How a Mormon Church in Chinatown Helps Refugees Resettle -- Immigrants Escaping Domestic Violence Se
On the last morning of 2016, the brothers and sisters at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Chinatown congregation were busily preparing to distribute groceries at the Bishops’ storehouse in Inwood, where people in need can get food and discuss their needs with LDS bishops. Amy Tan arrived about 11 o’clock after hiking in Inwood Hill Park, refreshed before getting her day underway.
“Hey I’m here”! she greeted her fellow congregants. They began stocking the shelved with canned foods and commodities like paper towels. Local congregations take turns doing service here, and today’s the Chinatown church’s turn after a three-month rotation, said Andrea Lindsay, assistant manager of the uptown storehouse. Five volunteers from the Chinatown congregation on Elizabeth Street have shown up.
After two hours of unpacking canned food, much of it produced and processed by the LDS church and packed by its volunteers, Tan and her fellow congregants were ready to distribute it to those coming in to get what they need for New Year’s Eve.
Tan, who has volunteered at the uptown storehouse four or five times, is an asylee from Canton, China herself. “I feel very happy. Getting the chance to help people is an honor,” she said in Cantonese, while preparing paper bags that people will fill with food and household items.
Half an hour later, a deaf-mute African American couple came in. Tan found it hard to communicate with them, but she accompanied them with a smile, as other volunteers reached oil and cereal down from the shelves according to their list. Tan helped put the groceries in the bags she had prepared.
“Are these all they need?” she asked another volunteer in Mandarin, fearing that they’d missed something. After checking, she accompanied the couple to the desk where Lindsay waited to handle the paperwork.
After the couple left, the volunteers relaxed and chatted while they awaited other clients.
A brother pointed to an unpacked box of canned beans and asked Tan if she wanted to take some home for her daughter.
“No, no, no. Leave them for others. Any of you want them? Take it!” she declined the offer and turned it to others. But after the bother continued to offer her and other members food, she finally agreed to take it.
Tan, 50, joined the LDS church in 2012. The spiritual support she’s received from her church has helped her through the hardships of resettling in this new country, she says.
Indeed, worldwide, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a long history of helping refugees. Its inspiration can be traced back to the 1830s, when the founders of the LDS Church were refugees themselves, says Ron Ahrens, director of public affairs for the LDS Church in the New York Metropolitan area. The early Mormon church was not well accepted in the country, and moved from New York City to Missouri, where the state expelled it, and finally to Utah. Many of the pioneers were persecuted.
“At least a part of our collective memories,” said Ahrens, “is pain and struggle.”
The United States has some of largest refugee resettlement programs in the world, and most have local branches in New York City, including the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Catholic Charities and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). Since 1975, the country has resettled three million, according to Refugee Council USA, a coalition of U.S non-governmental organizations. The U.S Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement reports that in 2015, the U.S took in about 70,000 refugees, or two-thirds of all refugees worldwide who were permanently resettled. Last year, the State Department says, it admitted 85,000.
“The U.S refugee program is enormously successful,” said Westy Egmont, 70, a Boston College School of Social Work professor with expertise in refugee resettlement. But it also has some shortcomings, he says. A common problem: it’s hard to find appropriate ethnic groups as the intermediaries for newcomers to the States. Also, resettlement agencies provide very low expenditures per refugee. Nationally, the budget for these programs is $583 million, including overseas processing, individual assistance, health care and initial housing, says Egmont.
The agencies’ goal is to resettle refugees within eight months; half a year is even better. “They need to get a job and be able to be self-sufficient very fast,” says Egmont. But these programs often lack the resources to provide psychological care to help refugees to recover from the traumas suffered in their home countries. New York State, as one of the top states that helps resettle refugees, took 4,000 of those 70,000 refugees in 2015. However, although New York City is one of the most welcoming cities for refugees, it also causes problems because of its high cost of living, says Egmont.
In terms of asylees, in 2014 about 23,530 people were granted asylum, according to the State Department of Homeland Security. From 2004 to 2014, U.S. has granted asylums to an average of 24,500 people each year. In the last decade, China has remained country with the largest numbers of people granted asylum.
