Starting over…again
Amina came to Upper Valley MEND for help with rent.
“I know it’s only one month’s rent, but it made such a difference,” Amina said. “I could focus on the next step. It gave me a brighter path.”
Amina has a master’s in public health and had a stable job with the Washington State Department of Health (DOH). But in April, federal budget cuts reduced funding to the DOH and her entire team was let go. Amina has been searching for a job ever since, but she’s competing for positions against former team members, including those with multiple master’s degrees and doctorates.
Amina is no stranger to struggle. Although she was born and grew up in the United States, Amina and her son Owen had been living in Saudi Arabia to be near family. They moved to Cashmere during the pandemic because of Owen’s citizenship status. Unlike the U.S., where any child born on U.S. land is automatically a citizen, Saudi Arabia only grants citizenship to those who fathers are Saudi—their mothers’ citizenship status is irrelevant. Although Amina has dual U.S./Saudi Arabian citizenship, Owen was not a Saudi citizen because his father was not. Without Saudi citizenship, Owen was considered stateless.
“Statelessness isn’t an immigration issue,” she said. “It’s a human rights issue. I had to learn that the hard way.”
Making hard decisions
When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, Amina was working in a hospital, and worried that she’d contract the virus and bring it home to her son. Ultimately, she decided not to go to work, and began the long, tedious process of trying to move back to the United States, where she was born and grew up.
When Amina and her son were finally able to leave Saudi Arabia, it was with less than a day’s notice. They drove 13 hours to make the 16-hour evacuation flight to Dulles Airport in Washington D.C. Both leaving Saudi Arabia and arriving in the U.S. were harrowing. Due to his stateless status, Owen didn’t have an official passport, so Amina had to convince officials at both ends that the paperwork they had—the only paperwork she’d been given—was relevant to letting him travel to the U.S.
Simultaneously, she had to try to help her 9-year-old son calm down after a really long, stressful journey.
She asked him, “If someone came to your door, stomping around and crying, would you let them in?”
“No,” he said.
Fortunately, this explanation helped Owen calm down, customs finally let them through, and Amina found her friend Bethany waiting for them. By that point, Amina was so exhausted she could hardly think, let alone make a decision when Bethany asked her what she wanted to do next. After a night’s sleep, Bethany suggested Amina consider moving to Bethany’s hometown—Wenatchee. When Amina agreed, she said, “Good, because I already bought the tickets.”
Since then, Amina and Owen have been living in Cashmere. They spent two weeks living with a local family until they could get their feet under them. Within a month, Amina got a job at the DOH and the two of them began to settle in to a part of the country they’d never been to before, where they didn’t know anyone, far from family. In addition to working, Amina became an advocate and volunteer for United Stateless, an organization that brings awareness to the hindrances of stateless status.
Amina has always had a job, starting with working as a tutor in middle school. Being unemployed since April has been hard, especially being so far away from her parents. Although Amina has a bachelor’s degree in dental and oral health from Saudi Arabia, she can’t get a license to do that kind of work in the U.S. without going back to school.
Although she receives unemployment, it is not enough to cover all her expenses, including her high rent. She’d applied for SNAP benefits, but they only gave her $24 a month—not nearly enough to feed both Amina and her growing, 14-year-old son.
After asking around for resources, someone suggested Upper Valley MEND. When Amina spoke to Human Services Director Bob Mark, she explained that she and her son were about to be homeless.
“I feel like he was more worried than I was,” she said.
Amina has become adept at being able to tell when someone is judging her, but Bob didn’t give her that impression.
“I still felt like a human—I wasn’t looked down on,” Amina said.
Since she lives in Cashmere, Amina qualifies for help with rental assistance through MEND, which residents from Cashmere to Leavenworth are eligible for every six months. She can also use the Community Cupboard for groceries, the Upper Valley Free Clinic on Monday nights, and get low-cost clothing and household items at Das Thrift.
She described the overwhelm of trying to figure out how to make ends meet when there’s not enough money, and how much mental space opened up from knowing her rent was covered.
“I felt like I just threw the ball in {MEND’s} court and they helped me play it.”
MEND can offer Amina many of these resources because of the generous donations from community members like you. Thank you for helping us help families like Amina’s who need it.