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Refugees have always found a welcoming home in Alaska with people arriving here from multiple countries.

And this year was a standout.

This is the largest resettlement year in the state of Alaska's history.

Who helps new arrivals get settled and build successful lives here?

We'll discuss it right now on Alaska Insight.

Good evening.

Tonight, we'll learn about the process for immigrating here and the services that are available available to refugees and asylum seekers.

Alaska has seen about twice as many people arrive this year than in previous years.

We'll find out why and what the future may hold in that regard.

But before we begin that conversation, we'll start off with some of the top stories from Alaska Public Media's collaborative statewide news network.

Alaska's newly sworn in congresswoman, Mary Peltola, has announced her top staff members.

She's hired Don Young's chief of staff as her own, something that is considered unusual for Capitol Hill because staff usually stick with one party.

Young was a Republican and Peltola is a Democrat.

She also hired Claire Richardson to direct constituent services.

Richardson is a former public radio reporter from Juneau.

She worked for Governors Tony Knowles and Bill Walker and was chief of staff for Lieutenant Governor Byron Morlot.

And Larry Pursley of Anchorage will be a senior policy adviser He was a deputy commissioner at the Alaska Department of Revenue and was the federal coordinator for Alaska's proposed natural gas pipeline.

Public health officials and law enforcement i Kodiak have raised the alarm that the dangerous and highly potent drug fentanyl, in a form known as rainbow fentanyl because of the colorful pills it is made into, have been seized in at least one bust on the island.

A Kodiak public health nurse says the island community is seeing a definite increase in overdoses.

Alaska's fatal fatality overdose rate spiked last year and state health officials say it is driven by fentanyl.

Buzz Kelly, who was a candidate for U.S. Senate, has withdrawn from the race and has endorsed Republican Kelly Chabot.

He says his motivation for suspending the campaign cam after Republican Sarah Palin and Nick Begich lost to Democrat Mary Peltola in the special U.S. House election.

Others in the Senate race are incumbent U.S.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, also a Republican and Democrat Pat Hasbro.

Kelly says the timing of his campaign's suspension was on purpose.

Had he dropped out by the September 5th deadline.

The fifth place candidate would have replaced him on the general election ballot.

Tonight's program features stories about some of Alaska's newest residents.

Every year, people resettle in Alaska after escaping conflict in other parts of the world, the reasons they left their homes and the circumstances under which they arrived may be different, but they're all looking for the same thing safety and security for their families.

Now conflicts are driving a major increase in the number of refugees and other immigrants arriving in Alaska from overseas.

Alaska Public Media's Adelyn Baxter has more on what that transition is like for new arrivals.

This we add a P-I-N-G inside Anchorage's Refugee Welcome Center.

Bridgett Reynolds is teaching a job readiness class going, going shopping.

All four of her students today are recent arrivals from Ukraine.

They are among the hundreds of Ukrainians who moved to Alaska this summer as the war with Russia drags on, taking class, attending class, same, same.

The class is free.

It's provided by Catholic Social Services, Refugee Assistance and Immigration Services, or RES.

That's the resettlement agency for all of Alaska.

Rays is federally funded and helps people with housing, jobs and other support services for up to five years after arrival.

For many people, that starts with learning the language.

You can also just say, I am shopping at Costco.

We have these job readiness classes to assist with vocational English, like getting people ready to work.

But then also it's like ongoing culture orientation.

So things that they will walk out of the classroom and be able to start using.

They've also expanded their classes online to accommodate people who have resettled in other parts of the state outside of Anchorage.

And they're seeing more demand than ever this year This is the largest resettlement year in the state of Alaska's history.

Hey, Jamie, how are you?

It's a spat.

Rossano runs race.

She says in a typical year, they process about 130 new arrivals.

That number dipped significantly during the pandemic.

Good to go.

But now, due to conflicts in Afghanistan and Ukraine, the agency is handling more clients than ever before last fall and winter.

More than 100 Afghans arrived since the war broke out last spring.

Upwards of 200 Ukrainians have come to Alaska and more are expected.

Dispatch Rossano says the higher number of Ukrainians has a lot to do with who was already here.

So those communities are naturally going to grow in those populations increase.

And you're watching it happen here in Alaska with Ukrainians.

So Alaska has a historic tie to many routes, to former Soviet Union arrivals from Ukraine and Russia.

The Ukrainians and Afghans who have arrived in the last year are unique among race clients.

They're here because of federal programs, giving them parolee status for a designated amount of time In the case of Ukrainians, U.S. citizens need to sponsor them.

Afghans and Ukrainians are not refugees in the legal sense of the word.

But they're here and they're allowed to access benefits because of these change in congressional acts.