One of the ways the LDS church helps refugees is through partnerships with these resettlement programs; it donates money to relief agencies around the world. That’s how it has to responded to the recent international refugee crisis, says Ahrens. Last August, the LDS Church donated $2 million to the U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops and International Refugee Committee in order to help refugees build new lives in U.S.
Most of LDS’ direct work with refugees comes from local church leaders encouraging members to be individually involved, says Ahrens. Besides distributing food from the storehouse, local Mormon congregations also provide career and psychological counseling.
This help for refugees is mostly short-term, says Kai Huang, 50, bishop of the Chinatown congregation. “Our church emphasizes ‘self-sufficiency’,” he says in Mandarin.
Helping women who suffered from domestic violence in their home countries, or even after they arrived in the U.S, is not rare for the LDS church in New York. Huang has worked with about six women who suffered domestic violence during his four years as bishop.
“It’s a more common problem in congregations with new immigrants,” says Huang.
When Tan and her 12-year-old daughter back then first arrived in the U.S in 2012, they encountered a completely strange place. She had suffered from domestic violence in her homeland. An ex-boyfriend constantly harassed her at the real-estate company she owned, so that she could not live a normal life. She felt forced to flee to the U.S and hasn’t returned to China even once. She had to remain in the States for a year after she was granted asylum, in order to apply for a green card, according to U.S law. She’s still waiting to receive the green card, though she was approved in 2015.
“I never thought of going back since the first day I’m here,” she says.
Resettlement hasn’t been easy for her. Her real-estate business in Canton had made her financially relatively stable. She sold her house there and brought 100 thousand RMB (about $14500) to the States when she arrived, renting an apartment in East Harlem for $1100 a month.
“100 thousand RMB is not that much in U.S dollars,” Tan says. She soon realized she had to find a way to survive before she spent all her money. But faced with a language barrier, she had no clue where to start. That's when Woman Kind, formerly the New York Asian Woman’s Center, which helps victims of domestic violence, kicked in to help.
It provided free legal advice to help resolve her asylum case. “The organization helped me a lot, ran around to find a lawyer for me,” Tan said. Many lawyers don’t take political asylees’ cases. “It took us half a year to find the lawyer.”
Housing also posed a big problem. Tan moved into a Korean community shelter in Flushing for a while, then to a cheaper apartment near Main Street. Twice, landlords evicted her because they wanted to rent the apartments to relatives and friends and were unable to provide long-term housing. She has found that frustrating, she says.
In Canton, she had never worried about housing. These obstacles shocked her. “I must work diligently to make more money. I must have my own house,” she says.
Tan and her daughter have since moved to Chinatown, a five-minute walk from the church. On a Sunday afternoon, after services, she went home to cook lunch for her daughter.
Tan’s apartment is on the third floor in a more than hundred-year-old building, with no elevator. She checked her mailbox after she entered the building, walked down a dark hallway and started climbing upstairs.
“Joey I’m back! Did you eat?”
No one answered. She crossed the living room and went into the single bedroom, which her daughter shares.
“Are you sleeping? Did you eat?” Tan asked her daughter who seemed asleep. Her daughter answered faintly that she ate congee already and fell back asleep again.
It’s fine to let her daughter sleep more during weekends, Tan said. Her daughter went to bed late last night and was at the church early this morning.
She opened her refrigerator to make herself something to eat, but soon realized there was not much food – and her religious beliefs forbid shopping on Sunday. Using what was left in the fridge, she combined Cantonese noodles with fish balls and fried some vegetables.
“I’m not a good cook,” she laughed as she cooked. “My boyfriend says he likes the food I cook. But I suspect he’s lying.”
Tan’s apartment, only about 600 square feet, is large size for Chinatown, she say. It feels good to be settled. But because they were constantly moving in the early years, her daughter was also forced to change schools. She had earlier been enrolled in a very good school on East 21st Street, with the help of the City Department of Education,
But it took Tan some time to learn how school districts work. She still regrets her choice to move to Flushing, which forced her daughter out of a good school. “I feel sorry for my daughter,” she says. “She couldn’t fall asleep every night back then. She asked me if we are going to run out of money. I feel so sad.”
