R E FRESETTLEMENT UGEE Greensboro as the Global Gate City s t o r y a n D P h o t o s b y D e o n n a K e l l i s ay e D
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iuanh Ho was 11 years old when she and her family got off the plane in Greensboro. “There was snow on the ground. I remember it being so very cold!” she says. Vietnam didn’t have snow. Everything about America was big. And different. Kiuanh is a refugee whose family resettled in Greensboro. The nation’s attention is currently focused on Trump’s recent Executive Order impacting refugee resettlement and immigration. The Order directly affects the Triad, which has welcomed refugees for three decades. Today, Greensboro and Charlotte receive the largest numbers of refugees in the state. Many in Greensboro are proud of the “global gate city.” The motto serves as
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a distinctive calling card that indicates tolerance and acceptance. Kiuanh is one example of how refugees become part of the local fabric. Before the plane touched down on that cold day, Kiuanh had seen an American for the first time several months earlier. It happened during the refugee-processing interview. “He was as tall as could be. I had never seen such a tall white man!” She laughs at the memory. Kiuanh explains that they didn’t have TV in Vietnam, or later, in the refugee camps in the Philippines. “So how could I know about Americans?” In 1991, Kiuanh (pronounced “Keewan”) and her three sisters arrived in Greensboro with their single mother. Settled by Lutheran Family Services, the family gained refugee status through the 1987 American Homecoming Act that pro-
vided resettlement preference to children born from American servicemen. Kiuanh’s oldest sister is Amerasian, and the family faced persecution in Vietnam because of it. “It was hard,” she remembers. “People called my mother and my sister a traitor.” Kiuanh entered Aycock Middle School with limited English and second-hand clothes. She says that most refugees don’t have a lot when they arrive, “so you wear whatever is given to you. Kids at that age can be a little bit difficult to deal with. I remember being picked on and laughed at as I walked by. I was young and took it personally, and I felt like I didn’t belong.” She also struggled with a childhood seizure disorder. When her mother sensed Kiuanh was getting sick, she’d walk the girls several blocks to another refugee’s home, someone who had been in the country longer and had better English skills.
“If something happened, they could help translate to the emergency crew. I know for mom it was really scary for her to be in a new country,” Kiuahn remembers. As she looks back, these challenges seem minor. America was her home now. “I mean, we left Vietnam for a reason and being able to come to America was everyone’s dream. No one would think, regardless of the challenges, not to stay here. Going back was not an option,” she explains. As Somali-British poet Warsan Shire writes in her poem, “Home”: “You only leave home when home won’t let you stay.” Why are Refugees in Greensboro? The Triad, and Greensboro, in particular, has welcomed refugees since Lutheran Family Services brought the first South-
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