Nancy Wong, 67, is a first-generation Chinese American. Her father came to San Francisco in 1937 at the age of 13. During this time, the Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese from immigrating to the United States, making him and his family undocumented when they arrived.

“ That’s probably the main reason why I have a special place in my heart for refugees,” said Wong.

Wong’s father eventually settled in Nevada, and his struggle to gain citizenship inspired Wong to live a life of service. The heart of this service has been volunteering with the Northern Nevada International Center, where she has helped with refugee resettlement.

“It’s an adjustment for a lot of people, and so, anything that we can do to make it a little easier for them is what I try to do,” Wong said about the work she has done with refugees in Northern Nevada. 

The Northern Nevada International Center, or NNIC, started its refugee resettlement program in 2016 at the tail end of the Obama administration. 

Carina Black, an immigrant herself, is the founder and executive director of NNIC. Her organization has resettled around 1,100 refugees in Northern Nevada. Most of them are fleeing violence, persecution and war in their home countries. 

“I have a mother from the Congo whose nieces were scattered into other countries for years due to violent shootings in their home village,” Black said, “until they all came back together again and got the golden ticket to be resettled to the United States.”

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, there are 43.4 million refugees globally, yet the United States has capped the number of refugees allowed this year to 125,000. That adds up to about .3% of all refugees worldwide. 

For Black, helping these refugees is at the core of the NNIC’s work. But its work has been halted since the Trump administration implemented an indefinite ban on refugee resettlement in January, leaving tens of thousands of refugees unable to enter the country.

On February 25, a federal judge ordered the resumption of refugee resettlement. But last month, per Reuters, a new ruling allowed the administration’s refugee ban to remain in place as litigation continues. An impending travel ban affecting residents from 43 countries could further affect refugee resettlement.

“The previous Trump administration, this was all an experiment for them. Now they have all this experience and can go in with many more ways to curtail everything and say we’re stopping refugee resettlement,” Black said.   

Nancy Wong, a longtime volunteer for the NNIC, is proud of her father’s story. He fled China as a boy but was unwelcome in the United States due to his race. President Donald Trump’s ban on refugees and a possible ban on visas for residents of specific countries like Afghanistan and Iran remind Wong of the historical undertones of racism that existed when her father immigrated. 

“ I mean, I’m doing a counter cross stitch, and it says make racism wrong again,” she said.

How do refugees come to the U.S.?

There are several avenues for immigrants to gain citizenship in the U.S., but it was not until the 1920s that Congress passed a set of immigration acts limiting the number of immigrants who could enter the country.

The executive branch gets to set this number each fall. President Joe Biden prioritized refugee resettlement and set the refugee cap for 2025 at 125,000. During Trump’s first term, he set the refugee cap for 2021 at a record low of 15,000. 

To be considered for resettlement in the U.S., refugees must first get their status by appealing to the United Nations. They do this by providing sufficient evidence of being forced to flee their own country due to violence or persecution. 

Most refugees will spend their entire lifetime in urban refugee camps. Some, like Kakuma in Kenya, house upwards of 201,000 people. 

A small number of these refugees will be flagged by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as of special interest to the United States. Then, their cases will be moved to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, where they undergo a rigorous 18 to 36-month background check, including security screenings and interviews.  

If approved, they will be granted asylum in the U.S. 

They will then be flown into the country with a plane ticket, which they eventually have to pay back, and assigned to resettlement agencies in the United States. That is where Carina Black and the Northern Nevada International Center come in.

“ It’s the right of every individual to enter another country and say, ‘I am in danger of being persecuted in my country, and you need to give me asylum,’” Black said.

Once a refugee has been flown to the U.S. and reaches Northern Nevada, the NNIC takes over their case. NNIC helps the individual over a 90-day period with things like housing, a job and other essential services like English language programs. 

The NNIC refugee resettlement program has thrived over the past four years under the Biden administration. In 2024, it resettled 468 refugees, its largest number to date.

By January of this year, the NNIC had welcomed around 90 refugees into Reno.

“Then Trump announced there will be a 90-day pause on resettlement. So that’s actual refugees and asylees that will present themselves at the border,” Black said.

Alongside the ban on any new refugee resettlement, Trump implemented a funding freeze for all resettlement organizations. This has crippled the NNIC, leaving refugees in northern Nevadan in limbo and causing crushing impacts on jobs in the refugee sector.

 Are refugees a financial burden on Nevada?

Trump and other critics of resettlement argue that refugees are threats to U.S. national security, are not vetted, and that they put a strain on the economy.

“I think that there’s some people that think that refugees are not here legally, that they’re taking jobs from other people,” said Nancy Wong, a volunteer at the Northern Nevada International Center.

A 2024 study by the Department of Health and Human Services found that from 2005 to 2019, refugees contributed $581 billion in tax revenue in the U.S., outweighing the government’s $457.2 billion in expenditures on refugees.

“I try to educate people about [how refugees are] a positive financial influence in our community, and they bring such richness to our lives and the culture,” Wong said.

A 2023 American Immigration Council report found that the spending power of refugees in just one state, California, totaled more than $20.7 billion a year.

Furthermore, the Oxford Review of Economic Policy estimated that Trump’s 2017 suspension of refugee resettlement deprived the country of $9.1 billion in economic activity per year.

Trump’s 2017 Muslim ban, which could be resurrected in the coming weeks, targeted specific communities and left many vetted refugees without hope of the better life they were promised in the U.S., including U.S.-affiliated Iraqis and Afghans who remained trapped in violent contexts.

“ We’re all part of a universal humanity. At what point did we determine that you matter to me because you’re my skin color, and that person over there has zero value to us?” questioned Carina Black, executive director of the NNIC.

The future of refugee resettlement in Northern Nevada

Surviving Trump’s first term when the resettlement program was in its infancy has given the NNIC a solid framework to sustain itself even as the refugee ban and funding freeze continue.

When the Sierra Nevada Ally first spoke with Carina Black, she told us she had been expecting these challenges from the Trump administration.

“We’re working behind the scenes to take the next four years to probably resettle fewer folks but to really build infrastructure. So that if we should come about another administration that goes back to the traditional way of resettlement, we’re ready,” she said.

One unique aspect of the NNIC that could help them overcome the impacts of the current administration is that it is a part of the University of Nevada, Reno.

“There is no other institution in the United States of higher education where university employees actually resettle folks, and I’m trying to push that with the community, with the president, with everyone to say, ‘Hey, we have a real model here,’” Black said.

Although the future for the NNIC and refugee resettlement is murky, there is hope. Most of Trump’s first-term bans were reversed during the Biden administration, and courts and advocacy groups are fighting back.

But Nancy Wong, a volunteer at the NNIC, says we still need to be aware of the implications this refugee ban has not only on refugees’ lives but also on innovation and progress here in Nevada.

“ I’m a person of color, and I just think, ‘What if my dad hadn’t come to the United States?’” stated Wong. “You wouldn’t have had 20 patents in chemical engineering if my dad hadn’t helped his brother attend medical school. He was the first radiologist board-certified in Nevada.”

“ The world would not have been quite as good here if my family hadn’t been allowed to come here.”

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