Faces of Liberians in Minnesota: Round 4

Doris K. Parker is the executive director of Liberian Women’s Initiatives of Minnesota, or LIWIM, and heads a home health care company. Doris grew up near the airport outside Monrovia, and came to the US in the 1980s with her family.

LIWIM runs two programs: College Bound, an initiative that matches young Liberian women with older professional Liberian women for mentoring relationships, and an adult literacy program.

Parker is concerned about the psychological impact that the Temporary Protected Status/Deferred Enforced Departure issue is having on many Liberians in the US. “We are being re-traumatized over and over again,” Parker says. “People fled the war and came over here, but because of the immigration policies they are constantly under threat that they are going to be sent home to a place that they are not prepared to go to…So they are in that constant flight mode, and it’s emotionally nerve wracking, and it’s causing a lot of mental illness, depression, among our people.

“Unfortunately mental illness has such a negative stigma to it that people in our community don’t seek help until it is too bad….The threat of the parent being sent home and then the children who were born here being left. The threat of the father being taken out of the family again. As a community, as a nation, as a people, we have not found peace yet. We have not found rest yet because we are still on the run, we are still on the alert.

“Everyone says ‘Oh go home you were only here temporarily,’ and so forth. But it’s not easy to just pack up and leave after people have fled and made a life, and said thank God I have peace, and I can raise my children…And after we have crossed this other hurdle you take a sigh and then, ‘Oh what’s happening next?’ You brace yourself for what’s happening next. It has been going on for years.”