crossthreaded

The hat was finished a few days ago, and it was put to the test tonight. A friend and I went walking in the 15 degree-or-so weather tonight, and she needed a hat to cover her ears. The hat held together and served its warming purpose. My first hat was a hit.

So, the numbers. Here is what George Rupp, leader of the IRC had to say about the numbers of refugees in the world:

There are over 40 million uprooted people in the world.  Yet under presidentially-set ceilings only 80,000 of them will gain admission to the United States this year, which means that only two out of every thousand refugees has any prospect of resettling in the United States. (http://blog.theirc.org/)

When I try to stop and think about that many people, it blows my mind. Forty million people. That’s almost two populations of the state of Texas-23,507,783 people was the 2006 estimate-(http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/48000.html)  forced to leave their homes.

Of those forty million people, two might resettle here. Might. That is 0.00000005% of a chance they might move here.

Those two people probably don’t want to leave home. They don’t want to go away from everything they’ve ever known, their families. Have you ever seen an old married couple over the age of 60 try to resettle in a country where they have no family, no English language skills, and only one of them is literate? I have. Now those are courageous heroes.

Until the end of the year, donations to the IRC are doubled by a matching gift. Ninety cents of every dollar goes directly to help refugees. My favorite sub-office is in Abilene, Texas. (http://www.theirc.org/where/united_states_dallas_tx/office-united_states_dallas_tx.html) Abilene’s at the bottom of the page. I am not sure that that gift gets doubled since it’s local, but the ones made here will: http://www.theirc.org/donate/overview.html

Trackback URI | Comments RSS