Many new arrivals take seasonal jobs in the visitor industry when they first arrive, but long term employment can be difficult to secure while people are adjusting to life in a new country.

There was a group called Partners for Progress.

Race works with a variety of community partners to help and encourages clients to explore starting their own business.

One way they're doing that is through food in partnership with the Anchorage Community Land Trust.

Race operates Grow North Farm in the Mountain View neighborhood.

Dozens of refugees and other new arrivals work at the farm through the Fresh International Gardens Program.

Some of them manage their own plots, supplementing their incomes with what they sell and their diets with what they don't like.

14 year old Sharjeel Rana and his family, they arrived from Nepal when he was seven.

In the summer.

Now he helps his mother work their plot and sell the vegetables at farmers markets around town.

So we usually sell everything that we grow here, here, and we usually take some to eat also.

His family also sells homemade samosas through North's food stand.

There are six different small food businesses at the farm, and starting this summer, a food truck with rotating offerings such as a Burmese soup called Moringa.

Sharjeel says he enjoys farming, but he has other ambitions for now college.

And one day, maybe a career in marine biolog in Anchorage.

I'm Adelyn Baxter.

Joining me tonight to discuss the experience of moving to Alaska from another continent and who aids them in finding a path to a successful new life is Issa Spatrisano.

Issa is the state refugee coordinator for Catholi Social Services and Devine Nganga is an Alaskan who originally hails from Cameroon.

Welcome, both of you.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks so much for being here.

Divine, I want to start with you.

Even facing strife, it can't be easy to leave your home country.

Tell us about your life in Cameroon and what forced you to leave it Thank you very much.

My life back home in Cameroon.

I used to work with the government.

So we are currently going to a political crisis where the origin of what's happening is Cameroon was colonized by two countries, France and Britain.

So after the Second World War, the United Nations interested in this part of Cameroon to the United Nations, so that they do what they call a referendum.

They do not just kind of give them their independence.

So in that light, because Cameroon has ten regions, eight of them belong to France and two from Great Britain.

The referendum at that time kind of created a situation where, you know, in politics number outweighs so because the French say it against to be one.

So in that process, there is kind of a kind of involvemen which has been creating an unusual atmosphere because from origin, the natural resources of that county all comes from English, part of the country, which is where I come from.

So as time goes on, it has been creating situations on, you know, with the revolution going on there where people have started asking questions, why, why, why?

And our current president has been there for 40 years for the kids, I mean, 40.

So he has powers and is kind of cracking down anybody who wants to contest his power.

So that is the origin and cause of the crisis and the war that is going on there.

And it has forced thousands and thousands of Cameroonians from the English speaking side to flee away from Cameroon and one of them.

Yes.

Well, an amazing way of encapsulating a lot of history.

Very quickly, thank you for that.

And continuing on, your family has now joined you.

How difficult was that process and how long did it take to get them here?

It took one year.

Generally, I can count myself.

Fortunate because I don't know.

I've seen other people.

It has been taking them for more than three years.

I would succeed, too.

To do that kind of family are good men.

But for mine, it was one year because I just made the right people at the right time.

All right.

Well, it's a very difficult and it's a very difficult process, but I thank God mine worked out well.

It sounds like a year does not seem like a tremendously long wait.

I mean, I'm sure it does when you're missing your family, of course.

But in this process, I know it can take a very long time, as you noted.

Issa, I want to turn to you, as we heard in the open.

This is the state's largest year for new arrivals.

Ukrainians are a big part of that.

But give us the full picture.

What's what is going on there?

Yeah.

So historically, Alaska receives around 130, 150 new arrivals a year.

That's been the historic trend since we started to receive arrivals in 2003.

And this year we really started the year off very strongly and very quickly with the result of the fall of Afghanistan.

So when Afghan fell, when Afghanistan fell at the end of August and there was a need to resettle a very high number of Afghans that had been evacuated out on airplanes.

And so right from the start, we were reached out to and asked, what's the capacity for the state of Alaska?

And we said we would take 120 people.

And I mean, that's really our entire year right there.

And there was some plans that it's okay, it should be all right.

We have the capacity to have 200 people, you know, so if we get the other groups plus Afghans, that would be all right.

And so really in the span of like four months, we received 100 and 115 Afghans And then on the heels of that, not any of us expecting what would happen in Ukraine did occur, of course, in Ukraine.

And then with the strong family ties and the strong connection to Slavic communities here in Alaska.

And we're seeing really very, very high numbers of Ukrainian arrivals and mixed in with that are regular refugee arrivals who are not to be forgotten about.

We just welcomed a Congolese family of six two days ago here in the state of Alaska.

So, you know, there are scattered arrivals mixed in with those.

And so really with the traditional refugee arrivals.

