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Ojoye Akane: Connecting families, faith and homes

Delivering counseling and education on home ownership, Ojoye Akane travels from Faribault to Rochester to Albert Lea to Austin. He logs a lot of miles in his work for Three Rivers Community Action, but his travel around southern Minnesota is easy compared to the longer life journey that brought him here. That journey contributes to the passion that inspires his work with families and their homes.

Akane grew up in Ethiopia, an orphan raised by “multiple people,” including a grandma and two uncles. “Maybe that shaped my personality,” he says. “If you feel connected with a family, even if you don’t have parents, that family would shape your life.”

Akane arrived in the United States in 2004, staying first with an uncle in Mankato. He and his wife and children moved to Austin in 2011, buying a home in 2015.

Today, his home in Austin is filled with family – his wife, their four children, a step-daughter who now attends the University of Minnesota, and nieces, nephews and other relatives who frequently visit. In August, nieces and nephews came for extended visits highlighted by visits to the county fair.

“I’m passionate about children,” Akane says. He’s also passionate about his faith and about education. He drives children to Faith Church every Wednesday for services and religious education. “I just want them to come there, especially when the kids and their parents are not connected to any religious organization or church,” he explains. “To me, faith is part of my personality.”

Akane describes his job as an emerging market initiative created to provide financial and homeownership education and counseling services and advocate for minority home buyers. The initiative also serves other special needs populations, such as single parents and people with disabilities. He does short-term and long-term counseling for first-time home buyers, as well as delivering workshops for first-time home buyers.

Financial literacy workshops focus on skills such as budgeting and establish credit, and include an introduction to home ownership. Home Stretch workshops provide an in-depth overview of the home buying process, and are often required by financial institutions as a pre-condition for getting a mortgage.

“I love the work I’m doing,” Akane says. The best part of the work comes “when you see people’s face when they are closing or when they get that new home that they dream of.”

He sees his work as giving back to the community. “I am educated, I have connections – I have to use this to give it to the people that would benefit from it.”

With undergraduate and graduate work in urban studies, Akane has his sights set on a doctorate.  When you have a potential that you are not using, he says, “that is a recipe for more education — and more debt!”

His big dreams for the future include more work with young people and with his church.

“If God has given all this energy, scholarships, funds, the generosity of this country, if God has provided me with all this, my life should be a blessing,” he says. “I want to be a blessing in this community.”

Eh Mwee: Building bridges in five languages

Eh Mwee is a bridge builder, though she looks too small to do that work. The bridges she builds reach from employers in Mower and Freeborn counties to Karen and Karenni refugees looking for jobs in their new home.

Eh Mwee grew up as one of those refugees, born in Burma but fleeing with her mother to a refugee camp in Thailand when she was just two months old. She was five when her mother died, and then lived with an adoptive family in the camp. Growing up without a home or country, she knew she wanted both – and more.

“When you live in a refugee camp,” Eh Mwee explains, “you don’t have a chance to go to college.” Refugees were restricted to the camp, not allowed to live or work outside the camp, and always considered illegal in the rest of the country. Their choices are to live and die inside the camp, to win resettlement in a third country, or to return to their home country. People of Karen and Karenni ethnicities still face persecution in Burma, so that was not an option.

Eh Mwee wanted more than a life behind fences. She wanted an education, a real home, even a car. She decided to seek resettlement. Waiting to turn 18, when she could apply for resettlement, she finished high school and studied English in the camp. Along with 250 others, she applied for one of 20 spots in the English Immersion Program, and got into the 10-month program.

Of the five languages she speaks, Eh Mwee says, English is the hardest.

Getting permission to come to the United States took years. Like all refugees who apply to enter the United States, she filled out applications, was interviewed by U.S. officials, waited for background checks and medical checks, and then had even more interviews. Finally, after 22 years in a refugee camp, she was approved for a U.S. visa.

Now 30, Eh Mwee has accomplished many of her dreams, including her first car, a job, and buying a home, where she lives with her husband and four-year-old daughter

At the Workforce Development Center, her job title is Karen Outreach and Job Search Instructor. She interprets, sits in on meetings with employers, finds resources, and helps her clients fill out forms and prepare resumes and applications.

Language is a barrier to success, so her interpreting is vital. She speaks Burmese and Thai, as well as two Karen languages – Po and Ska. Usually, she communicates with Karenni people in Burmese.  Once a client is hired, she may go with them to the job orientation and help them to understand expectations and safety procedures.

Immigrants’ first goal is a job, she explains, and then a home. She says most Karen and Karenni immigrants are shy and quiet, and make good neighbors.

“We love being with friends and other family members. Usually we go to church together. On birthdays, we call it thanksgiving worship, not a party. We gather everyone together and eat together. We like being friends with others and we like to help each other a lot.”

DACA Helpline

(Español abajo.) The helpline is open again this week! Minnesota immigrants and refugees with household income below 250% of the federal poverty guidelines can call for free legal consultation on DACA. Call 651-287-3715 from 10-noon on Tuesday and from 2:30-4:30 on Thursday. (Income screening will be done over the phone.)

La linea de derechos para inmigrantes y refugiados estará abierta otra vez durante esta semana! Inmigrantes y refugiados que viven en el estado de Minnesota y que tienen un ingreso debajo del 250% de las guías federales de pobreza pueden llamar a la linea telefónica para una consulta (gratuita) relacionada con DACA. Llame a 651-287-3715 el martes entre la 10 de la mañana y el mediodía y el jueves entre las 2:30 y las 4:30 de la tarde. (Una evaluación de ingresos se tomará lugar por teléfono.)

