Ink Link Special Reports

Liliya Mayevsky came to the U.S. with her family as refugees in 1996, when she was 18. She arrived with her parents, two older brothers, and her grandmother. Her grandmother’s lifelong dream was to live in a free country.

Sebastian Fuentes was a 20-year-old college student in Lima, Peru, in 2001 and saw the limited opportunity in his home country for his future. He decided to have some adventure and took the chance to explore a new country and to build his language skills, so he got a seasonal worker visa.

Glory Wabe is from the Island of Mindanao in the Philippines.  She was married with children when she came to the United States in 1988. She was trained and working as a nurse so she qualified for a type H-1 Specialty Occupation visa.

Geshe Gendun Gyatso-Konchuck’s family was exiled from their native Tibet by China into India. They lived initially in a refugee settlement in the north before settling in Southern India.

Ekoue Abroussa’s family became refugees because his father worked for the government in the West African country of Togo. Due to political upheaval and ultimately civil war his family, parents, and five siblings became refugees in Benin.

If you want to change things then be the ambassador of that change

Country of origin: UKRAINE Snizhana Riabko and her husband are war refugees who arrived in Manchester with their three children

Maria Elana Letona’s journey to America began as a girl at the age of 13.  She was the eldest of three sisters in a very unstable and traumatic home situation in El Salvador. She arrived in East LA in 1974 and her sisters followed.