Erick Trickey is a writer in Boston.

BURLINGTON—Eight years ago, Som Timsina’s family left a refugee camp in Nepal and became one of the first Bhutanese families to seek sanctuary in Vermont. Timsina drove the Holiday Inn’s shuttle on night shifts for three years as he saved to open his own Asian grocery. Five years later, Central Market has become a gathering place for the state’s growing population of ethnic Nepali from Bhutan, and its kitchen dishes out Himalayan cuisine that gets raves from locals on Yelp—tikka masala and biryani, plus Nepali momo dumplings.

Timsina, 38, works long, fast-paced days. In a 20-minute chat in his store, he never takes off his black jacket or takes the Bluetooth from his ear. Though business isn’t as strong as he’d like, and housing costs in Burlington are high, Vermonters, he says, have offered a welcoming refuge for him and his family — including his father, who was tortured by authorities in Bhutan.

“They react good so far,” he says of Vermonters. “They are helping us.”

For decades now, Vermont has welcomed refugees from around the world: more than 8,000 since 1989, just over 1 percent of the small state’s population. Vermonters have been almost Canadian in their big-hearted welcome of the displaced and persecuted, primarily from Somalia, Sudan, Central Africa, Bhutan and Bosnia. They’re generous donors of furniture and household goods for new arrivals. They’ve taken Somali refugees into their homes to help them adjust to American life. And their schools have stepped up with English-language classes for kids from abroad. In Vermont, refugee resettlement has enjoyed near-unanimous support from state and local political leaders, who see it as a way to add youth and vigor to the largely rural state’s declining population. And for the most part their constituents have agreed. Until this year.

On April 26—the same day Donald Trump swept through seven Republican primaries in the northeast—the mayor of Rutland, southern Vermont’s largest town, announced a plan to accept up to 100 war refugees a year, beginning with Syrian families. The reaction was swift. A volunteer group, Rutland Welcomes, organized to prepare for the Syrians’ arrival, and at the same time a vocal group bent on halting the resettlement, Rutland First, flooded meetings in the town of 16,000. The ensuing debate, which dragged on through the summer, was a miniature version of the emotionally charged argument that dominated so much of the presidential cycle. But the way Rutland residents responded was quintessentially Vermont: generous and pragmatic. In the end, most residents saw that this was about more than the refugees’ well-being. It was about their own as well.

***

A six-foot-tall teddy bear with a red bowtie rests on a shelf in Vermont Bosna Cutting, Ramadan Bahic’s fabric shop. It’s a photo op for every kid who visits the business, and a symbol of how Bahic and his wife rebuilt their lives in the Green Mountain State after fleeing Bosnia in 1993. Fashion designers before the war, the Bahics now cut fabric for clients that include the Vermont Teddy Bear Co.


“I can say I’m born here,” says Bahic, 56, burly and upbeat. “My language is my language, my accent will stay, but if you ask me, I’m a Vermonter.”

Bahic and his family, all of them Bosnian Muslims, fled their Serb-controlled town during the Bosnian civil war. “My father was beaten by Serbs,” Bahic says. “Both my parents, they were almost killed. We were witnesses, so we were supposed to be killed.” The Red Cross evacuated them to a refugee camp in Croatia, and after four months, they were resettled in Burlington.

Though Vermont isn’t known for its diversity—whites make up 94 percent of its population of 625,000—that’s changing. Bahic’s new life is a testament to the major role refugees have played in bringing new cultures to Burlington. His parents’ funeral services were presided over by an imam from the Islamic Center of Vermont, one of the state’s two mosques. Though Bahic leads a mostly secular life—he likes to gamble and drink— he’s visited Burlington-area churches to explain Islam. The 15 employees at his business in suburban Winooski include many Vietnamese-immigrant seamstresses. His Bhutanese neighbors in his Colchester apartment complex are working hard, hunting for new work, moving up. “In five years, they’re looking to buy a house, some looking to buy a new car,” he says.

Immigrants in Vermont have organized to help newer arrivals. The Association of Africans Living in Vermont, founded as a social circle, now offers workforce development and translation services to new refugees. Tuipate Mubiay, a Congolese immigrant who co-founded the group in 1999, also runs an orientation and a conversation partners program for refugee students at the Community College of Vermont.

