Refuge from lesser-known conflicts

Afghans make up more than 50 percent of the refugees coming to Dallas, according to Anne Marie Weiss-Armush of DFW International, a refugee support network based in our neighborhood. Syrian refugees represent the most recent influx.

Turmoil in Latin countries such as Venezuela also brings asylum seekers to our neighborhood.

A few years ago, Alejandra and Ruben Valbuena were living modestly in Venezuela. Both earned bachelor’s degrees — Ruben was working as a quality assurance engineer at a food-producing factory and his wife wanted to pursue a master’s degree in civil engineering.

After they married, Alejandra says through an interpreter (Yaneth Lopez, a volunteer), the couple planned to have two children. “But now, the situation is different,” she says.

In recent years, an economic crisis and a food and medicine shortage, not to mention suppression of free speech, has made Venezuela a dangerous place to live.

Venezuelans today are given a number and a shopping day — that’s one day every week to 10 days when they are allowed to purchase groceries, medicine and toiletries. But queues at the markets, no matter the day, stretch down streets and wrap around buildings. People begin lining up at 4 a.m. Most shoppers are met with bare shelves by the time they enter the store.

“As Venezuela’s lines have grown longer and more dangerous, they have become not only the stage for everyday life, but a backdrop to death,” the Associated Press recently reported.

Several dozen people have been killed in line during the past 18 months, including a 4-year-old girl caught in gang crossfire.

“An 80-year-old woman was crushed to death when an orderly line of shoppers suddenly turned into a mob of looters — an increasingly common occurrence as Venezuela runs out of just about everything,” the AP reports.

Ruben joined a protest against the government — a decision that changed his life.

“I was seen protesting,” he says through the translator, “and word got back to the factory.”

The first time, his pay was reduced and he was demoted, he says. “We were obligated to support the government.”

The government has taken over formerly workercontrolled factories. As conditions worsened, he feared for his safety.

“Anyone can go and kill you and justice will never be served,” Ruben says.

The young couple was surviving, and Alejandra was grateful to be part of a tight-knit family with loving parents.

But Ruben, unable to sit quietly as his country suffered, continued to protest.

In a December 2015 report, the Venezuelan Violence Observatory estimated that 27,875 killings occurred that year. Venezuela now rivals El Salvador as the world’s deadliest country, according to a New York Times article.

When Ruben and Alejandra learned they were going to be parents, they decided to seek asylum, even though it meant leaving behind people they love — among them, Alejandra’s father, who lost his job as a university professor due to his denunciation of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro.

Alejandra is an olive-skinned beauty with long black hair and striking eyes that water when she talks about her family in Venezuela.

“Mal,” she says when asked how it feels to think about her loved ones still there. “Bad.”

Now she has to do best by Alessia — the 2-yearold hops from one toy to another, giggling and clearly content as her mom sits on a couch at the Pamper Lake Highlands charity, which provides services to women including childcare, supplies for babies and English classes.

Alejandra discovered Pamper Lake Highlands, founded by Lake Highlands resident Caren Bright, as she was scouring the city for affordable English classes.

As soon as Alejandra received a permit to work, Bright gave her a job in the day care.

“She is so beautiful, and we are lucky to have her,” Bright says. “She never misses a day of work.”

Her husband is trying to learn English on his own.

He was cleaning pools for a living, but after breaking his leg while playing soccer (“I love sports,” he says), he works at a check-cashing company.

He says he knows opportunities will increase as he improves his English.

“I don’t want to be a load on this country,” he says. “I feel I want to give back to the country where I will live.”

Ruben says he sold everything they owned to pay someone to help him fill out necessary paperwork to secure political asylum in the United States.

“I don’t care about all of that. She is the most important thing,” he says, referring to his daughter.

The second child they planned for will have to wait, Alejandra says, and her boss, Caren Bright, cries when she overhears this.

“What a sacrifice you have made,” Bright says. “And an intelligent choice.”

Alejandra is just grateful Alessia doesn’t have to go hungry, as so many in Venezuela do.

“[Here] we have milk, food, diapers,” she says. “And if you work hard, you will have a car, house.”

She adds that the freedom to speak your mind here and hold your own opinions is invaluable.

“You are not forced to vote for this politician with a gun to your head,” she says.

When she first arrived, she says she felt isolated and homesick, but as soon as she realized there were so many people here in Lake Highlands going through similar or worse situations, as she came to know other women through PLH’s English classes, she “felt happier and more motivated and comfortable.”

She is determined to learn — “I will not be one of those who lives here and does not learn the language,” she says.

An essential thing one must muster when coming to America as a refugee or asylee? “Humility,” Alejandra says definitively.

You might be a doctor, lawyer or engineer where you came from, and a pool man, check-cashing clerk or day care worker in the United States. You might be viewed as unintelligent if you do not speak the language well, and Ruben and Alejandra both say they can live with that, for now.

“We have self-reliance, a marriage at peace, we can sleep at night,” Alejandra says. “We want to show our daughter hard work. There, hard work was not valued and strong opinion was persecuted — so one could not grow. How can you be allowed to grow when they will kill you for thinking or speaking your beliefs, just as they will kill you for a pair of shoes? You cannot grow when you are in constant fear.” her head and needed a couple of stitches. Ruben also attends a group at Watermark where immigrants, refugees, asylees and others get together to help one another with résumés and offer support.

Ruben and Alejandra say they aim to apply the same drive here that earned them honors at their Venezuelan university.

“Even if it takes five more years,” Alejandra says.

To be eligible for asylum in America, people must have fled their home countries in fear of persecution due to race, religion, nationality or politics. Once in the United States, those who apply for asylum may legally stay in the country while their application is evaluated, a process that can take years.

While they are aware of the negative news and political views in Texas related to refugees and immigrants, Ruben and Alejandra say they have felt mostly kindness since arriving in Dallas last year.

It is during this period of limbo that neighborhood nonprofits and churches offer essential services.

When Ruben broke his leg, for example, he went to the QuestCare Clinic, operated by Watermark Church on Skillman at I-635. He gave them a $10 donation, and the doctors there patched him up. Same thing when Alessia bumped

“People help each other,” Ruben says. Alejandra adds that she wants refugees seeking resettlement here to have a chance, because the ones she has met are the most hardworking and grateful people she knows.

“They might be the next doctor to find a cure. They might be a person to make life better. Chances are important.”