Since Tan came to the States, she has worked as a nanny, something she never imagined herself doing. “I used to have my own business. I’m now here for a job like this? Even I despise myself.” She had thoughts like this when she first started working in the States. But she has adapted. Baby-sitting does pay well, and allows her to support her family.
On the last Monday in February, Xiaoling Hu started her week with an unusual workload—taking care of two older women in a row. She arrived at the East Broadway subway station at 8:15 a.m. from her home in Brooklyn, and walked into the pharmacy next door.
“Good morning! I’m coming in!” Hu greeted its employees in Cantonese, went straight to the newspaper stand and grabbed a free Chinese newspaper.
At the LaGuardia Senior Center, right across the street, the two old women she takes care of were having breakfast. Hu headed into the small, noisy cafeteria and found her two clients sitting together.
“Sister Yan! Sit here and wait for me!” Hu said, speaking loudly to an elderly woman in a black and red blouse. “I will go drop off the newspaper to her place and come back to pick you up!” Hu pointed to the younger senior, Sister Ying, the one she was originally scheduled to help this morning, sitting next to Sister Yan.
Sister Yan did not seem to understand. She has had problems hearing and communicating after a fall on the street a year ago. Hu tried again. “Sit here and wait for me! I will be back very soon!” She smiled, speaking slowly and patiently.
Hu’s colleague, scheduled to take care of Sister Yan, had asked Hu to substitute for this shift, so Hu is dashing back and forth, trying to handle both women’s care.
She walked to Sister Ying’s apartment in a senior building on Water Street, five minutes away from the senior center, and left the newspaper on a table. Then she tied back her long black hair, and washed the woman’s underwear by hand.
“I was off for the weekend, so every Monday when I’m back I have to do a big clean up, because I’m not sure the person here during the weekend did it,” she said, going to the kitchen to start her next task – washing dishes and wiping the wall.
She finished the chores in 15 minutes and headed back to pick up Sister Yan, who might have finished her breakfast. She said she needed to hurry up. As she left the apartment, she took a final peek at the stove to be sure the gas was off.
A nurse working for another elderly person who lived next door greeted Hu on her way out. These elders usually lacked care from their families, Hu said. The two women she worked for both treated her very well, and she wanted to be responsible.
At the senior center, Sister Yan and Sister Ying had finished their meals. Hu held Sister Yan’s hand and started slowly walking her home to her apartment on Rutgers Street. Sister Ying left for her place as well, waiting to see Hu in the afternoon.
Hu has known Sister Yan for more than three years. Although she does not always work for her, she often substitutes for Sister Yan’s helper.
On the short walk, Sister Yan tried to speak to Hu, but couldn’t speak clearly. After a couple of tries, the two were still unable to communicate. Hu suddenly gave Sister Yan a hug.
“It’s OK…It’s OK…When we get back you can write me the words on paper, OK?” Hu said.
“Did you take your pills today?” Hu asked Sister Yan, when they got home.
Sister Yan seemed to have a more important thing to do, grabbing the uneaten yogurt and jelly from her breakfast, along with some juice from her refrigerator.
“You want to go to the neighbor’s and give them the food again?” Hu asked, understanding. She accompanied her to a neighbor’s apartment at the end of the hallway.
“They used to live next to each other,” Hu explained of Sister Yan and the African American family. But Sister Yan was switched to a smaller apartment.
When returned, Hu started the cleaning the apartment while Sister Yan watched TV. When Hu asked Sister Yan again about her medication, she learned that Sister Yan hadn’t taken it. “I always need to remind her about this,” Hu said.
Sister Yan later wrote on a slip of paper that she wanted to buy flowers for the funeral of her child’s in-law who just passed away. She and Hu spent two hours wandering Chinatown, buying flowers and eating lunch together. Since Hu had to leave Sister Yan to care for Sister Ying in the afternoon, she accompanied Sister Yan to buy Sister Yan’s dinner early for tonight. But now she decided to escort Sister Yan to Sister Ying’s apartment. The three would eat dumplings and steamed buns together for lunch.
