Recent Arrivals: Refugee Resettlement in Nebraska

One of the stories Nebraskans tell themselves is that the story of Nebraska is a story of immigration. One of the most recent versions of this story is that Nebraska is one of the best and most welcoming places in the country to be a resettled refugee. In many respects, this narrative is true, but as with all narratives, reality is more complicated. This chapter attempts to paint a fuller picture by providing a detailed history of the foundation of Nebraska’s refugee resettlement program, and an overview of five of the most populous refugee communities in Nebraska. First, we survey the early history of immigration in Nebraska, show how policymakers tried to draw European immigrants here to settle the land, and discuss how national laws created a system that profoundly favored white, abled immigrants. Second, we detail national efforts to make immigration more racially equitable, which coincided with the first extensive efforts to resettle refugees after the Second World War. Third, we discuss the beginnings of the refugee resettlement system in the United States, and how this looked in Nebraska. Here, we detail how the demands for refugee resettlement after the Vietnam War led to the creation of the refugee resettlement system we have today, and how Nebraskans interacted with these developments. We then turn to a discussion of refugees’ experiences in and impacts on Nebraska. In our fourth section, we use data compiled from twenty years of Congressional reports1 to give the fullest descriptive, quantitative picture to date of the refugees who have been resettled in Nebraska. Then, we write about five of Nebraska’s largest and most influential refugee populations: Vietnamese, Yugoslavs, Iraqis, Burmese, and Sudanese. The sixth section discusses the essential economic contributions refugees have made to Nebraska’s economy, and the seventh section details three ongoing challenges that Nebraska’s refugees face: state government statements and actions, a lack of resources to support refugees after the first ninety days of resettlement, and English language barriers. The eighth section concludes this chapter.