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Building A Future for Himself and Others: Oballa Oballa Tells His Story

Posted on Mar 09 2020

“It was a Saturday. A lot of people were killed–within 12 hours more than 424 people were dead. I could hear the bullets. I saw one of my uncles die.”

This is how Oballa Oballa’s immigration story began. He was ten years old on December 13, 2003 in Gambela, Ethiopia. “The government tried to get rid of our whole tribe,” he said. “We were kicked out of our homeland suddenly. But even before that we had been mistreated by the government because of our land and resources.”

After walking nearly seven days, Oballa crossed the border into Sudan to get to Kenya. After some time living in Nairobi, he went to a refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya and lived there from 2005-2013. In the camp, food was distributed just twice a month—if at all. There were water shortages too, but throughout it all Oballa and his family remained optimistic.

“Every day the hope is that one day we will be able to leave,” he said. To do that, they had to go through the long, complicated, and often opaque process of refugee resettlement.

“Some people come to a refugee camp and will stay there for more than 20 years without getting an opportunity to resettle. Some people will stay for more than 10 years. Our name was picked after we had been in the camp for about 6 years, but even from there the process was really difficult.

“When your name is finally picked you have hope. Our name was posted in 2008 and every morning I would wake up and go to the post station to see if anything had changed. My mom would ask me for an update and then we would pray that tomorrow something will come up.

“Even once we were chosen for resettlement it took forever before we were granted permission to come to the United States. We had to go through a lot of interviews, and were constantly having to prove to different lawyers that our story was true and that the conditions in our country were as bad as we said they were. It was an exhausting process, and we went almost three years without any real progress. Finally, at the end of 2012, we heard that the UNHCR wanted to send us to the United States.”

Oballa and his family arrived in the United States in December 2013, ten years after the massacre that drove them from their home. Initially, they lived together in Maryland before Oballa moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for Job Corps training. His mother moved to Austin, Minnesota, and Oballa joined her there after completing his Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) certificate.

“I don’t see myself moving to any other city apart from Austin,” he said. “I want to pay back the help that I got in Minnesota by working here and helping the community that helped me become who I am today.”

Oballa first heard about the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM) while interpreting at the Austin Welcome Center. “I liked the website and thought their work was awesome,” he said. Soon after, he met with ILCM staff attorney Sara Karki to become a citizen himself. “Having an attorney translate all the information and talk me through it was really helpful,” he said. “The whole process was really smooth.”

Oballa’s naturalization process lasted around six months. “Sara has been so helpful, and because of her my case was really fast,” he said. “A lot of my friends say to me ‘your case was so fast,’ and some people are sitting here and it takes forever.” Oballa now recommends ILCM to others looking to apply for citizenship.

Oballa has worked at Mayo Clinic since 2015. He is a health unit coordinator and CNA in the psychiatric unit. Though he values his work at Mayo highly, Oballa sees an even greater need in the community for social workers and has discovered a deep passion for social work. He graduated from Riverland Community College last May with an Associate of Arts and Associate degree in Human Service and is now pursuing a bachelor’s degree in social work with the long-term goal of becoming an immmigration social worker. “I like working with refugees when they come here,” he said. “Without the social worker who helped me when I first arrived I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

Oballa views immigration as one of the biggest issues of the current day and wants to be a voice for that issue both within immigrant and refugee communities and for the public as a whole.

“People are saying that refugees are only here to bring the economy down. That is not true. I myself did not come to the United States to beg. I came here to work and have a better life. Refugees are boosting the economy of the U.S.A. So if someone who doesn’t know a refugee’s background says, ‘You people make America bad,’ we have to look back—who is saying that? Apart from Native Americans, everyone in this country is either an immigrant or a refugee. So I feel like people shouldn’t make that decision that, ‘We don’t allow you here.’”

Oballa has long been a public voice, even before becoming a citizen. Starting when he was a student, Oballa worked with LeadMN, an organization that represents the 180,000 two-year college students in Minnesota and works with those students to elevate future leaders and overcome systemic barriers to success. In this role, he championed issues including bills to combat food insecurity on campuses and provide open electronic textbooks to bring down the cost of course materials. In both cases, his work involved testifying at the capitol, and thanks to the efforts of Oballa and other student activists, both bills passed.

Oballa also traveled around visiting Minnesota community colleges talking to students in order to take their concerns up with the board of trustees and then the house and senate. Oballa was elected president of LeadMN in 2019, after previously serving as vice president.

Having registered to vote at his naturalization ceremony, Oballa is looking forward to also engaging in different forms of political involvement.

“I am so happy because now I can vote and serve on a jury. I’m excited about jury duty. It is a privilege. Looking at my background even as a citizen I might be less likely to be picked for a jury, but having my voice and being someone who is civically engaged in the community I can volunteer myself. There are a lot of immigrants, refugees, and black people who are being convicted and sent to jail because there aren’t juries who represent them. I am also looking forward to running for office someday to represent my community.”

Oballa believes that “refusing refugees is not what the United States is supposed to be.”

“People need to understand refugees before judging them. Refugees come to the United States for good reasons. They don’t have other places to go and this opportunity is a blessing to them. It is a blessing for me to be here, and there are still refugees with hope that they could come here too. No one should be able to take that away.”