By Campbell Erickson | March 26, 2018
The story of the refugee in America has always been one of controversy, of the idyllic “American dream” but also of xenophobia and nativism. People escaping extreme, life-threatening adversity and persecution have been met in America by both welcoming arms and threatening glances. Most recently, President Donald Trump has referred to “Haiti and African nations” with derogatory terms while discussing national immigration policy, and has lowered the 2018 cap on admitted refugees to the United States to an all-time low. America struggles with dissonance in its rhetoric and policy around refugees, as messages of nationalism and bigotry contradict the narrative of America as a home for all seeking shelter and safety—and this tension is surely impacting those arriving from areas of active conflict, political disintegration, famine, and oppression. One might assume that, for young people who know little of their home country and who have spent their lives in refugee camps hearing stories of this American dream, this incongruity would be hugely demoralizing. Yet instead of succumbing to the pressures of ongoing, sometimes implicit forms of oppression and discrimination in America, refugees—specifically those who arrive to the United States at a young age—are carving a path for themselves that no president, immigration ban, nor populist campaign message can curb.
Young refugees are actively pursuing education America. In a groundbreaking working paper published in June 2017, Notre Dame professors William Evans and Daniel Fitzgerald reveal some important findings about refugees in America: in addition to paying $20,000 more to the government than they receive in government programs over the course of twenty years, refugees arriving in America under the age of thirteen are graduating from college at higher rates than native-born students. This means that young refugees are overcoming both dehumanizing rhetoric and institutionalized barriers, such as poor school districts, meager access to after-school programming, and minimal experience with the American educational system as a whole, to build their own American dreams, developing and relying on the qualities of individualism, perseverance, and intellect that, for many, embody precisely what it means to be American.
In an interview with the HPR, Ahmed Badr, a Wesleyan University sophomore who left Iraq and arrived in America on refugee status at the age of ten years old, said that the data about education and refugees presented in the working paper was “surprising but not surprising at the same time.” Badr explained, “I’ve seen the resilience of refugee youth, so I understand it.” But, as Badr points out, the story of young refugees’ success isn’t simply the result of personal resilience. There are pervasive cultural, economic, and community-related differences in the ways that young refugees approach education when compared with native-born students. It is these differences, Badr argues, that are at the root of young refugees’ growing achievements.
