Erie County seems like a contradiction to many outsiders. It voted by 17 percentage points for Barack Obama in 2012 and then turned around four years later and supported Donald Trump in 2016. It’s also home to the one of the largest refugee populations in Pennsylvania, which took in 3,219 refugees in 2016 — ranking ninth among all states in the union.
“In 2016 we placed nearly 700 hundred Syrian refugees in Erie,” said Ed Grode, still energetic at 70. “They come from places like Kenya, Bosnia, the Congo and Iraq. Refugees now make up roughly 20 percent of the city’s population of 100,000.”
For a decade, Grode sat on the board of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), a national nonprofit that partners with the State Department to resettle refugees. Today he is still intensely involved in helping those fleeing tribal warfare, political upheaval or religious persecution in their native nations — people like Bahati.
“Everyone finds a job once they settle here. Some find two or three,” Grode said.
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