“I feel Vermont has more open doors than other states,” says Mubiay. Immigrants in the state tend to find jobs, apartments and health insurance faster than elsewhere, he says.

At the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program in Colchester, the state’s only refugee placement agency, flyers on a lobby bulletin board offer refugees tips on jobs, health care and transportation: “UPS is now hiring,” “Vermont Health Connect,” “Get a bike — Bike Recycle Vermont,” “And Remember, Please Give 15 Days Notice If You Are Quitting A Job.” The Children’s Book of America, edited by William J. Bennett, the Reagan administration secretary of education, rests on a coffee table, its cover illustration a bunch of kids from a kaleidoscope of ethnicities waving American flags.

A member of the Honor Guard of the American Legion salutes as the National Anthem is played during a naturalization ceremony for 25 people in Rutland, Vermont, in November 2015. At right, a volunteer from the American Legion Auxiliary holds U.S. flags to pass out during a naturalization ceremony in Rutland. | Getty Images | Getty

Amila Merdzanovic, VRRP’s director, came to Vermont in 1995 as a Bosnian refugee. She makes the case for resettlement’s contributions to Vermont: It brings about 200 working adults a year to a state with a stagnant, aging population. “We have employers calling us on a daily basis, saying, ‘We need workers,’” she says. Many refugees get jobs at hotels and restaurants. Landlords call, too, despite Burlington’s low housing vacancy rate. “Refugees are hyper-aware of the importance of good credit,” she says. “[They] take care of their apartments and their neighborhoods.”

It’s hard to measure refugees’ assimilation or happiness. Instead, agencies like VRRP look at self-sufficiency to measure success. Refugees get a one-time payment of $925 to $1,125 to start anew in the U.S. After that, the goal is to help them find a job that pays enough to make them ineligible for state aid. In 2015, Merdzanovic says, 75 percent of employable adults resettled in Vermont were self-sufficient within three months of arriving. By eight months, the figure rose to 88 percent.

“[If] we don’t hear from them, we know they’re working, their kids are in school, they’re driving, they have a car and driver’s license. That’s a success,” she says.

In Burlington, refugees’ biggest challenge is affordable housing. Timsina, the Bhutanese grocer, says some refugees have moved to Ohio or Pennsylvania because of Burlington’s high rents—at least $1,500 a month for a three-bedroom apartment. That’s one reason Rutland appealed to VRRP.

Ajuda Thapa, right, works in the kitchen with her son Jay Thapa, in their home in Burlington, Vermont. Ajuda Thapa, 45, a former refugee, was forced from her home in Bhutan in 1992 and lived 19 years in a refugee camp in Nepal before coming to the United States. | AP

But accepting Rutland’s application to become a resettlement site for Syrians has exposed VRRP to something it hasn’t dealt with elsewhere: angry opposition. “It’s very different,” says Merdzanovic. “It’s new waters for all of us.”

***

As Rutland Mayor Chris Louras crosses a downtown street corner, an SUV pulls up. “Hey, Louras!” shouts the passenger.

“Mr. Congressman!” says the mayor.

Peter Welch, Vermont’s lone member of the House of Representatives, is the passenger, and he’s not at all surprised to find the mayor giving an interview about his support for refugees. Welch is quick to say that he and Vermont’s senators back Louras’ effort.

“All three of us support accepting refugees in the country—America needs to do its share—but the real hard work is in the communities where people are going to land and live,” Welch says.

It hasn’t been easy, but Louras, an Army veteran who still sports a soldier’s buzz cut, has a history of charging ahead. That’s what Louras did last November, when Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, announced that he, unlike several Republican governors, would continue to welcome Syrian refugees to his state.

“I saw that as an opportunity,” Louras says, “not just to do the right thing—to open our doors to a people who are fleeing for their lives—but also to do the right thing for the community.” Louras says Syrian refugees could give Rutland a population boost and more cultural and ethnic diversity, which in turn could help the town attract and retain millennials.

