Unsettled: A Story from the Global Refugee Crisis

On the Media

• Episode: Unsettled: A Story from the Global Refugee Crisis
• Website: On the Media
• Feed URL: http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia
• Duration: 00:33:16
• Published: 2018-01-23 06:00

Over these last few months, WNYC reporter Matt Katz has been reporting the story of a congolese man named Andre and his wife, Lisette. They were living in a Malawi refugee camp, but then Andre was given the chance to be resettled in Elizabeth New Jersey. And he had to leave Lisette behind.

When Matt started researching this story he was struck by the fact that in the last 3 years the largest number of refugees to the US were not from Syria or any of the other majority Muslim countries named in Trump’s “extreme vetting” list but from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

President Trump came into office promising a wholesale remaking of U.S. immigration policy - there was the travel ban and, of course, the border wall. But what's gotten less attention is the dramatic shift in refugee policy, like slashing the number of refugees allowed into the country and changing security procedures.

Luckily for Andre, he made it to New Jersey right before things started to change. 

Click here to see photos of Andre and Lisette and learn more about their story.