Refugees

With Western New York still in the grasp of the coronavirus pandemic, a newly-resettled refugee family is getting into the spirit of the City of Good Neighbors. For Buffalo Toronto Public Media’s Making Buffalo Home initiative, WBFO’s Kyle Mackie reports on how an Afghan couple sparked a business venture that’s making face masks and generating income for refugee women.

During this holiday season, many are enjoying family, friends and the joy of the time. A University at Buffalo doctor is going into an area many are fleeing and doing good.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz is sending a clear message to the Trump administration: Send more refugees here. Poloncarz and other county executives across the country are now required to opt-in to allow future refugee resettlement in their districts.

Older refugees in Buffalo face challenges that younger refugees circumvent. Although services are prolific for this community, they are not always as accessible due to certain barriers. Those barriers make it sometimes impossible for them to utilize the available resources.

Buffalo's popular West Side Bazaar, an incubator for immigrant and refugee-run businesses, is moving from its current home on Grant Street to a larger space on Niagara Street.

The continuing national turmoil about immigration and the U.S. southern border drew a large crowd Wednesday night to St. Joseph University Church for an interfaith service.

It might still be more than a month away for kids, but some adults went back to school this week. It was the start of the Buffalo Public Schools’ summer semester of English classes for individuals aged 21 and older.

One hundred immigrants from the Democratic Republic of the Congo are here to seek asylum in the United States.

Much of the current focus on immigration into the United States remains on the country’s southern border. But in Buffalo, a local organization continues to serve as a beacon of hope for individuals and families fleeing war-torn and unstable nations.

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo is hosting a visiting exhibit created by a Burmese artist who, along with hundreds of subjects he has met through his project, are former political prisoners in their homeland. His exhibit, a Show of Hands, features plaster casts of each former prisoner's hand. Some of them are of individuals who have since settled in Buffalo after spending years as refugees.

It was the last day of computer coding class Friday for dozens of teen girls, all of whom came to Buffalo as immigrants or refugees.

Several community organizations who serve local refugees and immigrants are uniting to denounce the Supreme Court decision upholding President Trump's travel ban from seven nations, including five featuring Muslim-majority populations.

Buffalo Public Schools have added so many immigrants to the student population, the district now has 84 languages spoken in the hallways and 125 teachers have been added to work with these students.

Catholic Charities hosted representatives of more than a dozen local businesses Tuesday. It was the not-for-profit agency's opportunity to say "thank you" for the willingness of those companies to provide jobs for some of Buffalo's resettled refugee population.