Damakant Jayshi

The Wausau branch of a national refugee resettlement agency is coordinating the arrival of a four-member family from the Republic of Congo in Marshfield on Friday, the agency officials said.

Another family of 10 Congolese refugees will be resettled in Marshfield on Oct.7, according to Eric Yonke, Co-Sponsorship Coordinator for the Multicultural Community Center in Wausau. The MCC is the Wausau branch of the Ethiopian Community Development Council, Inc., one of the nine refugee resettlement agencies that work with the U.S. Department of State.

The Wausau-based Multicultural Community Center is working with Marshfield Community Foundation to resettle the two Congolese families. Yonke told Wausau Pilot & Review they hope to resettle other refugees in Marshfield based on community volunteer support, housing availability and employment opportunities.

The two Congolese families resettling in Marshfield have children ranging from infants to high-school age students. The family arriving on Friday has two children below age 5 and the family arriving next week has eight children. 

“We are working with the Marshfield School District to place the children in the appropriate public schools according to their ages, language abilities, and prior school experience,” Yonke said.

The resettlement is happening days after the United States announced a new target of refugee resettlement in the country of 125,000.

President Joe Biden signed the Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2023 on Sept. 27, according to the U.S. State Dept.

“This ambitious target demonstrates that the United States is committed to rebuilding and strengthening the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP),” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a press statement. Blinken added that “a new private sponsorship pilot program will also expand opportunities for communities across the country to participate in welcoming the world’s most vulnerable to the United States.”

The Multicultural Community Center helped resettled Afghan refugees in Wausau and Stevens Point, but there are no plans right now to resettle Afghan refugees in Marshfield. The organization has resettled 87 Afghans so far. The original target involved resettling 75 Afghans but later it was revised upward to 107 in late winter. 

Yonke added that the number of Afghan refugees being assigned to the Wausau office has dwindled considerably over the last few months.  

According to U.S. government officials, Afghans arriving in the United States are a mix of American citizens, lawful permanent residents, Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders, SIV applicants, those who worked directly with the U.S. on its mission in Afghanistan and their families, and other vulnerable Afghans.

The MCC official also said they currently resettling families and individuals from Burundi, Sudan, Syria and Somalia as well as refugees from Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The targeted areas for resettlement for arriving individuals and families are within a 50-mile radius of the MCC’s office downtown Wausau. But the ECDC branch is restricting their resettlement efforts to Wausau, Stevens Point and Marshfield, Yonke said.