THE MIDDLE OF EVERYWHERE

The Middle of Everywhere: A Critical Review

The Middle of Everywhere: A Critical Review

Introduction

Every year the president determines how many refugees will be allowed into the United States for permanent resettlement. In 2001, President Bush set the number at 70,000. But in the wake of Sept. 11, the government decided to carry out a security review of the refugee screening process and shut down almost all of its overseas refugee resettlement processing. The review dragged on for months. By January 2002 the State Department had admitted only 700 refugees. The entire resettlement system now stands in danger of collapse. Though written before Sept.11, the new book by Mary Pipher, The Middle of Everywhere, vividly illustrates what our country would lose if we stopped welcoming refugees into our communities. She introduces us to a diverse group of refugees recently resettled in her hometown of Lincoln, Neb. The author, a nationally known psychologist, volunteered part time in the local refugee resettlement agency. Pipher helped the newcomers navigate their way through the many complexities of American daily life (Pipher, 2003). In the process of befriending the refugees, she discovered that the world had come to Lincoln, and Lincoln would never be the same. This paper presents critical review of the book The Middle of Everywhere by Mary Pipher in a concise and comprehensive way.

The Middle of Everywhere: A Critical Review

To understand how and why refugees can transform themselves and their adopted communities, Mary Pipher gently draws a picture of where they came from and how they got here. Every refugee has a story, and these stories can sometimes break your heart. Consider an Afghan woman named Sadia, whom Pipher befriends. Sadia spent most of her life on the run and in Taliban prison camps. In Nebraska she works long hours in a factory to support herself and her teenage daughter.

Sadia is not an immigrant; she is a refugee. Immigrants voluntarily decide to move to another country; refugees are forced to move. Almost a million immigrants enter the United States legally each year, but the number of refugees is much smaller. Refugees must first prove to the satisfaction of the U.S. government and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees that they were forced to flee from their home countries because of persecution (Pipher, 2003). The terrorists who hit New York City and Washington, D.C., did not enter the country as refugees because the screening process is too rigorous. It is ironic that the U.S. government shut down the refugee program, which involves all sorts of fingerprinting and background checks, but continued the immigration visa programs, which can be much less demanding.

If a refugee passes all the tests, she then gets approved for entry and is turned over to one of several national private resettlement agencies. The largest refugee resettlement agency, for example, is run by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops through many dioceses. The national agency, with the help of a modest State Department grant, assigns the refugee to ...