by Ana Martínez, 2025 Welcoming Communities Program Intern at USCRI Mexico(2025) Edited by Alexia Gardner (Policy Analyst) and Anum Merchant (Policy Intern) Imagine building a life in a country for more than a decade—becoming integrated into the community and coming to consider a place home—only to be uprooted and abruptly sent somewhere that now feels like a distant memory. […]
Category: Headquarters
Access Changes Everything: Frank’s Story for World Hearing Day
On World Hearing Day, we recognize the importance of hearing health, early identification, and access to communication for all. Frank’s journey reminds us that hearing loss is not just a medical issue — it is a matter of access, dignity, and human rights. Frank arrived in the United States full of hope and high expectations. […]
Cultivating Peace in an Age of Despair: A Reflection from the Walk for Peace
Photos by V. Walker, 2026 By: Victoria Walker, Policy Analyst Looking around the world today it takes little effort to find distress and despair. Violence is escalating, oppression is tightening its grip on entire communities, and people are straining to push back against a current of hopelessness. What feels increasingly rare is peace. Yet […]
USCRI and WUSC Commit to Regional Collaboration to Strengthen Economic Inclusion and Education Pathways for Displaced Communities in Latin America
The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants Latin America and the Caribbean (USCRI) and the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) have formalized a strategic collaboration to strengthen higher education pathways and economic inclusion for displaced populations across Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador. This collaboration builds on the longstanding alliance between WUSC and the Diálogo […]
TURNING PERIOD POVERTY FROM STRUGGLE TO STRENGTH
By Firdaus Bashee – Country Director, USCRI Kenya and, Sudi Omar Noor Founder, Girl Power Action Initiative (GPAI) In Kakuma, thousands of girls deal with the reality of not having access to sanitary pads each month. This includes over 75,000 vulnerable teenage mothers, survivors of gender-based violence (GBV), and school-aged girls who are most […]
A Conversation with the Dalai Lama – From the Archives
By Will Evans, Policy Analyst In 1959, twenty-three-year-old Tenzin Gyatso and a small Tibetan entourage fled Lhasa and trekked for weeks across the Himalayas before reaching safety. The Prime Minister of India at the time, Jawaharlal Nehru, insisted on providing asylum to the group, citing moral and humanitarian grounds. Tenzin Gyatso is now better known as His Holiness the Dalai Lama. For 66 years, he has lived in exile, unable to return […]
USCRI Mexico Essay Contest Winners
As part of the Intercultural Mobility Week held in October 2025, the Welcoming Communities Program at USCRI Mexico, through the Network of Committees for Integration and Welcoming (ReCIBE) at Universidad Panamericana, organized an academic essay contest focused on mobility, inclusion, and intercultural dialogue. Seven teams, comprising nineteen students, participated in the contest, contributing legal and […]
Updates from the Front Lines: Serving Immigrant Trafficking Survivors in 2026 – Live Recording
To commemorate National Human Trafficking Prevention Month, USCRI, along with the University of South Carolina, Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of International Migration, Asylee Women Enterprise, and Ayuda, held an event on January 21 to discuss the state of service programming for immigrant survivors of human trafficking in 2026. A recently released preliminary report presents findings on how the […]
Introducing “From the Archives”
For more than a century, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants has advocated for the rights and dignity of refugees, reporting regularly on harms committed against people on the move. For our 115th anniversary, we are turning to our archives, republishing historical material and pairing them with present-day reflections on how the lessons of the past still resonate today. Our archives reveal that the past […]
Holocaust Remembrance Day – Remember Today’s Refugees
By Alexia Gardner, Policy Analyst, and Anum Merchant, Policy Intern In May of 1939, a boat of German Jews aboard the St. Louis pleaded for asylum in the United States. They were denied entry and returned to Europe. 254 of the passengers were later killed in the Holocaust. Rosa Seligmann was murdered at Auschwitz. Martha Scheyer was killed at Sobibor. […]
