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By CANDACE RONDEAUX, Times Staff WriterGaining citizenship can be difficult for people scarred by torture and ethnic cleansing.
ST. PETERSBURG - Safija Alijagic does not like to talk about the day Serbian soldiers knocked her out cold and left her with broken bones. She cannot talk about the day they came and took her brother-in-law away. Her hands shake as she sifts through photocopies of the identity documents found with his naked body in a mass grave.
Alijagic, 52, has traveled a long road since war drove her from her home in Bosnia in 1992. Along the way she lost her home, family members and friends. But it wasn't until the Bosnian refugee lost the $554 she received every month from Social Security in February that she reached a dead end.
"I don't know how we will survive," Alijagic said.
Neither do thousands of refugees like her across the country who, in some cases, are losing the only income they have because of a federal law enacted in 1996. Under the welfare-reform law, refugees must become American citizens within seven years of their resettlement in the United States or lose their Supplemental Security Income, a payment for the elderly, poor and disabled.
But immigrant advocates say that refugees from conflict zones such as the former Yugoslavia have difficulty passing the test in English. Years of exposure to a brutal and bloody war have inflicted severe psychological damage that makes it difficult for Bosnian, Serbian and other refugees to live, let alone learn a new language.
"Many of these people are trying hard to be self-sufficient," said Pat Frederick, director of the Florida Center for Survivors of Torture and Refugee Services in Clearwater. "But some are extremely fragile. They've been to hell and back again."
Nationwide about 45,000 people could be affected by the seven-year restriction; 7,600 live in Florida. In 2004, about 3,000 Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, recipients had their payments cut because of the welfare-reform provision. About 400 of them were Florida residents, according to the Social Security Administration. This year an estimated 6,400 people across the nation could have their payments cut. About 700 of those live in Florida.
The numbers might seem small. But these days the law is taking an unusual toll on refugees like Alijagic. She is part of a large wave of immigrants who came to the United States in the late 1990s after ethnic conflict tore apart Yugoslavia. Between 1993 and 2003, more than 143,000 Bosnian refugees resettled in the United States, according to the State Department. The Tampa Bay area is home to many of them, with nearly 4,200 Bosnian, Serbian, Albanian and Croatian refugees settling here from 1997 to 2005, according to Florida's Department of Children and Families.
Like other victims of genocide, refugees from the former Yugoslavia faced starvation, torture, rape and witnessed executions of their friends and family members. Many also likely sustained head injuries that affect their ability to remember even basic things, said James Lavelle, director of international programs at Harvard University's program in refugee trauma.
Most don't want to talk about what they've experienced, and only some agree to get mental health treatment. But many refugees will need counseling before they can begin the lengthy process of becoming a citizen, Lavelle said.
"There seems to be a mythology that you can lose your spouse, that you can have your daughters raped and beaten and lose your brothers to ethnic cleansing, then be put on an airplane and sent to a new world and learn new language and new culture and become productive citizens," Lavelle said.
Congress is considering legislation that could provide some relief for refugees faced with losing their benefits. The Senate Finance Committee has passed a welfare-reform bill that would, among other things, allow refugees and political asylum seekers to receive payments for nine years instead of seven. The bill awaits approval from the full Senate, which could come in the next two or three weeks. The extension could help some, experts say, but those who are in danger of losing their benefits this year or next are in for bureaucratic wrangling.
Bosnian refugee Vlatka Gulan, 68, begins to cry when asked about her last days in Bosnia. The youngest of her two sons disappeared when the war in the former Yugoslavia drove her family out of her village in Bosnia in 1992. She has not received word of his whereabouts.
Gulan and her family moved to St. Petersburg in 1999, the same year she and her husband began receiving SSI payments. Her harrowing escape from the bloody conflict in Bosnia left her deeply depressed and has affected her memory, she said.
"If I could take the test in my language I feel I could pass it," Gulan said through an interpreter. "But in English? No."
To pass the test immigrants must be able to speak, read and write English and answer a series of questions about American history and government. For many immigrants the questions are the most challenging. But even many American-born citizens would be hard pressed to name the 13 original colonies that made up the United States or name the main writer of the Declaration of Independence.
In some cases, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services grants waivers to refugees with severe mental and/or medical disabilities that make it difficult to pass the citizenship test. But immigrant advocates say such waivers are rare. Proving that a refugee's poor mental or physical health is an outgrowth of the traumas they experienced in their home countries is difficult, said John Dubrule, director litigation at Gulf Coast Legal Services, a St. Petersburg legal group that assists refugees with the citizenship process.
"We have a lot of people who have post-traumatic stress disorder and because of the cultural barriers to mental health treatment they don't get help," Dubrule said. "When they finally do they only see a psychologist one time. But (immigration officials) look askance if somebody says they have a serious psychological issue that they've only received treatment for once."
Researchers Kitty Bennett and Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Candace Rondeaux can be reached at rondeaux@sptimes.com or 727 771-4307.