PAGE A2, KEIZERTIMES, JULY 20, 2018
Travel ban impacting local Community garden
refugee resettlement efforts needs help to go solar
By CASEY CHAFFIN
Keizertimes Intern
In the two and a half years
since the Salem-Keizer area be-
came a new Oregon hub of ref-
ugee resettlement, 220 refugees
have been resettled in the area.
Refugees, who often arrive in
family units, have been aided in
their transition to a new coun-
try and a new life by Salem for
Refugees, a local volunteer or-
ganization ded-
icated to pro-
viding support
to incoming
refugees, or, as
co-director of
SFR Anya Holcomb refers to
this burgeoning community
within our community, “our
new neighbors.”
For
resettlement
non-
governmental
organizations
(NGO) that receive funding
from the government to pro-
vide services for new arrivals,
immigration changes have cut
deeply into budgets and staffi ng.
But for a volunteer-run organi-
zation like Salem for Refugees,
“The main practical implica-
tion for us is the decrease in
numbers,” Holcomb said.
Since founding the orga-
nization in response to a need
for support for refugees be-
yond that offered by govern-
mental agencies and NGOs,
Holcomb has seen the fl ow
of refugees to the community
change based on policies com-
ing from the Trump Adminis-
tration. Since President Donald
Trump took offi ce, the yearly
quotas for refugee resettlement
have been slashed—according
to the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees, in
2016, the last year of the Obama
Administration, almost 79,000
refugees from around the world
departed to be resettled in the
U.S. In 2017, the fi rst year of
the Trump Administration, the
number of resettlement depar-
tures fell to under 25,000.
The lower quotas, paired
with three iterations of a travel
ban on certain countries, have
also impacted Salem for Refu-
gees’ and other resettlement or-
ganizations’ ability to welcome
“new neighbors.”
The third and latest version
of the travel ban—which the
Supreme Court ruled in June
to be constitutional and there-
fore permanent policy for the
meantime—restricts admission
of refugees and immigrants
from Iran, Libya, North Ko-
rea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela
and Yemen. Critics of the ban
have derided it as a
dressed-up ban on
Muslim immi-
gration and refu-
gee resettlement.
Those working in
the fi eld of refugee resettle-
ment have found that it targets
the system as a whole, consid-
ering some of the world’s larg-
est producers of refugees are on
the list.
Holcomb, who says she’s just
about lost track of the countries
impacted by the shifting travel
ban policy over the past year
and a half, has seen the effect of
the travel ban on their organi-
zation. For a solid four months
during one iteration of the ban,
Salem for Refugees didn’t re-
ceive any new families at all.
Over the two and a half
years of the Salem area’s re-
settlement program, Salem for
Refugees has welcomed refu-
gees from nine countries: Iraq,
Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Soma-
lia, Pakistan, Ivory Coast, Dem-
ocratic Republic of Congo, and
the Central African Republic.
However, since the fi rst imple-
mentation of the travel ban, the
demographic of new arrivals
has shifted. The organization
now receives virtually no Mid-
dle Eastern refugees, who are
often Muslim.
“Since the travel bans have
taken effect all of our families
are from Africa, particularly the
Democratic Republic of Con-
go,” Holcomb said. And the
short breaks that have separated
different iterations of the travel
bans hasn’t changed that; even
when the travel ban hasn’t been
in effect, people from Middle
Eastern countries still aren’t
getting into the United States
in large numbers.
In addition to added restric-
tions from the travel ban and
quotas, additional “security
measures” have been imple-
mented since the onset of the
Trump Administration for
refugees awaiting resettlement
in the U.S., making the refu-
gee screening process—which
already took upwards of two
years prior to 2017—even lon-
ger.
Even with refugee-negative
policy coming from the highest
branches of government, Hol-
comb remains positive. “We’ve
just tried to really stay focused
on loving and supporting the
families who do come,” she
said.
At press time, there are 270
Salem for Refugees volunteers
supporting 17 refugee families
in the Salem-Keizer area. Salem
for Refugees hosts open meet-
ings for new and continuing
volunteers on the fi rst Monday
of every month from noon to
1:30 p.m. at the Salem Alliance
Church. For more information
on getting involved, visit Sa-
lemForRefugees.org.
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By ERIC A. HOWALD
Of the Keizertimes
The coordinators behind
Keizer’s Rickman Commu-
nity Garden are looking to
make it even more self-suf-
fi cient.
Earlier this spring, Peggy
Moore took to social media
to ask for donations of fl ower
starts and pots to add to the
garden, then she decided to
get bold.
“I put a request up asking
for a greenhouse and, within
a few days, I had two offers,”
Moore said.
Now, Peggy and her husband,
Jerry, are looking to take the
greenhouse solar. Last week, the
couple received $1,270 in match-
ing grant funds from the Keizer
Parks Advisory Board to make it
happen, but Peggy said the group
is still about $1,000 short of mak-
ing it happen. The total cost to
install six solar panels on an adja-
cent shed to fuel the greenhouse
is about $2,500.
Jerry said a bid he received to purchase and
install the equipment came within $150 of what
it would cost to buy the materials alone at a local
hardware store.
“But a lot of contractors don’t want to do a
project this small,” said Jerry. “Adding electricity
to the greenhouse will power a fan to control the
temperature in the summer and a heater in the
winter.”
Peggy already has a number of plans for how a
solar-powered greenhouse would transform what
the garden already does.
“The plants we get from
the Marion-Polk Food Share
are leftovers from the big box
stores and they aren’t always
in the best shape or we don’t
get the varieties we want,”
she said. Being able to raise
anything gardeners desire
from seed will expand the
possibilities exponentially.
With enough lead time,
she would even like to see the garden host a give-
away of vegetable and fl ower starts to home-based
gardeners each year.
The garden currently has 17 plots and all are
currently in use by members, but several of the
plots serve large families. Peggy estimated that
there are between 80 and 100 people who eat
directly from the Rickman garden’s produce, but
surplus goes to local organizations like Simonka
Place, a women’s shelter, on River Road North.
If you would like to contribute to the so-
lar effort in some way, contact the Moores at
moore5881@comcast.net.
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