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IIRI Executive Director, Bill Shuey
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February 21, 2006
International Institute Executive Director, Bill Shuey, elected to Board of U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants At a recent conference for partner agencies of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), Bill Shuey was elected by his peers to serve as the Chair of their Standing Committee. As Chair, Bill will also serve as a Board Member of the Washington D.C. - based organization headed by Director Lavinia Limon. As an ex-officio Board Member he will represent Network agencies, including our very own Institute, by serving as a liaison, bringing local issues to the national organization.
Priority topics discussed at the February USCRI Agency Network conference included:
The Agency Network (currently involving 25 organizations that are full partners, with an additional 22 that are non-voting affiliates) has grown to include an impressive variety of other direct service organizations engaged in bringing races, cultures, and religions together. Each partner or affiliate plays a leadership role in their community in undertaking important common tasks. Examples include: creating healthy communities, educating children, promoting harmony in diversity, sharing the tools and skills necessary for self-reliance and success, and testing methods and models of service that respect and empower participants as they work together to achieve their dreams and become fully vested members of the American community.
In 1910, the National Board of the YWCA created the Department of Immigration and Foreign Communities, which created and nurtured some 60-field projects in cities around the United States; these projects were called “International Institutes,” and they were established to serve new arrivals to the United States, foreign-born women in particular. These agencies – all of which became independent of the YWCA at the time of the Second World War – have evolved over the years and those that have survived still form the core of the USCRI Network. The first wave of refugees in the 1970's (and, later, the Refugee Act of 1980, in which Congress authorized funding for the domestic resettlement of refugees) led to the USCRI Network to participate in the U.S. Refugee Program. Indeed, since 1975 and under contract to the U.S. Department of State, the Network has resettled over 150,000 of the approximately 2 million refugees who have fled life-threatening persecution in their own countries and been given official asylum by our government. With only a few exceptions, all 47 member agencies and affiliate agencies in the Network sponsor and resettle refugees. You can read more about IIRI's Refugee Resettlement program here. Today the Network is also an affordable source of expertise on immigration law (to more than one million immigrants and refugees throughout the U.S.), and nearly all partner agencies are accredited by the Bureau of Immigration Appeals to represent clients in their dealings with what is now called the Department of Homeland Security. Most recently, USCRI partnered with the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to establish the National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children; start-up funding was provided by a generous ($500,000) donation from actress and children’s rights activist, Angelina Jolie.
The International Institute of
Rhode Island's mission is to enable all area residents,
especially immigrants and refugees, to become self-reliant,
invested participants in our communities, while fostering
respect and understanding among all people.
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©2005 International Institute Rhode
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