And then you talk about the Afghans arriving very early on in the fiscal year and now Ukrainians finishing out the fiscal year.

It's just really been globally.

I mean, so much of what we do is affected by what's happening in the globe and just globally.

It's really been a year of conflict.

It certainly has.

Is staying with you.

You've been doing this work for a decade.

How has it changed in the numbers of people arriving annually and where they're coming from?

Has that figure that you gave us earlier sort of held steady for a long time?

Has that changed?

I think the 130 figure has held pretty steady until we look at the there were some serious changes during COVID.

Of course, numbers dropped very, very low.

So our lowest number of arrivals ever in history was last year and our highest number of arrivals ever is this year.

So you can imagine that rapid growth like how challenging that really is.

So COVID really stopped resettlement for a number of years.

Right.

And so if you look out outside of those factors, we stayed pretty consistent.

We had some years where we dropped down to 80, but that was when we were seeing nationwide slowdowns and resettlement.

And so it was all really to be expected.

I was just laughing with another staff member the other day who's been here about a decade with me, and we were just sayin how resettlement is the same and it's always very different depending on the population that's arriving.

And every cultural group has its own challenges, its own barriers, its own strengths, its own, you know, kind of things that arrive with them.

So, you know, when you get really you're never very good at resettlement because as soon as you get really good at serving Afghans, Ukrainians arrive.

And as soon as you get really good at serving Somalis, now it's Sudanese arriving.

And whether it's the Burmese or the Bhutanese or asylees from Cameroon, you really learn the core values of cultural humility, and then you really learn to get up to speed.

I mean, what Divine just gave you in a history lesson in 3 minutes?

I mean, our our office is responsible for knowing all those history lessons because if we don't understand what our clients, what caused our clients to flee, how will we serve them upon arrival?

And so it's the same and it's always very different.

And I think as the globe changes and address and historical things occur and we are always adapting to.

So it's been the same and it's always been very different.

And then the ten years I think the same and very different.

Divine How is it that you chose Alaska and where are you in the process for citizenship?

My choice of Alaska is.

When I was coming to the U.S., I always told friend and brother, we say arrested in Alaska for 17 years now.

So the more reason why I was coming to Alaska was because I. I was more of accommodation.

Somebody who has to accommodate you first before you figure out.

You can't just be going to the United States.

Of all that, you know, anything.

So the first was initial accommodation.

That's the choice of Alaska.

And then the process of naturalization is still remain, we remained me 19 months, almost two years.

To become to apply to become a U.S. citizen.

So you are 19 months away from the ability to apply or you're 19 months away from that being finalized.

I'm 19 months away for the eligibility to apply to become a citizen.

And you arrived in 2019, is that correct?

88.

Okay.

And you work in the health care field currently.

How does that work you're doing here compared to what you were doing in Cameroon I think that is one of the unique.

Identity of the United States of America You can become anything if you want to be.

I think I believe in that because I have instances where.

Friends and families that I know.

There were teachers.

There are now doctors change professional.

That is one of the unique characteristics that I believe that in my opinion I might be wrong.

But I think that is one of the cartels in Cameroon.

I was the Customs Border Patrol officer.

Yeah, but.

Coming to the United States.

In Alaska, particularly.

I made my own research on.

What?

How can I be useful?

In the community.

And with that with that kind of research, the result was.

Health care is almost the best way you can be useful in the community.

That was my motif.

I changed and I did some trainings on things like that.

I am a council.

All right.

Well, fantastic.

Thank you for that.

Your family, as we noted, has now joined you.

How has it been for your wife and your children to adjust to life here?

The change was so drastic when they arrived in January.

Oh, dear.

They arrive in January.

And you know what January is in Alaska, coming from Cameroon where the climate is tropical kind of.

And then to, um.

To Alaska.

In January.

I mean, it was totally different.

It was very hard for them.

Mm hmm.

But, uh.

The preparation on how to welcome them, on how to get them adapted to the climate, the community and things like that.

I can hand that that strength and honor to Isa because she's the one who guided us on how to welcome them, how to cloth them during that time.

You know, they have to put on clothes and how to integrate themselves into the community.

All what's been done by Catholic social services through ISA Prison.

So we these are really from the bottom of my heart.

I use this opportunity again to tell her, thank you very much.

And your kids your children are in school.

How is that adjustment been?

Very different.

You know, here in the United States, you're not in Cameroon.

It's a very, very different setting.

So how has that adjustment been for them?

Yeah, it's it's going to be challenging because the culture, everything was different.

And they come from a culture where looking at you in the eyes is disrespectful.

So we start telling them because I was here before them, we have to start telling him that if you if you are talking to somebody, don't be kind of don't be like, look at the person.

That means you are paying attention.

