Refugee families from Syria, the first of about a hundred individuals who might be resettled in Rutland in the coming year, have begun to arrive. But millions of other displaced Syrians remain behind while they await security approval to be resettled in another country.
They’re living in refugee camps, or trying to eke out a living in cities across the Middle East and Mediterranean.
What is life like for these families as they wait?
Who decides which individuals get to leave and where they go?
And how do these refugees make sense of the lives they left behind in Syria, and the lives they now have to build anew in a foreign place — like Rutland, Vermont?
These are some of the questions VPR is exploring in a reporting trip to Jordan, where more than 650,000 displaced Syrians are living, having fled the civil war in their country that began in 2011. We’ll be visiting refugee camps there and following the U.S. State Department’s process for selecting refugees to come here.
What do you want to learn about migration crisis in the Middle East, and the process of deciding which individuals are brought to the United States, to communities like Rutland? Submit your question here, and VPR’s reporting team will try to answer it while reporting from Jordan.
Explore the rest of VPR's reporting on refugee resettlement in Rutland.
Follow VPR's reporting on air and online beginning Jan. 30. Support for this project comes from the VPR Journalism Fund.