“Our population is crashing,” Louras says. Though Rutland is one of Vermont’s largest cities, that doesn’t mean it’s very big. About 16,000 people live there, down from 19,000 in 1970. Louras, mayor for nine years, has worked to turn it around. He says downtown occupancy is at 95 percent, up from 75 percent when he started. But Rutland has been hit hard by the opioid epidemic and the subprime mortgage crisis. Absentee landlords have neglected their properties, leaving the city to step in with garbage pickup and grass-mowing. Refugees, he says, could revitalize the city’s hardest-hit neighborhoods.

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, standing at right, watches as teacher Yvette Rainville, of the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program, instructs students in an English-language class. | AP

“In Burlington and Winooski, new Americans really take pride in where they live and become very engaged community members.” Besides, he says, the town’s economy needs workers: Unemployment is below 4 percent in Rutland County, and the region’s top employers, Rutland Regional Medical Center and a GE aviation plant, have trouble finding new employees.

So, after talking with State Department and Homeland Security officials, VRRP, the local school district and major regional employers, Louras announced in April that Rutland would apply to welcome 100 refugees a year, starting with 100 Syrians. A supportive group, Rutland Welcomes, organized almost immediately to prepare for the Syrians’ arrival. So did opposition.

“These are the same people or many of the same who danced in the street celebrating 9/11, the same people who hate us,” read a change.org petition against the resettlement, with more than 400 supporters. Another group, Rutland First, also launched fierce criticisms of the refugee resettlement plan and hosted national anti-immigration speakers Philip Haney and James Simpson in September.

Some critics complained that Louras had acted secretly by not informing the city’s board of aldermen. “To keep it a big, fat, frickin’ secret until it’s too late obviously breeds mistrust,” says Rutland City Treasurer Wendy Wilton.

In a July meeting, the aldermen narrowly rejected a petition to hold a nonbinding citywide referendum on refugee resettlement. Instead, they voted to send a letter to the State Department saying they weren’t ready to endorse the idea.

“The last thing I wanted was for Rutland to be tarred [as] the community that voted on whether or not Muslims could be our neighbors,” says Will Notte, president of the aldermen, who supports resettlement. “We never voted on Italians coming. We didn’t vote on the Poles. This is not something that is meant to be decided at the ballot box.”

Rutland alderman Scott Tommola, who voted to send the question to the ballot, says he’s not opposed to taking in refugees. “I’ve met very few who are adamantly opposed to this,” Tommola says. “The majority of people I talk to are cautiously optimistic.” But he isn’t convinced that the city has the jobs, housing and education capacity to take in 100 refugees a year. “Show me these jobs and the housing that’s adequate,” he says.

In August, at a Rutland First meeting, Wilton claimed that taking in refugees will cause Rutland’s property taxes to rise. She predicts they’ll drive up English-language learning costs in local schools, and their housing needs will require the city to spend more on community development. “It could be much more difficult than we think to help these folks,” she says. Louras and others have disputed Wilton’s figures. The mayor says taking in refugees won’t cost City Hall a thing, and the schools superintendent says the district has excess capacity for teaching English.

Wilton, like Rutland First, says she isn’t completely opposed to taking in refugees—maybe 25 a year would be OK, she says. But she’s concerned that they’ll take jobs from native Vermonters and that there aren’t enough middle-class jobs in town to offer economic mobility. She also has security concerns about admitting Syrians to the U.S., citing intelligence concerns that ISIS can generate fake passports and may try to infiltrate the West through refugee flows. “We’re more than likely to end up, out of 10,000, 20,000 people, to have some folks here that don’t have our best interests at heart,” she says.

Louras says he’s confident that the federal vetting process is solid: “Individuals who want to do us harm are not going to come through refugee resettlement.”

Syrian refugee children recieve soccer bracelets at a makeshift playground at Za’atari Refugee Camp in northern Jordan, July 15, 2014. 20% of inahabitans are under the age of 12. | Katie Ellsworth

In late September, the State Department approved Rutland as a new home for refugees. Louras says 75 Syrians from either the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan or camps in Lebanon, plus 25 Iraqis, should arrive in December or January.

Notte says he’s confident that most Rutland residents support the refugees’ arrival. He says meetings of Rutland Welcomes attract much larger audiences than resettlement’s vocal opponents. The refugees’ supporters have organized a furniture donation drive and begun holding free weekly Arabic lessons at the Unitarian Universalist Church.

“Vermont is desperately in need of young working people,” Notte says. “It’s a match made in heaven.”

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