I am Chandra. I am from Nepal. Over 105,000 Bhutanese have spent up to 15 years living in refugee camps established in Nepal by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The UNHCR and agency volunteers help people to get food and vegetables, but refugees don’t have enough money to fulfill their basic needs because of a lack of jobs. Most refugees are unemployed.

We were resettled in the United States because we lost our future. They don’t want to see our dark future. There is one agency that started to send people from Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal to the United States of America to make our own life. They started to make separate groups of families and sent us to different states. We took a loan from the I.O.M agency which helped us to start to make a process for resettlement in America.

When we arrived in America, we got a case manager from the I.R.C. They helped us with different things such as documents, AHCCCS cards, and maps. They helped us to search for jobs. They provided free English classes. They (the I.R.C.) helped us to pay for house rent for 3 months. After 3 months, my parents started to work in a store because my parents wanted to make some money to pay our rent to make our family happy, but life is too expensive. I appreciate they did not have to pay for our own food and apartment when we came to the U.S.