Immigrant families celebrate newfound liberty

SPECIAL REPORT: What Does Freedom Mean to You?

Mohaned Al Soodani figured it was time to leave Iraq when people kept coming to his home to kill him.

"They think I'm spying for the United States," said Al Soodani, who was a warehouse manager for the U.S. Embassy. "Three times they came to my home to catch me and kill me. Three times they didn't catch me."

Calls from friends alerted Al Soodani, who escaped by way of the roof of his Baghdad home and fled to neighbors. When the embassy opened a program for Iraqi employees to apply to come to the United States, he was first in line.

"I like my country," he said of Iraq. "I really love it. But situations change."

Now, he loves America.

Al Soodani, his wife, Alyaa, and their 15-month-old daughter, Rawan, arrived in the United States last August after lengthy detours through Syria and Jordan. They settled in South Richmond, part of a wave of immigrants who have come to Virginia in recent years seeking freedom and opportunity.

Net immigration settlement has accounted for more than one-quarter of the total population increase in Virginia since 2000, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Overall, the foreign-born population of Virginia in 2007 was more than 800,000, or about 10.5 percent of the state's 7.7 million residents, FAIR reported.

Immigrants come from all over: El Salvador, Mexico, Korea, the Philippines and India were the top five countries of origin for foreign-born Virginia residents, according to 2006 U.S. census figures, but immigrants come from dozens of countries.

They also come for different reasons. For Al Soodani, his overriding motivation was his family's safety. When did he first feel the safety he sought? Soon after arriving at Richmond International Airport.

"I was sitting in a chair, and I was not doing this," said Al Soodani, constantly turning his head left and right so he could see all around him. "In my country, I do this all the time because I don't know when they're coming. I don't know when death is coming to me."

Freedom to Al Soodani is simple: being able to wake up in the morning, go to work, do his job, come home, relax, go shopping or drive a car.

"Lead a normal life," he said.

Despite the threats and terror in his homeland, Al Soodani, 32, has been able "to maintain his sense of balance and grace as he began his new life in the United States," said Guy E. Frank, an employment specialist with Refugee and Immigration Services, which has helped Al Soodani.

"I admire him because of his tenacity and his big heart," Frank said. "He catches on quickly, he has a sense of responsibility and he has a great sense of humor, too. He hit the pavement running as soon as he got off the plane in Richmond."

Soon after arriving, Al Soodani was pushing Frank to help him find a job. He didn't want to sit around in his apartment, he said.

Little more than a month after he arrived, Al Soodani landed a job at a Richmond paper-products company.

"To find a job with good money," he said with a smile, "that's really freedom."

. . .

Eleanor Sanchez came to America from Cuba when she was 17. After being separated for more than three years from her father, who immigrated to the United States earlier, Sanchez, her mother and sister arrived by plane.

Her husband, Kenny, also came from Cuba when he was 17, but he took a slightly different route: He swam.

"We were sitting around and one of my friends said, 'Hey, you want to go to the United States?'" Kenny Sanchez recalled. "I said, 'Yeah, let's go.'"

Four young men -- Sanchez was the youngest -- jumped into Guantanamo Bay at dusk in October 1993 and swam for more than 12 hours, avoiding Cuban searchlights and fighting cramps.

Once outside Cuban waters, they were picked up by the U.S. Navy. Sanchez was brought to Virginia, where he lived with what he described as a wonderful foster family before going out on his own.

He met Eleanor after coming to Richmond, and they married and had two children.

He brought his parents from Cuba 10 years after he arrived. A year after that, Sanchez was in desperate need of a kidney transplant. His father donated one of his.

"Being here is a blessing," Sanchez said.

Eleanor Sanchez feels the same way.

"I'm so glad I'm here," she said. "It's a total change to what I left in Cuba. It's freedom. You can say what you want to say, you can do what you want to do, you can be what you want to be.

"This is life, really."

In Cuba, food was scarce, medical care spotty. Her family lived with her grandparents, the dream of owning their own place just that.

"It's amazing we're here," she said. "I would never have been able to provide the life for my kids we have now."

Kenny Jr. is 11, Mariah 9. The family lives in Henrico County. Eleanor Sanchez is a medication caseworker at CrossOver Ministry clinic, which provides medical care to the uninsured. Kenny has operated food carts for years; he and his father have plans to open a Cuban restaurant downtown.

Eleanor Sanchez arrived in the United States on July 6, 1995, missing the Fourth of July by only two days. She hasn't missed once since.

. . .

Freedom came with a steep price for Abdul Karim Dumbuya: leaving his family.

Dumbuya won a visa lottery to leave his native Sierra Leone, but on the day he picked up his paperwork at the U.S. Embassy, rebels thrust his troubled homeland deeper into chaos.

His plans to come to America, build a better life and send for his wife and son later became complicated. Dare he leave his family as a civil war raged?

His wife insisted he go.

"Right now we have no hope, no freedom," she told him. "You have to take that chance."

Said Dumbuya, "My wife is so courageous."

Dumbuya came to Richmond in 1997, got a job and began the long bureaucratic process to bring over his family. The situation in Sierra Leone degenerated and, unbeknownst to Dumbuya, his wife and son were evacuated to neighboring Guinea.

For a while, he did not know where they were or if they were alive. Eventually, he learned their whereabouts and returned to Africa to find them and bring them to the U.S. They arrived in 1999.

"My family and myself are blessed and lucky to be in the United States, where we found freedom and work hard with no hesitation," Dumbuya said.

Dumbuya works as a tailor, his wife as a nurse. Their older son, Mustapha, a recent graduate of Hermitage High School where he was a soccer standout, will attend Lynchburg College. Their younger son, Ibrahim, is 3.

Despite his success here, Dumbuya has not forgotten those left behind in Sierra Leone. He and other Sierra Leoneans living in Richmond have formed a group, Sierra Leone Self-Help Organization, to raise money to send back to those trying to put their lives back together after years of war.

Dumbuya already pays for several children to attend school in his homeland.

"Things are pretty good with us now," he said, sitting in the living room of his Henrico home. "Thanks to freedom for making all this possible."

Contact Bill Lohmann at (804) 649-6639 or .