When you walk into any of its seven Phoenix locations, you’ll be all but overwhelmed by the vibrant colors of fruits and vegetables and the tall displays and the fragrant, sweet smell of traditional Mexican pastries.
But you probably won’t notice the 25 or so refugees among the employees at Pro’s Ranch Markets. They come from Cuba, Sudan, Nicaragua, Iraq and elsewhere. These refugees, who often suffered unspeakable horrors before arriving, are quietly and diligently working in gratitude.
Dilli Bhattarai, a Bhutanese refugee, is part of the safety crew at one Phoenix location, which is part of a regional chain that caters to Hispanic customers. He’s responsible for keeping the aisles clean and clear.
“I like my work,” he said in broken English.
Patrolling aisles for spills might not seem like a dream come true, but before arriving in Phoenix, Bhattarai spent 18 years in a Nepalese refugee camp.
“The refugee life is the end of life for a human being,” said Chandra Basnet, also a Bhutanese refugee, through a interpreter.
Basnet, Bhattarai and his daughter Bhima found work at Ranch Market thanks to the refugee resettlement program run by Catholic Charities in the Phoenix Diocese.
Nearly 20 years ago, the government of Bhutan forced more than 100,000 Bhutanese “Lhotshampas” out of the Asian country, which borders Tibet to the south.
“Lhotshampa” means “southerner” in Bhutanese and refers to residents who are descendants of Nepalese migrants. The migrants first moved to Bhutan generations ago to pick crops.
In the 1980s, the Bhutanese government started fearing the growth of the Lhotshampas, said Father Silas Bogati, executive director of Caritas Nepal, in an interview with The Catholic Sun, Phoenix’s diocesan newspaper. With continued migration, the population of the Lhotshampas came to rival that of the Bhutanese natives.
“There was a bit of jealousy,” said Father Bogati, who has worked with refugees in Nepal for years. While some of the reaction could be ascribed to religious difference, he said ethnic diversity was the real cause.
“Women were raped, houses were bulldozed. The government began a policy of intimidating the (Lhotshampas). They created a terror situation so that they would get out of the country,” Father Bogati said.
The U.S. government has resettled 22,000 or so, he said, and plans to resettle a total of 60,000.
“Hopefully in five years we’ll close the camps,” Father Bogati said.
Refugee families are given a small hut and their basic needs are met at the camps. Though Caritas helps provide education, refugees don’t have opportunities to work.
“They have come to the United States hearing it’s a land of opportunities,” said Father Bogati, who visited with 200 Bhutanese refugees in Tucson recently. “Most of them have done pretty well. Maybe the older folks have a hard time because of the language.”
In the Phoenix Diocese, Catholic Charities serves more than 1,000 refugees each year, providing comprehensive job readiness classes along with general employment preparation.
At any given time, Catholic Charities is trying to place 200 refugees in jobs. While it used to take an average of two to three months, it’s now taking as long as six months to find jobs for refugees.
“The economy itself makes it difficult,” said Joseph Donald, employment coordinator for Catholic Charities’ refugee program. He also said language barriers can be an issue. But Catholic Charities works with refugees to help ease the acclimation process. All told, Catholic Charities’ employees speak 26 different languages.
For most refugees who, by definition, have escaped persecution in their home countries, it takes two to three weeks to get to know how the system works in this country.
A couple of years ago, a refugee at Ranch Market was carrying a bag of apples that ripped open, spilling all over the floor. The refugee put his head down and waited, market employee Claudia Perea recounted. She later discovered, through a Catholic Charities translator, that he was waiting to be hit.
“We told him it was fine,” she said, choking up. “He was just kneeling down, waiting.”
“Some of those things are very common,” said Donald of Catholic Charities, himself a refugee from Sudan. “Some little things will trigger past experiences. We tell refugees that if they don’t understand something, it’s OK to ask. And if they’re afraid to ask, they can always call us.”
Despite coming from a variety of backgrounds, the refugees wind up becoming part of the family at Pro’s Ranch Market.
“I see refugees as one more segment of our community,” said Tina Huff, executive director of human resources with Ranch Market. Huff brought the Catholic Charities refugee program to the market a few years ago.
“We already cater to customers from various ethnic backgrounds,” she said. Hiring refugees was a logical extension.