Hu’s satisfaction in helping people comes from her own experiences of being helped by others. As another asylee from Canton, China, she received financial help from the Chinatown Mormon church to cover her rent four or five time, over a couple of years, since she came to New York in 2011.
The congregation constantly provides financial help to refugees who’ve just arrived and can’t afford their rent, but the amount usually only covers temporary help, because the church encourages self-sufficiency, says Huang.
“Her situation is relatively harder,” says Huang of Hu. Her physical and mental health is not always stable, so she often has to stop working, and then she cannot support herself. She treats others kindly, nonetheless. “She doesn’t have too much savings,” says Huang, but when Hu sees other church members in difficulty, she often buys commodities for them.
The church has also provided food for Hu; she received food from the Bishop’s storehouse in November. “But she’s a very tough and independent. If she doesn’t really need it, she never asks for it,” Huang says. He remembered once visiting Hu and asking whether she needed food. She told him, haltingly, that she only had $10.
Hu was born into a poor family in Canton, and her mother was abandoned by her father when Hu was little. He formed a new family, forcing Hu to separate from her siblings. Because of the feudal Chinese ideology that boys are preferred to than girls, Hu was the only child in her family left to live with her mother.
She also had a serious eye disease, later diagnosed as cataracts. As a child, her vision was already very poor, affecting her studies and, when she got older, her job opportunities. “I couldn’t do jobs that require reading or writing texts, because I can’t see,” says Hu. For a long time, she could only work in factories, performing heavy tasks. Her vision problems continue; she has suffered a detached retina and endured several surgeries, yet her vision is still so poor that she can’t see someone’s face clearly from across a street. Because of her physical limitations, she worked on and off in China and married at a late age.
Her marriage ended, and she suffered financially as a single mother, working as a caregiver for the elderly. She also faced pressure from local officials involved with illegal activities, whom she tried to expose to the government, she says. Realizing that she couldn’t stay in her country, she met a man from Texas, introduced by her friend, in 2009. They decided to marry and she came to America in 2010, with her then seven-year-old daughter, as his fiancée.
However, her new life in the States didn't proceed as smoothly as she expected. Soon after the marriage, three months after arriving in San Antonio, she realized her husband wanted to control her life.
“We lived in a quiet neighborhood where only three houses could be seen; two of them were ours and his daughter’s. I felt I was isolated,” Hu says. Without her husband driving her, she could go nowhere. Gradually he cut all her connections, prohibiting her from going to church or calling family and friends back home. He even hid her and her daughter’s passports.
As their conflicts became more severe, Hu tried to seek help. “Police were involved four times, but it didn’t work out,” she says. She was sent to a shelter once with her daughter, in order to separate from her husband, but life was not easy at the shelter. Most residents were Hispanic, and no one seemed to care about an Asian who didn’t speak Spanish or English and wanted to escape her husband’s control, she said. When she asked to call the only Chinese person she knew, from the church she attended, shelter employees were unwilling to help her, she said.
She actually returned to her husband’s house, feeling abandoned by the shelter and by the police, but encountered even more serious domination by her husband, and fell into a deep desperation.
On her fourth attempt to involve the police, she was sent to the home of Ling, the only Chinese person she knew, introduced to her by local church members since both women were Cantonese. They had never met before, but Hu was finally able to escape from her husband’s house.
The pastor at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Antonio helped her contact the Chinatown congregation in New York City. She and the Chinatown congregation’s former bishop decided that New York may be a better place to escape from her husband and resettle.
At the end of 2011, after a year of feeling tortured by her husband, Hu got on a bus from Texas to New York. “I carried $150 that Ling gave me, some water and food, with my daughter.” She didn’t know what she would face elsewhere, in a country still unfamiliar to her after a year. But as long as she escaped from Texas, she thought to herself.
Hu sometimes feels grateful for these strangers, some she only met once or twice, who helped her without hesitation. She sometimes wants to go back to say thanks.
But sometimes, she also wonders why so many bad things have happened to her. “I’m bringing my daughter alone to this country, have nobody to consult with, no one to complain to, no relatives and friends.” She’s a stranger on a strange land, she says, and this would keep bothering her, even after she resettled once again in New York.
