Abdeta Shuke’s arrival in America happened twice.
The first time was in the Hollywood way, with a giant jet touching down and a lifetime reduced to a pair of trousers, an extra shirt and an entrance visa stuffed into a single suitcase.
The second time, when he really learned what it is to live in the United States, came eight months later, when the assistance money ran out.
Eight months is enough time, Congress has decided, for any refugee to get a job, find a place to live, learn the language, learn the customs, learn to drive, master a checkbook.
“After that,” says a sighing Barbara Carr, Colorado state refugee coordinator, “it’s a free-fall.”
Debra Perlan, a veteran employment case manager for Ecumenical Refugee Services in Denver, squeezed her eyes closed and sent a prayer skyward.
“If there’s a God out there,” she pleaded, “you will get Abdeta a job.”
Shuke (SHU-kay) arrived July 19, 2002, a 33-year-old political refugee from Ethiopia.
He had been given the highest U.S. priority for resettlement because he was a man marked for death in his own country for being on the wrong side of the ruling party.
One day he was living in exile in Kenya; the next his name appeared on a United Nations bulletin board next to a sponsorship destination: Denver.
He had heard of Texas. He knew California because of movie stars. But Denver was just a bunch of letters in a language he did not understand.
Seven days later, Shuke, his wife, her sister, and his 14-year-old son were hustled onto a series of planes, bound first to Brussels, Belgium, then London, then New York, then Dallas, and, finally, Denver.
The beginning is a blur. Faces Shuke did not know trying to talk to him, trying to help him. They put him in their cars, drove him here and there so his son could be enrolled in school, the family could get a house, sign up for food stamps and learn English. Everywhere there were cars. All he could think was: “Did no one walk anywhere?”
While all refugees are technically immigrants, not all immigrants to this country are refugees.
Those, like Shuke, hold a special place in the nation’s newcomer policies because their lives are threatened.
But the invitation comes with strings. Refugees receive financial assistance initially, usually comparable to the few hundred dollars a month an American family gets through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. After that, most are on their own, usually disappearing into the masses of the working poor.
Perlan was assigned to Shuke’s case. She always seemed to pull magic out of the hat. But not this time, not in a city where the economic good times had soured, where English-speakers who once laughed at menial jobs were now reluctantly taking them.
As summer became fall and then turned to winter, Shuke still had no job.
He would go to Perlan’s office, hopeful, always wearing the suit he had been given, because that is what Americans looking for work did.
But no one wanted to hire him, no matter how smart, how eager, how willing he seemed. His English was shaky, and he had only one hand.
Five years before, Ethiopian government soldiers burst into his family’s home in the middle of the night, shot and killed his father and torched the house.
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Shuke was shot too. Once in the chest and once in the right hand. His crime was being outspoken, wanting independence for his ethnic group. The letters of protest he wrote were well-known in government circles.
He dived through an open window and hid in the forest. A village doctor found him and cut off most of what was left of his mangled hand. Only his little finger remains.
An indoor job would be best for him, Perlan thought. Nerve damage from the amputation meant he felt temperature extremes more than most people. The cold, especially, brought intense pain.
“When I first came here, I tried to get a lot of jobs, but I can’t do them with just one hand,” he says.
Perlan did find him work, sometimes as a cashier, sometimes as a stock clerk. But invariably, after a few days or weeks, she would get a call asking her to pick Shuke up. It just wasn’t working out, the managers would say.
“Get in the car,” she would say gently to a confused Shuke, “I will explain. … “
Perlan found herself especially drawn to his plight. Maybe it was his quick smile, his determination to make a life for himself. Or maybe it was the way his puzzlement would give way to triumph over so many things foreign.
“He is just an endearing man,” she says. “Out of the hundreds of people I have helped over the years, the one person I will always hold in the deepest part of my heart is Abdeta.”
By the end of 2002, he and his son were living in a small rental house in Littleton. His wife had left him and moved to California a few months after arriving in Colorado. He does not talk about it except to say he was sad.
The rent was still being paid by Ecumenical. There were food stamps too. But Perlan knew time was running out. That is when she began her conversation with God.
She was moving on, leaving the city. But she vowed she would not go until Shuke was employed. His assistance would end in March.
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Photo 1: Like many poltical refugees arriving in this country Abdeta Shuke could not safely stay in his homeland of Ethiopia. Five years ago he lost most of his right hand after being shot by government soldiers. Today he works two jobs at DIA to make ends meet. Nerve damage from his injuries make outdoor work painful. Photo 2: Shuke works two jobs to support himself and his son in Colorado as well as to send money to his other children still in refugee camps in Ethiopia. Photo 3: Shuke buttons his shirt with his left hand at his apartment. Photo 4: Shuke cleans rental cars at Budget Car Rental. Photo 5: Shuke, who works at Budget Car Rental’s DIA location, has not seen his mother and other three children since 1997. Photo 6: Shuke and his son Mustafa Dhaba, 16, see this country as one of opportunity. They hope to one day be able to afford a home just for themselves, without roommates. Currently six people share their two-bedroom apartment in Denver. Photo 7: Photo 8: Shuke puts a cassette of the music of Elemo Ali into a player in his son’s room. Ali performs the music from Shuke’s home in Ethiopia. Photo 9: Ethopian refugees Abdeta Shuke and his son Mustafa Dhaba, 16, at their home as roommate Robdu Walio (left) watches her daughter Milko Dube Walio, 10-months-old explore the room. Photo 10: Photo 11: Photo 12: |
On Feb. 28, 2003, at 5 p.m., the very day, the very hour, she was leaving her job in Denver for New Orleans, Shuke clocked in for work at Budget Car Rental at Denver International Airport.
