More than 100 families gathered Sunday in Pittsburgh’s Highland Park to celebrate the city’s immigrant and refugee community. The event was organized by Hello Neighbor, a nonprofit focused on supporting these families, and featured soccer, crafts and other activities for kids — as well as food from across the world to reflect the attendees’ cultures.
“I think Pittsburgh is a really great place for immigrants and refugees. When I talk to people, most of the time they tell me how welcoming everyone they’ve met has been, how they love Americans, how they feel like their neighbors are so nice,” said Jenni Walkup Jayes, education and community empowerment supervisor at Hello Neighbor.
Walkup Jayes said the annual event has been happening since 2017, with some COVID-related exceptions. This year, it featured activities for children (Anna and Elsa from Disney’s “Frozen,” and Maui from “Moana,” for example, made an appearance), as well as community resources such as the Carnegie Library system and Carnegie Museum of Art.
Katie Blackley
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90.5 WESA
Logistically, Walkup Jayes said organizing the immigrants and refugees from more than 30 countries takes “lots and lots of phone calls and lots and lots of interpreters.”
Still, she said, it’s an important part of the experience for newcomers to the city to see people of all backgrounds joining together — especially against the backdrop of a recent rise in arrests and detentions of immigrants by federal Customs and Immigration Enforcement officers. Often, she said, Hello Neighbor’s lawyers have been consulted to bring clarity to what’s become an unclear situation.
“Folks do face discrimination. We’ve seen a rise in workplaces that are just unsure about what requirements people need in order to work legally,” Walkup Jayes said. “Our immigration attorneys had to have a number of conversations with employers explaining, ‘Hey, they have work authorization, even though they might not have that work [Employment Authorization Document] yet, but they’re still authorized to work.”
Katie Blackley
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90.5 WESA
Due to the current climate, many attendees were hesitant to speak to the media, and WESA did not record audio or photograph children or teenagers without permission from adults. But a few people were willing to speak, including Abdallah Mahamat from Sudan, who spoke through an interpreter.
Katie Blackley
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90.5 WESA
Abdallah Mahamat from Sudan at the Hello Neighbor potluck in Highland Park on Sunday, Aug. 17.
“The city of Pittsburgh, it’s very beautiful, nice city, especially downtown,” he said. “So the reason I love this city is, I love the diversity in it, [a] different culture that makes immigrants more welcome into it.”
ICE was not present during the event Sunday, though the chance of an appearance lingered for attendees. The newest families, Walkup Jayes said, were often picked up by bus or other shared transportation because many had recently arrived and had yet to purchase a car — or get their licenses here.
“These are folks who have had a lot of hardship on the way here,” she said. “So when they come to Pittsburgh, they see, ‘My family is safe here, we have food, I can get a job.’ Things might not be great at first… but over the years, things improved.”
She said she keeps in touch with families who are thrilled to tell her that their children are headed to college, or that they’ve purchased their first house. It’s a chance to share the success of the community’s efforts to ensure a welcoming environment.
Katie Blackley
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90.5 WESA
Throughout the afternoon event, kids were often seen interacting with the Pittsburgh Riverhounds soccer team’s pop-up target, getting face paint or creating crafts with local organizations. Among them was Maria Wheeler-Dubas from the nonprofit Backyard Nature, an environmental education nonprofit.
“Sometimes it’s really cool to get comparisons of the wildlife or plantlife of the countries where the kids have come from to conversations about the plants and wildlife we have here,” Wheeler-Dubas said.
“I had done a craft with one kid earlier who was telling me about some of the snakes that they had where he was from — and most of them were a little more dangerous than ours — so it’s kind of cool to compare the different kinds of things they saw in the countries where they were originally from versus the things they’re seeing here,” Wheeler-Dubas added. “There’s this fun exchange of information and knowledge, that’s really cool.”
Katie Blackley
/
90.5 WESA
Katie Blackley
/
90.5 WESA
Katie Blackley
/
90.5 WESA
Katie Blackley
/
90.5 WESA
Katie Blackley
/
90.5 WESA