Refugees Waited Years For Relocation To Nashville

As Nashville celebrated World Refugee Day today, settlement officials say that the largest influx of refugees is now coming from Myanmar.

The migration is not caused by the recent devastation of Typhoon Nargis or the conflict between Myanmar’s military junta and Buddhist monks. Most refugees accepted now into the United States have been living in refugee camps for at least a decade.

That’s the case for almost all refugees coming into the U.S.

Jaramie Sindayigwany fled Burundi when he was ten years old. He waited for thirty years in a refugee camp in Tanzania before being accepted for resettlement last July. Through an interpreter, Jaramie says life was not much better in the refugee camps than from where they fled.

“Life was so hard while we were living in the refugee camps, no food sometimes, have to sustain without food, we tried our best to make ourselves, you know, to get some living, but things were so hard for us.”

The United States is accepting 70,000 refugees this year, which is approximately 1% of the world’s refugee population. Of the refugees that come to Tennessee, 60% relocate in Nashville.