Congolese refugee life in Oshkosh, Wisconsin

Continued coverage of the town that supports EAA AirVenture…

“‘I haven’t known happiness’: Congolese refugees in Oshkosh share resettlement experiences” (Oshkosh Northwestern, Feb. 17, 2025):

“I haven’t known happiness since coming here,” Zawadi said in Swahili, still calmly.

“The people are good [here], but the systems are not,” Zawadi said through her daughter Jeannette, who translated in English.

There was also a brief pause on federal grants that was eventually rescinded two days after it was initially issued last month.

For context, refugees like Zawadi and Tuliya, the mother of the second Congolese family, rely heavily on resettlement agencies like Christian humanitarian organization World Relief, which relies heavily on federal grants and funding.

One of the things that makes groups such as World Relief so vital is they pay immigrants’ housing, utilities and other essentials for their first 90 days in the U.S., hoping they will eventually find a job and land on their feet after those initial three months.

How much profit potential is there for World Relief in and around Oshkosh?

World Relief Wisconsin serves 660 immigrants in the Fox Valley area. According to Regional Director Gail Cornelius, World Relief Wisconsin is serving 125 new immigrants in the Fox Valley region alone, having already helped nearly 350 new residents in 2024.

Winnebago County government has since contracted World Relief to handle that initial 90-day resettlement of immigrants in the county, agreeing to reimburse the agency up until April.

But World Relief Wisconsin serves approximately 660 clients through its Fox Valley office alone, and the organization is just one of 10 resettlement agencies in the entire country.

The latter’s family has been in Oshkosh since last August and was settled by World Relief in a house with a monthly rent of $1,800. But Zawadi is still learning to speak English, leaving Jeannette, at 22 years old, as the only working member of the family of eight.

The family is still eligible for Refugee Cash Assistance, a federal program that provides temporary financial relief to refugees who recently arrived to the U.S. But it’s unclear whether the recent executive orders have put a pause to that program, too.

Americans who can’t afford to have children are funding Africans to have at least seven kids (the father was left behind in Africa, so this is a “single mom” with seven children, apparently happy to share one house; see “Densely packed invasive anoles outcompete natives”:”The Cuban newcomers also tolerate much denser living conditions, while green anoles don’t. This allows the invasive species to take over more territory.“).

Some birthright citizenship action in a different family of migrants:

Eventually, she, her husband and two children were resettled in Manitowoc by World Relief in 2021. Now, their family has moved to Oshkosh and grown with the addition of two kids.

A common theme for African refugees is the system’s refusal to acknowledge their qualifications.

Zawadi also speaks Swahili, Kinyarwanda and Kibembe and was a successful entrepreneur while moving her family through Botswana, Tanzania, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

Americans who can’t afford to have children paid an African family to have four children, so far, and then be less happy/successful compared to if they’d stayed in Africa.

How fat do the do-gooders at World Relief get? Based on their Form 990, they take in about $202 million/year in money (nearly all taxpayer funds?) and pay out $93 million to employees.

Note that none of the above-mentioned refugees are seen at the airport during AirVenture. So far all of the people we’ve seen serving as volunteers have been white native-born Americans. This is mostly true of those working at restaurants, picking up trash, servicing porta potties, etc., as well, though there are perhaps some Latinx working at Latinx-themed food kiosks.