or Latino-African. Fargoans can shop not just from chain groceries but from mom-and-pop stores featuring products from Asia, Africa, and the Balkans.
Now, due in large part to the resettlement efforts of Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, almost 5,000 refugees from 40 countries have resettled in Fargo since 1990. Although LSS has been resettling refugees in the area since World War II, most of Fargo’s New Americans are more recent arrivals: From Asia in the 1970s, from the former Soviet-bloc and the Balkans in the 1980s and 1990s, and, from 2001 to the present, from Iraq and nearly a dozen countries in Africa. About 450 refugees have been resettled here in each of the last eight years.
But LSS doesn’t work alone in helping New Americans settle into their new homes. A host of other nonprofit organizations, consortiums and volunteer efforts all play a part in seeing that refugees make successful transitions into their new lives.
These New Americans have, for the most part, made successful transitions here; they work hard, they pay taxes, they buy homes, they start businesses and they underscore the reality of life in a global culture, even here in flyover country.
But refugee resettlement in Fargo-Moorhead isn’t all a celebration of cultural diversity. It’s a complicated issue. Social workers and translators at LSS and other supporting agencies and organizations have full caseloads and hectic schedules. And although most New Americans thrive, it’s not easy for refugees to adjust to life in a new, unfamiliar culture. Especially in recent years, refugee resettlement has also prompted divisiveness, as a small but vocal minority fear refugees and resent the efforts of the federal government and LSS to resettle them here. Many people don’t understand the complexities of refugee resettlement, which is why LSS created a list of Frequently Asked Questions about refugee resettlement. You can view this here.
Some facts and stats, provided by Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota:
· Since 1997, an average of 400 refugees have been settled in North Dakota each year — 70 percent in Fargo/West Fargo, 20 percent in Grand Forks and 10 percent in Bismarck.
· 509 were settled in 2015.
· 85 percent of people settled reunited with family members.
· 40 percent of those settled are children.
The stories on this website, reported and written by eleven students in a semester-long advanced reporting class at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, explore refugee resettlement in the Fargo-Moorhead area. They do not attempt to provide the definitive study on the topic, but rather to explore various aspects of refugee resettlement through the stories of people who know the topic on a first-hand and deeply personal basis.
BY CATHERINE MCMULLEN