World Refugee Day was last week, and unfortunately I produced nothing more than this post here at the Volunteer Logue. However, I’ve been holding on to one article for some time now and came across two other relevant links, and this is perhaps the most fitting connection to tie them in:

• One is an article by Mary Sanchez of the Kansas City Star, making a connection between the situation at the time Anne Frank’s family applied for and was unable to secure US visas with issues in immigration policy today. This is not an article that fits into a two-sentence recap, so please just read it. (Thanks to the personal blog of Change the Truth Foundation founder Gloria for a long-ago post on this article.)
• Next is an article about the latest on Iraqi refugees and the difficulties ahead of even those who are accepted as refugees abroad; one rather stunning figure is that Sweden accepted 9,000 Iraqi refugees last year and expects to accept 20, 000 this year.
• Finally, there’s the IOM - the International Organization of Migration. I recently became aware of a program in which IOM assists skilled individuals who have resettled abroad (starting out as refugees) to return to their original countries for a time as volunteers. This is framed as (one of many) capacity building measures, and I think it’s significant first of all because it puts people from a group which is often seen as helpless in a position to contribute – and also because it basically serves as an acknowledgment that many people who are/have been refugees do in fact have something to offer. People from all walks of life can be refugees.