Without personal identification, the first problem Hu needed to solve when she arrived was her immigration status, since she was in danger of losing the legal right to stay in the U.S. after separating from her husband. The former bishop of the LDS Chinatown congregation introduced her to Woman Kind, where Tan obtained help as well. The Center located a lawyer to help Hu divorce her husband and apply for asylum. Now Hu has her green card and can live in the States legally.
Still, Hu encountered problems. Her first job in New York was in a Chinese restaurant, where she worked as a kitchen helper; several later jobs were also in restaurants. She felt frequently discriminated against in these places, however, saying older staffers excluded her because of her lack of experience.
Indifference from shelter staff still bothered Hu. She lived in two shelters in New York, one in midtown Manhattan and another in the Bronx, and complains of similar experiences mistreatment there as in Texas.
“Shelters are all about darkness. Sometimes for no reasons your room was broken into and your legal documents stolen,” she says.
One of the toughest task he had to handle after he became bishop of the congregation, Huang says, was to help Hu move out from a shelter and find housing. “She didn’t know how to find apartments back then,” he says.
Three years ago Hu and her daughter rented a room in someone’s apartment in a public housing complex near Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn for $450 a month. It was a nightmare: Hu got sexually assaulted several times by the man who was the tenant.
“I didn’t dare call the police...since he threatened me that it’s also illegal for me to live in public housing,” she says. State law says tenants cannot rent rooms to someone who’s not a family member. Without adequate knowledge of the law, Hu did not take legal action to protect herself, and the man continued assaulting her.
She asked Bishop Huang for help, but without substantial evidence, Huang said he could do nothing. Because of such experiences, she started seeking psychological help two years ago. Bishop Huang sent her to the church’s congregation on the Upper East Side, where licensed psychologists provide counseling services to refugees. Hu was diagnosed with mental problems, due to the persecution she suffered for so long, and communication problems, said Huang.
Due to language issues, after receiving initial help from American psychologists, she was referred to a Chinese doctor, Ming Zhu, a psychotherapist at the Crime Victim Treatments Center at Mount Sinai Hospital. The Chinatown church sent her and two other women.
The Crime Victim Treatment Center works with survivors of domestic violence, and all the services it provides, such as psychiatric and legal consultations, are free of charge. However, not everyone qualifies as a crime victim, Zhu says. People who seek help at the center have to provide police or medical records or conduct an initial interview with the psychotherapists in order to verify their stories and determine their symptoms. Hu participated in both individual and group therapy there, Zhu says, where patients with common interests can discuss trauma recovery and related topics. As the doctor who works with all the Chinese-speaking patients, more than half of Zhu’s patients are Chinese; she now is working closely with about 12 cases each week. Immigrants suffering from domestic violence are very common, in her experience.
Zhu says that a low awareness of what services are available for crime victims is common in Chinese communities and that it probably relates to their perception of what they could receive in China.
“Many Chinese immigrants don’t think they have rights,” Zhu says, “because, in China, domestic violence survivors usually don’t have legal protection or welfare benefits.” This perception prevents them from seeking help after they have been victimized, even in America. But this is a common misconception, according to Zhu. “Community services in America are very humanistic.”
One way to raise awareness is to use the power of the community to spread the message of the available medical and legal services or consultations. The church is a big part of this power.
“For many Chinese immigrants who just arrived in the U.S., the church is their first source of support.” Zhu says that Hu, as the beneficiary of therapy, has helped to spread the word of the service in church so that victims like her know what sort of services are available to them.
Besides Tan and Hu, the LDS Chinatown congregation continues to help Chinese women refugees with domestic violence histories. One woman from Hubei Province is mentally unstable and has made suicide attempts while struggling to live in New York. The congregation helped her find a shelter in Queens and covered her medical fees.
In February, the LDS congregation in Jersey City held an event at its church for refugee children and families. About 60 to 80 local refugees from countries such as Syria, Sudan, and Africa came for family activities and counseling sessions with church partners, including Church World Services, a relief agency helping with refugee resettlement.