If you don't do have interpretations.

So to them at that time, those are the little only two things that really give them hope.

I know you just come to a place like first two.

They went to service.

Service high school schools like a village.

Wow.

They're like, is this a school or a village?

You know, if a would be school trying to language kind of things and the culture, even the kind of people you meet, all of that was challenging.

Bu still we had a strong support system, Catholic Social Services where they kept on on a daily basis, on a systematic kind of way, give us ideas and follow up and kind of upgrade them.

I think they are doing pretty well.

They are doing pretty well.

I mean, really pretty well because my first daughter, my Chelsea is and she's reading competitions.

The second one, fortune, she's graduating this year in a serious high school, third one civil service high school.

And the fourth, Divine jr., he's in Stream Academy.

Then I have two little ones Chris, I shalom aboard and all of them, they are doing the little ones.

They really have little or no problem because you can't even know that you come from somewhere they already like.

We don't see their kids, they're just filling in for the other ones.

I think they got really integrated into the sounds like they're thriving.

They're doing well.

That's fantastic to hear that just are giving me good feedbacks.

Yeah well that's fantastic and it's a large feat to get all that accomplished.

And so following up there Issa in the ten years that you've been doing this work, what have you learned about what it means to be a welcoming place so that people can have success as we're hearing that Divine's family is experiencing Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing is, is like it seems so complicated, but it's really not.

And whenever I talk in public or I get an opportunity to do something like this, I always say yes, because, you know, clients spend 1% of their lives in my office.

They spend 99% of their lives in our community.

Right.

And so that means where's the bulk of Devine's children's lives?

They're being played out in Anchorage School District.

So, like, how is a school district a welcoming place?

And Devine's life is largely at work.

So how are work environments welcoming places and and, you know, Divine and I were just talking before this about their family trying to buy a home.

And so, like all these pieces of our community that really have nothing to do with Catholic social services and really have to do with what is it in our community and what are the values in our community.

And so for me, it's like I will have failed at my job if all I do is create a welcoming environment at Catholic Social Services.

Right.

They will have categorically failed.

And so how can we be welcoming?

And it's like, you know, I always tell people, get to know your neighbors, you know, take advantage of the events that happen.

World Refugee Day is celebrated every year in this community.

We just had a welcoming Anchorage event yesterday.

Go North Farm is a public place.

We welcome you to come down and meet the refugee entrepreneurs on site that are growing food, that are feeding our community.

You know, yesterday we had the Alaska Department of Health and Human Services giving out 30 extra dollars to work and SNAP recipients on site to purchase vegetables.

I mean, those are the kinds of ways in which we build a community, you know, and I think we do that in a very number of ways.

So people can always check out our website to see what kind of events we have going on.

But I think that's step one.

And I think step two is just be kind.

It seems so simple, but it really is part of it.

I always tell people, next time you're at the grocery store and someone is fumbling with their benefits card and they don't know how to put the number in, that could be a new arrival who just got here three days ago.

So can you be kind and patient in that aisle even though you got someplace to go?

Can you just be patient?

Can you just wait a minute?

You know, and like, that goes a long way in.

Our students have a part to play.

You know, when Devine's kids showed up at school, I guarantee you there was someone who was very kind to them, you know, and that's important.

It's a good message.

Just be kind.

It's quite simple.

Divine, Issa mentioned that you're trying to buy a home, but do you imagine that you'll plan to stay in Alaska for the long term, or are there other places you'd like to live?

Oh, that's a very good question.

Um.

I don't plan to move.

For many reasons.

You want me to share them to you?

About 30 seconds we've got.

Faces in ease.

I come from a coastal place in Cameroon, so Alaska is a good fit for me.

I go to fishing.

I find it very.

It's normally just like this.

I'm used to fish in natural things and then the climate is good.

And then another aspect which is very particular is.

Everything in Alaska is big.

Everything is big.

The nature is kind of unique and different.

And there are some advantages where you the state income tax is not being perceived on things like that.

Well, thank you so much, both of you, for being here.

And welcome to Alaska.

Thank you.

Just be kind such a good way to wrap this up Alaska is always in need of smart, hard working people who contribute to their local community.

And our state has a long history of people arriving from other countries who have helped build the state's economy and culture Diversity in worldview and traditions adds innovative thinking to the problems that face us all and also makes our communities much more interesting places to live, learn and grow together.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight.

Be sure to tune in daily to your local public radio station for Alaska Morning News and Alaska News Nightly every weeknight .

Be part of important conversations happening on Talk of Alaska every Tuesday morning and visit our website Alaska Public dot org for breaking new and reports from across the state.

While you're there, sign up for our Free Daily Digest so you won't miss any of Alaska's top stories of the day Thanks for joining us.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.