His job was to vacuum returned cars. He did it with one arm. His pay was a little more than $8 an hour.
A few weeks later, he received his first paycheck of $500 – the exact amount of his rent, now overdue.
The U.S. Census Bureau reports that as of 2003, about 33.5 million foreign-born people were living in this country, or roughly one in 12.
In Colorado, the number of foreign-born doubled in the past decade.
Today about 8 percent of the state’s population were born outside this country’s borders.
Of all the newcomers, political refugees make up a tiny percentage. Nationally, they number only about 30,000.
Most traditional immigrants who arrive come for jobs already promised or have families here. They tend to be quickly absorbed into the fabric of their ethnic communities.
James Smith, a senior economist who studies demography and immigration for Rand Corp., says immigrants may start their life in this country at what Americans would consider desperately poor, but their standard of living typically rises quickly – usually faster than those born in the United States.
Refugees, however, are a different story.
They tend to feel isolated. They come with less and have suffered greatly, bearing scars both on the outside and within.
Still, Carr of Colorado Refugee Services says they are survivors. She is often astounded by their resiliency.
“If I was ever in a lifeboat, I would want a refugee with me.”
Ten months after first clocking in at DIA, Shuke still vacuums cars. On a recent December morning, his breath hangs in the air like puffs of smoke. The temperature hovers around 20 degrees.
The stump of his right hand is curled within the confines of his coat sleeve. Gloves don’t fit.
He has made a few friends at work, chatting on his breaks with the other Africans, the Haitians, an occasional American. But mostly he keeps to himself. There is work to be done.
He has a second job, as well, unloading freight and cleaning the interiors of planes so he can send money home to his three other children living in Africa with his mother. He has not seen them since 1997.
Recently there have been rumors of layoffs at his second job. Shuke is starting to fret about money, especially when it comes to his son Mustafa Dhaba, now 16.
“I think every day, ‘How do I get him to college?”‘
Mustafa, who spoke virtually no English two years ago, is now an A student and cross-country star at Englewood High School.
Shuke works 12-16 hours a day, six days a week, bringing home roughly $1,600 a month. His time with Mustafa must come on Wednesdays, his only full day off. He has never seen his son run.
The house in Littleton is long gone. He now lives in a small apartment in Denver along with Mustafa and four roommates split between two bedrooms and two bathrooms.
One room holds a recently arrived Ethiopian woman and her 10-month-old daughter. Mustafa’s room is shared with the woman’s brother, who sleeps on the floor. Shuke’s room is shared with a friend from Ethiopia who also works at DIA.
The space is tiny for so many people. But it is clean. Not a dish out of place. Mustafa is amazed when he visits school friends and sees how they leave their socks on the floor.
The money flies out almost as soon as it comes in: $400 for his share of the rent; $300 for food; $300 to the family left behind in Africa; $52 for a telephone; $79 for car insurance. Insurance is high because he is considered a new driver. A 1990 Subaru Legacy with 135,000 miles was given to him by Ecumenical Refugee Services so he could get to work.
Someday he would like to bring his other children here.
Someday he would like to have no roommates.
Someday he would like to have only one job so he could spend more time with his son.
Someday he would like to go to school and learn computers. Heaven would be working in an office cubicle, out of the cold.
He needs both jobs to make ends meet and help support his family in Africa, but that doesn’t leave him with any time to go to school to get a better job.
“He’s typical,” says Carr. “The first generation suffers the most. They get here and they are working, but it is hard for them to jump from one level to the next. Some never do. That comes in the next generation.”
“We must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish as fools.”
Mustafa has taped the message to his bedroom door.
He has very little memory of Africa; his father is plagued by nightmares.
“I remember soldiers with guns,” Mustafa says. “I remember we had a house, and they burned it. We had a store, and they burned it. I’ve already forgotten Africa. I’m in a different life now.”
Like most 16-year-old boys in this country, he dreams of having his own car. But it is more about practicality than status. Now he must ride a bus 90 minutes each way to school.
He would also like a bigger stereo. His favorite food is Doritos.
“I am an American first, an African second,” he declares.
Shuke seems confused by questions about living in poverty. “Our life is what it is,” he says.
He is grateful to have work, to have safety.
“Yes, right now I am poor,” says Shuke, “but in future, if I get in school, or if I get my English a little better, maybe my life will not be as it is today.
“It is better than in Africa. I am not thinking that somebody will put me in jail, that somebody will kill me. This is peace.”
Staff writer Jenny Deam can be reached at 303-820-1261 or jdeam@denverpost.com .
The myth
of dependence
Despite the perception that immigrants strain U.S. welfare programs, the numbers tell a different story.
As of 2001, only about 2.3 percent of immigrants got Temporary Assistance to Needy Families benefits, compared with 1.6 percent of native-born Americans.
For those receiving food stamps, the difference is even slimmer: 5.4 percent of the native-born, compared with 5.7 percent of immigrants.
The biggest difference comes in the ratio of native-born versus immigrants receiving Medicaid: 13.4 percent compared with 21.8 percent of immigrants. Experts say immigrants typically hold jobs – at least initially – that do not provide health insurance benefits.
SOURCE: Center for Immigration Studies
