SitemapThe Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber has been mulling over ideas on how to repopulate the area and how to find the people needed to fill the jobs coming in the next decade. One point that came up in discussion? Bringing in refugees from other countries. In August, as part of its Salute to Business program, the Regional Chamber invited Lee Williams to speak about bringing in refugees. “I started the conversation with the Regional Chamber of Commerce a while ago, to talk about interest in perhaps starting up a local resettlement agency in Youngstown,” Williams said.
Williams is with the Lutheran Immigration Refugee Services, also known as LIRS. “LIRS is one of 10 national nonprofit agencies who work with local partners across the country to welcome people into their communities, help them establish their new lives,” Williams said. The refugee admissions program in the United States is run by the State Department, which this year allowed 125,000 refugees.
The goal of Lutheran Services is to get them self-sufficient as quickly as possible — that means housed with jobs and the kids in school in six months. “The only way that resettlement works well is to have the entire community engaged,” Williams said. “This community was built on the backs of immigrants moving here to produce steel,” said Mike McGiffin, with the Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber. McGiffin and consultant Emil Liszniansky are driving the effort locally to repopulate. Both are in favor of including refugees. “I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t embrace people who are from other countries who are coming here to live a better life,” McGiffin said.
What’s needed first is a sponsor for the resettlement agency, which could include Williams’ Lutheran Services or Catholic Charities, which helps with refugee resettlement in other cities. “By having a resettlement agency here, we’d be required to have at least 100 people come in a year as refugees, and it could certainly be more,” said Liszniansky. As an example, Liszniansky cited the post-industrial city of Utica, New York. The city’s population dropped 60% over several decades before the people of Utica started embracing refugees. “They’ve actually got their population slightly on the rebound, and now a quarter of their residents are foreign-born,” Liszniansky said.
Ian Beniston of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation started looking into bringing in refugees 8 years ago, but the idea never got off the ground.
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