Long-Standing Illinois Center Worries about the Future of U.S. Refugees

Louis Nguyen, a 2004 immigrant from Vietnam, still visits The Refugee Center in Champaign, Illinois for occasional help with bureaucratic paperwork.

Louis Nguyen, Champaign, Illinois: “I love it here and I - how somebody do good. And how some people have the good life and understand anything: the paperwork. I love it here.”

He heard great things about The Refugee Center upon his arrival. What he didn’t know then was that it was a fellow Vietnamese immigrant, Tam Wei, who helped establish the organization in 1980.

Now 99 and living in an Urbana assisted living facility, Tam tries not to worry about the 45-year-old center's future amid federal funding cuts threatening refugee services nationwide. Refugees are a category of immigrants who are legally allowed in the United States when they are unable or unwilling to return to their homeland due to well-founded fears of persecution.

Born in French-colonial Vietnam in 1926, Tam grew up near Hanoi. During the 1946 French-Indochina War, she witnessed her husband’s death as he treated a wounded soldier, making her a widow at age 20.

Tam Wei, Champaign, Illinois:  “And I tried to open his jacket and I think it was too much blood and I passed out… I think he passed away right in front of me.”

After discovering a passion for teaching at several schools in Vietnam, Tam went on to study education, earning a bachelor’s degree by 1951. With Communists threatening her non-Communist family, she was eager to continue her education abroad – first in Geneva, then at the University of Illinois, earning a graduate degree in Educational Psychology. 

There she met and married Lun-Shin Wei, a scientist focused on soybean research, and they raised four children in Illinois. By 1970, Tam Wei was working as a traveling school psychologist. At the time, the U.S. was involved in the Vietnam War and she worried about working in the rural United States. However, she almost always found kindness and gratitude.

Tam Wei, Champaign, Illinois: “But it was very challenging. Because Vietnam War still going on and I’m a woman. And they may never see a Vietnamese woman. Anyway, that’s okay… I’m one to take on a challenge….But you know, when you are very sincere and very - really want to do something for the kids, it goes through.”

As Southeast Asian refugees arrived in Champaign-Urbana, Tam’s memory of being a newcomer inspired her to action.

Tam Wei, Champaign, Illinois: “So what I should do? I should do something. That was the only thing. Even if I have no idea about administration.”

With friend Quyt Nguyen, a former Vietnamese school administrator, Tam rallied local churches to sponsor refugees. Their efforts culminated in the refugee center’s 1980 opening in a small room in an Urbana church. 

John Muirhead, The Refugee Center, Board President, Champaign, Illinois: “I first got involved about 1978, ’79. I had just come to town to work as a director of an adult education program and one of the courses we offered was English as a second language. And through that, I met Tam Wei and also her co-director Quyt Nguyen when they were helping new arrivals. …Tam Wei is very persuasive so she said, ‘Oh, John, it would be good if you were on our board. And that’s how it started.”

John Muirhead is proud of the help the Center has given to a long list of refugees and other immigrants who have come to the area.

John Muirhead, The Refugee Center, Board President, Champaign, Illinois: “It’s really amazing when you think back over the almost 45 years that I’ve had the privilege of witnessing this.”

But The Refugee Center faced a challenge early this year when President Trump cut refugee funding. Within months, the federal government cancelled contracts with groups overseeing refugee centers nationwide, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops—the Center's supervising partner.

The cuts force the Center to reduce its budget by about 15%, though state support and private donations will sustain other immigrant services even as refugee assistance suffers.

Lisa Wilson, The Refugee Center, Director, Champaign, Illinois: “Refugee resettlement is the gold standard of legal immigration. People are vetted, they are interviewed, they have support through either family that’s already here or agencies like ours…. So I’m very sad to see the Trump administration has decided to target refugee resettlement.”

Tam’s message of compassion, which she brought to Midwesterners when establishing the center, remains as relevant today. 

Tam Wei, Champaign, Illinois: “What do they have? They have only their dignity. If your church is able to give so much, why don’t you give them that amount and let them spend it instead of making them come and ask for that? You need to think of the dignity of the people.”

By Colleen Bradford Krantz, colleen.krantz@iowapbs.org