ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
When Donald Trump takes office in a couple weeks, he will likely bring dramatic changes to America's refugee resettlement program. He could cut off Syrian refugees altogether. This is what he said in September.
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DONALD TRUMP: We are going to stop the tens of thousands of people coming in from Syria. We have no idea who they are, where they come from. There's no documentation. There's no paperwork.
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SHAPIRO: Actually, there's a lot of documentation and paperwork. The screening process often takes as long as two years. There are medical tests, background checks, round after round of interviews.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Do you just have your ID?
SHAPIRO: Gasan al-Ferris got through all that vetting, and now the Syrian chef is in Toledo, Ohio, dealing with a different kind of paperwork. He's at the bank learning how to write checks.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: What you would do here is put today's date.
GASAN AL-FERRIS: (Unintelligible).
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: OK, that's fine.
AL-FERRIS: Thank you, (unintelligible).
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: That's right.
SHAPIRO: He's making a payment to reimburse the cost of the plane ticket that brought him to the U.S. I wanted to find out what a new administration will mean for one community that has already taken in more than a hundred Syrians over the last year, so I went back to Toledo, a city where I first reported on Syrian refugees more than a year ago. I met some new people and checked in on families that have been here for a while.
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UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: What is your name?
OMAR AL-AWAD: Omar - I am Omar.
SHAPIRO: That was the first time we met Omar al-Awad and his family in 2015. He was taking an English class at a local church. Here he is today.
O. AL-AWAD: My name is Omar al-Awad. How old - 40.
SHAPIRO: The family's life has changed since the last time we saw them.
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SHAPIRO: For starters, they now have four children. Baby Salman turned 1 the day before we arrived. He's a full-fledged American citizen. And the other kids are now practically fluent in English. Tsiba is 5. Abdul Jabar is 7, and Hamam is 10.
HAMAM AL-AWAD: I like to go to school.
SHAPIRO: What do you do at school?
HAMAM: Doing math.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Ten minus...
HAMAM: Minus five - that equals five.
SHAPIRO: Omar's wife, Hiyam Al-Awad, says overall, this first year in the U.S. was tough.
HIYAM AL-AWAD: (Through interpreter) We came to a country that is not our country, and everything changed on us - the system, the people, the area, the city.
SHAPIRO: Omar, her husband, is trained as a carpenter. For now, he's working on a hospital cleaning crew. He says he is happy to be working, but what gives him the most pride is watching his kids flourish in school. Two of his children were just named student of the month. He was so proud; he went out and bought them new toys. Omar has come a long way, too.
Are there new refugees who have arrived in the last year who now you have helped because when we came here, you were the newest person.
O. AL-AWAD: (Through interpreter) Yes, I go with them to pay bills. There are days I take them to the doctor, bring them stuff from the store.
SHAPIRO: The U.S. never took in a lot of refugees from Syria. With millions of people displaced, the U.S. only admitted 12,000 or so over the last five years. Some cities in Europe took in twice that many in a given week. Donald Trump may stop admitting Syrian refugees altogether, fearing they could be dangerous. I ask Omar al-Awad whether he feels lucky to have made it to the U.S. while the door was still open a crack.
O. AL-AWAD: (Through interpreter) Of course. Anyone that is able to get out of these countries, whether it's Jordan, Lebanon or Turkey - of course the situation is better here than it is to be there.
SHAPIRO: Those are countries where millions of Syrians sit in refugee camps waiting to see what comes next.
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SHAPIRO: One organization in Toledo works to settle new refugees who arrive here. They help people find housing, furniture and jobs. There's even a new program offering counseling for people who've experienced torture. The group is called Us Together. On this day, new arrivals from Syria are going through an orientation program. A pastor from a nearby church named Luke Lindon speaks to him through an interpreter.
LUKE LINDON: There are some people that you may have heard that may not feel as welcoming. They might be saying some scary things.
UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: (Speaking Arabic).
SHAPIRO: Pastor Lindon is tall and gentle with a shaved head. He sprinkles his conversation with dude and blessings. He wants the new refugees not to feel afraid of differences.
LINDON: It scares our people here, and it scares you all coming in.
UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: (Speaking Arabic).
LINDON: But I'm here to say that nothing defeats fear like a face.
SHAPIRO: When he finishes talking to the group, we sit down with him in an office.
LINDON: My own grandfather is a Slovakian immigrant, worked in the brick yards. And he recalled a time before World War II that, you know, he was not considered white. He wasn't considered part of the populace. He was a problem. And so knowing that, we want to make sure that that history doesn't repeat.
SHAPIRO: It was interesting to me that your remarks to these brand new arrivals didn't hesitate to acknowledge that there will be hostility and there are people who are afraid of you. It's not like you worked your way up to that. That was what you started with.
LINDON: Yeah. It's a reality. We got to name the reality. We have to be truthful, but we also need to reach into this small group and welcome them as well as welcome others who are afraid of the conversation. Some people won't even have the conversation, and that's the one that I'm most struggling for in my own spirit - those who are so fearful they can't even have the conversation.
SHAPIRO: Toledo has seen generations of immigrants, including decades of Middle Eastern emigration. So when we went from one blue-collar bar to another, the openness to refugees was striking. One bartender told us as long as the Statue of Liberty is still standing, refugees should be welcome in Toledo.
Others had harsh things to say off the record. One woman who wouldn't speak on tape said they've got their own country; they should stay there. Then we met Jon Johnstone, who was in the Navy. He's suspicious of people who continue to wear headscarves and speak in Arabic.
JON JOHNSTONE: If you want to come here and turn the United States into Syria, I'm against that. You want to come here and speak English, you want to assimilate, you want to have a pizza, you want to have a beer, you want to eat a chicken wing, I'm all for it.
SHAPIRO: Corrine Dehaby has heard it all. Her family is Syrian-American. Her dad was a U.S. fighter pilot, and she runs the resettlement group Us Together. She stays focused on the positive. Last year, more Syrian refugees arrived than she ever expected.
CORRINE DEHABY: We budgeted for 75 last year, and we went over 235.
SHAPIRO: One-hundred-thirty-five...
DEHABY: Individuals.
SHAPIRO: ...When you planned for 75.
DEHABY: Yes, yes.
SHAPIRO: How do you do that (laughter)?
DEHABY: I don't know. We must be super woman here.
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DEHABY: Sometimes I ask myself, you know, how did I do - how did we do this as a staff, you know?
SHAPIRO: And when new people arrive, the needs of the people who've already been here don't disappear.
DEHABY: They don't disappear. You know, technically, the cases has to be closed in three months according to the American government. But in reality, we're not because they keep coming back and forth for stuff. So we can't telling them, no, you know, we'll close your case. But we can't close the door, you know, on the people. So we have new families. They have lot of needs. And then we have old families that still need - have needs.
SHAPIRO: Those needs keep her busy enough that she doesn't dwell on what will happen after Trump's inauguration. She says maybe his speeches about cutting off refugees were just political talk, empty promises. If the refugees do stop coming, then Toledo's long history of integrating generations of people from other countries may have a pause.
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