The Birth of the Marian Lyle Family Reunification Loan Fund
T. A., a Liberian asylee, attended our “Money Smart Day” workshop, and spoke eloquently about his painstaking efforts to save money and establish credit. His story gave real-life credibility to the workshop’s lessons on disciplined saving and budgeting. Our presenter – a local banker – was impressed by Ts’ story, and said he’d like to recruit T to teach financial literacy classes.
What the banker didn’t know was that T was saving to bring his family over from Liberia. T had escaped from Liberia after Charles Taylor’s army targeted him for execution. He fled to the United States, leaving his family behind to lay low until he could figure out a way – somehow – to get them to sanctuary here as well. T saved diligently for the air tickets, and applied for visas to bring his wife and three children to safety. Because he was unable to produce official school records from the war zone his family lived in, the U.S. State Department required him to undergo DNA testing to prove his paternity of the children. This cost T $2,000.
Having passed the DNA test, T soon received visas for his family to join him – bittersweet news when the airfare was nearly $5,000, and he had depleted much of his savings to pay for DNA tests. To make matters worse, the visas were only valid for six months; if he failed to get his family to the United States in that brief window of opportunity, they would go to the end of the immigration line and be stranded in Liberia for seven to ten more years.
T sought bank loans, but was told his income was too low to qualify; we applied for a grant from the Refugee Reunification Project, which had funded a previous ERICA applicant, but were told his income was too high to qualify. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking. Desperate, T turned to moneylenders at a Liberian “mutual aid” society, which planned to charge him 60% interest for a $3,000 loan. At that staggering rate of interest, he was likely to repay the same loan several times over before being free of the obligation. ERICA solicited funds on Ts’ behalf, to defray the cost of airfare. Upon learning of Ts’ plight, the banker who had met T at Money Smart Day was able to find a donor to cover half of the cost – $1,500. (The donor, we later learned, was the banker’s mother!)
Several other donors stepped forward, mostly members of the Cathedral staff and congregation, and we received an additional $100 from the Church of the Redeemer Outreach fund. The final $100 came from a Nigerian immigrant who was facing deportation. ERICA referred him to a legal aid clinic downtown, asking that he keep us posted about his problem. In the course of conversation, the Nigerian man learned of ERICA’s scramble to get a family out of war-ravaged Liberia. He returned later that day with an ATM envelope containing $100 cash. He said he did not know how much longer he could stay in the U.S., but he would like to help a family that could stay. When T learned about all of the donors who had come to his aid, he was quiet, but jubilant. He simply said, “Thanks be to God!”
Ts’ story, and others like it, led to ERICA’s now well established program, the Marian Lyle Family Reunification Loan Fund. The fund provides interest-free loans to help reunite refugee, immigrant and asylee families in need.
What the banker didn’t know was that T was saving to bring his family over from Liberia. T had escaped from Liberia after Charles Taylor’s army targeted him for execution. He fled to the United States, leaving his family behind to lay low until he could figure out a way – somehow – to get them to sanctuary here as well. T saved diligently for the air tickets, and applied for visas to bring his wife and three children to safety. Because he was unable to produce official school records from the war zone his family lived in, the U.S. State Department required him to undergo DNA testing to prove his paternity of the children. This cost T $2,000.
Having passed the DNA test, T soon received visas for his family to join him – bittersweet news when the airfare was nearly $5,000, and he had depleted much of his savings to pay for DNA tests. To make matters worse, the visas were only valid for six months; if he failed to get his family to the United States in that brief window of opportunity, they would go to the end of the immigration line and be stranded in Liberia for seven to ten more years.
T sought bank loans, but was told his income was too low to qualify; we applied for a grant from the Refugee Reunification Project, which had funded a previous ERICA applicant, but were told his income was too high to qualify. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking. Desperate, T turned to moneylenders at a Liberian “mutual aid” society, which planned to charge him 60% interest for a $3,000 loan. At that staggering rate of interest, he was likely to repay the same loan several times over before being free of the obligation. ERICA solicited funds on Ts’ behalf, to defray the cost of airfare. Upon learning of Ts’ plight, the banker who had met T at Money Smart Day was able to find a donor to cover half of the cost – $1,500. (The donor, we later learned, was the banker’s mother!)
Several other donors stepped forward, mostly members of the Cathedral staff and congregation, and we received an additional $100 from the Church of the Redeemer Outreach fund. The final $100 came from a Nigerian immigrant who was facing deportation. ERICA referred him to a legal aid clinic downtown, asking that he keep us posted about his problem. In the course of conversation, the Nigerian man learned of ERICA’s scramble to get a family out of war-ravaged Liberia. He returned later that day with an ATM envelope containing $100 cash. He said he did not know how much longer he could stay in the U.S., but he would like to help a family that could stay. When T learned about all of the donors who had come to his aid, he was quiet, but jubilant. He simply said, “Thanks be to God!”
Ts’ story, and others like it, led to ERICA’s now well established program, the Marian Lyle Family Reunification Loan Fund. The fund provides interest-free loans to help reunite refugee, immigrant and asylee families in need.
