DUBUQUE FOR REFUGEE CHILDREN
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Mission Statement
Dubuque for Refugee Children (D4RC) The mission of Dubuque for Refugee Children is to assist and empower undocumented unaccompanied minors who are placed with friends or family members within 100 miles of the City of Dubuque with their legal, educational, medical and housing needs in their quest to achieve secure, peaceful and sustainable lives. Most of the young people we work with live in the City of Dubuque, but one lives in Wisconsin and five are in Galena. We started with four young people when we incorporated as a not-for-profit in the fall of 2014 and now are up to 41 young people, mostly from the Quiché area of Guatemala. Indigenous Guatemalans are descendants of the Mayans. They have had minimal formal education in Guatemala. The youth’s first language is Ixil, K'iche' / Quiché or Kanjobal, and now they are learning English. We are looking for funds to help cover the legal assistance we provide these children, as well as dental work. We use the immigration system's definition of a juvenile, which is an unmarried youth under the age of 21. The first step in the legal process is finding local people willing to be the youth’s guardian guardians and having the guardianship established in state court. After they have a guardian, they can apply for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJ), a humanitarian immigration status for abused, neglected, and/or abandoned juveniles.
About This Cause
Legal services can cost between $2,500 and $3,875, depending upon whether applying for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), Asylum or both. One of the first four immigrant juveniles we helped apply for Legal Permanent Residency (LPR or a Green Card) when we started in 2014-15 has moved away from Dubuque, but the other three are still living in the Dubuque area and now have driver’s licenses and are applying to be citizens. In addition to legal services, we assist our students in enrolling in the Dubuque Community School District or the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) / High School Equivalency Diploma (HiSED) program at Northeast Iowa Community College (NICC)’s Dubuque center. Being enrolled in school, though, requires vaccinations. Some of our students were previously immunized in Guatemala or while in ICE custody before being released to their family members or friends in the Dubuque area, but none of them had all of the immunizations required in Iowa, so we’ve been working with the VNA to get them the ones they were missing. The students attending NICC are too old for the VNA’s childhood immunization program, so they have to go to Crescent for immunizations and we try to cover their co-pays. Dental exams are also required to enroll in school and some of these exams reveal that additional dental care is needed. Depending upon the complexity of dental care needed, Crescent Community Health Center may refer someplace else for these follow-up services. Our students who have Legal Permanent Residency (LPR) can apply for Medicaid, but the others who haven’t reached that point do not have insurance. We try to help cover these dental services as we have funding. Routine dental and medical appointments range from $35 to $100, but if problems are found, the cost can quickly become much more. A teenage boy needs to have 4 wisdom teeth removed, which would cost $2550.75. As you can see, there are so many needs to be met. Assisting these young with their educational needs, legal hearings, and medical / dental appointments entails much time and expense over many years.