“We’re trying to find way to ease the pain and suffering our brothers and sisters throughout the world are experiencing,” says Michael Scheel, Stake president of the LDS Church, who oversees nine local congregations in Hudson County and Newark and sponsors the event. “We try to make it an effort beyond our own boundary, and get involved a little deeper in our community.”
Of course, the refugee situation remains very fluid. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on January 27 banning all refugees for 120 days and travel from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia.
According to Boston College Professor Egmont, Trump’s order will have tremendous impact on slowing down national refugee programs. But LDS leaders don’t think their ongoing efforts of helping refugees will have a large impact. The LDS local congregations in the New York area are still trying to expand their language training services to refugees in the community, says Scheel.
Tan is now taking care of a four-year-old child for a Chinese-American family who live near City Hall. She teaches the child Mandarin, takes him to school and picks him up, and cooks for him, working Monday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sometimes she needs to work even later.
When her employer needs her, she responds, no matter what time it is. Once, while Tan having dinner with her boyfriend in Chinatown on a snowy night, her employer called. Tan had just sat down and ordered a meal, but she left the restaurant, went straight to her employee’s home and stayed until 11 o’clock that night.
“I don’t mind working hard. I’m willing to do it. I want to make more money to support my family,” she says. “Having a job, things to eat, and a place to live, are quite good.”
She was sick the next day, Sunday, when she came to the Chinatown church. Looking pale, Tan stayed bundled in a white down jacket to warm her up, but she still insisted on finishing a Book of Mormon reading class that met until late afternoon.
Tan believes that her interest in serving others is guided by God. A devout Mormon, she goes to the church in Chinatown every Sunday at 10:30 a.m. for services. She always listens very carefully to the sermon. She greets everyone as they walk in and will tell new comers to listen to the sermons about how God guides people to help each other.
“It’s good for you, even though you do not believe in Jesus. It’s still good to participate in more events like this,” she says.
On a Sunday in late February, Tan sat the church entrance as usual, volunteering to guide new members or visitors to their seats.
“Please wait a moment.” She stood up when she saw a church member who’d arrived late try to enter during the communion.
“It’s not allowed to move around during communion,” she explained patiently in a low voice. “We have to keep quiet. I’m sorry. Please wait on the side.”
After the communion ended, a church member went to the pulpit to share his story of how he came to believe in God.
“God is not only the creator, but he’s also the loving father…” Listening, Tan started weeping.
“I’m so touched by his story. It makes me connect with my own experience,” she later told other church members when the group gathered to read the Book of Mormon and talk about prayer.
She told the group that last August, she had lost her job and was also going through the Green Card application process, for which she would have an interview soon. She felt very frustrated during that period.
When she went to pray at the shrine, she said God told her that everything would be OK, and God would always stand by her. She found comfort and started to pick herself up.
“Since then a lot of miracles happened to me,” she told the group, weeping again. “My green card application is passed. And I found a new job soon.” She felt God had given her power at that time.
Tan admits that both she and her daughter like the U.S more now. “Coming here gives us freedom and happiness,” she says. They don’t have to be scared all the time.
Hu stopped seeing Zhu, her Mt. Sinai psychotherapist, three months ago. Zhu said Hu had basically finished her trauma-focused therapy, but it’s possible that her trauma reaction will be stimulated again by things that remind her of previous experiences. Although Hu is still seeking legal help for her sexual assault case, she said she feels her life right now is far more settled than a few years ago. She takes care of elderly people in Chinatown and in the Bronx, every morning from Monday to Saturday.
On Sunday, she too goes to church to spend time with other members. She’s become a very good friend of Amy Tan, the two supporting each other both as asylees from Canton and as women who have suffered domestic violence. Hu sometimes visits Tan for lunch after Sunday services. Tan cooks noodles for Hu, and the two relax a little.
“I tell my story because I want everyone to know I’m just a microcosm of those like me who live here,” Hu says. “What happened to me also happens to many others in every corner of America.”
But their worst experiences seem to have passed. Tan and Hu still try to have better lives in the United States. And every day, they’re one step closer to that goal.