A Tale of Two Citizens

Lisette with naturalization certificate.

After traveling a long, hard, and costly road, Licette Peña Paulino became a U.S. citizen this year. She waited for almost a decade to get a visa. After becoming a permanent legal resident, she had to wait five years to apply. Application fees total $725 now. After applying she had to wait again – for processing of papers and background checks and scheduling the naturalization interview and tests.

Along the way, Licette got help with the application and test preparation from Graciela Gonzalez, her pro bono attorney with the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, who is also an immigrant.  Licette said she is grateful to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, whose staff and volunteers made her feel “very welcome and not afraid through the process of becoming a citizen.”

Many years ago, Licette’s parents applied for her visa under the family reunification provisions of current U.S. immigration law. Then they waited – her parents here and Licette in the Dominican Republic, where she was a medical doctor. She was eight months pregnant when she received her visa. Coming to the United States with her husband and two children in September 2010, she gave birth to their third child in October.

Without speaking English, everything seemed frightening at first. She started English classes in November 2010.

Though Licette was a medical doctor in the Dominican Republic, her Dominican medical education and credentials weren’t recognized here. She had to look for other work. She now works as a personal care attendant. When she explored nursing classes through a community college, the process seemed bureaucratic and complicated. She is now preparing to become a physician’s assistant.

Licette’s desire to come to the United States and become a citizen began with the stories of friends who had visited here. Her parents came to the United States in search of work and a better life. She wanted that for herself and her children, too.

Now that she is here, Licette says she appreciates the order and relative security of living where people follow the rules. She is also glad that when she works, she has the materials she needs for her work—something we often take for granted.

She and her father prepared for citizenship together. Besides learning English, they had to pass a citizenship test with questions on American government, history and civics. The application process is expensive, but she and her father qualified for pro bono assistance from the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. Graciela Gonzalez, her attorney. “was wonderful,” Licette said.

Graciela Gonzalez recounts a similar journey. She came to the United States from Argentina and earned her B.A. from the University of Minnesota with majors in English and political science. She began her career as a certified interpreter in federal and state courts, and in immigration courts. She also taught “Interpreting in Legal Settings” at the University of Minnesota for many years. After her children left home, she earned a law degree from the University of St. Thomas and now practices immigration and criminal law. She also volunteers pro bono services at the Legal Rights Center, a non-profit organization that represents, free of charge, indigent and low income criminal defendants.

Graciela said it gives her great joy to help immigrants like Licette find their way through the paperwork, interviews and tests required to become a U.S. citizen. Naturalization is a moment of great emotion, as an immigrant steps into a new identity without giving up their native culture. Becoming a U.S. citizen is a process of addition, not substitution or subtraction. Welcoming new citizens enriches the United States.

 

Thanks to Newell Searle, a volunteer for ILCM, for writing this article. 

Juventino Meza: ‘I’m ready for what’s to come.’

#WinterIsHere and not just on Game of Thrones. Might not look like winter outside, but a bitter cold wind is blowing out of Washington these days for Juventino Meza, and for other Dreamers.

“A piece of paper has never defined me and having it be taken away will be hard but I’ve been there before,” Juve wrote recently. “We have been there before. Many are there now. What we do under these circumstances is important and I hope we choose to fight like hell for young people and our entire families- for ALL of us. I’m ready for what’s to come. I hope you are too.”

Juve has been fighting for years. After growing up in Jalisco, Mexico, he came to Minnesota as a fifteen-year-old. Besides adjusting to a new language and culture, he coped with high school bullying that targeted his immigration status and his sexual orientation. High school was tough, but Juve was tougher. He led student organizing for the Minnesota Dream Act, which passed during his senior year, and won a scholarship to attend Augsburg College.

Juve was the first in his family to go to college. His father and other relatives worked construction, and older siblings dropped out of high school. Interviewed by MPR in 2008 for an article about first-generation college students, he said:

“A lot of people also have generalized things like ‘Oh, you Mexicans are really hard workers.’ But I like to think of myself as ‘No, I’m a lazy bum’ or ‘I like to sit and read.’ And when that actually takes you further than working so hard, I feel like I’m capable just like anyone else, to be able to become a CEO or start my own organization.”

While still in college, Juve co-founded and became the first executive director of NAVIGATE-MN, a non-profit organization that works on behalf of undocumented youth. After graduating from college, he worked as a policy coordinator for the Citizens League, was a Humphrey School of Public Affairs public policy fellow, worked for the Minneapolis Pubic Schools, and is now enrolled in Mitchell Hamline School of Law.

“I’ve lived in the U.S since I was a teenager and only have had DACA for less than 5 years,” Juve wrote recently. “I went to college without the Minnesota Dream Act or DACA or access to health insurance. My entire adulthood has been managing to survive the awfulness of racism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant prejudices in this country and find hope every single time… and sometimes doing something good with others.”

Along with more than 6,000 young immigrants in Minnesota and more than 800,000 across the country, Juve now has DACA status – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. His organizing and advocacy work was part of the push that led President Obama to establish DACA in 2012, and the Minnesota legislature to pass the Minnesota Dream Act in 2013.

DACA is not a permanent status, but has been renewable every two years since 2012. DACA recipients do not have a path to permanent residence or citizenship, but do have temporary protection from deportation and work permits. Now President Trump is considering ending DACA, a move that Juve says would cause “a lot of unnecessary pain.”

Juve is still working with NAVIGATE-MN, organizing and advocating and offering help and support. Some of the resources he recommends, now that #WinterIsHere are: