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APPLETON – Heritier Muhorana talks to his wife and daughter every day.

He can hear their voices on the phone. He can look at their faces on a screen. But for more than three years, he hasn’t seen them in person.

In 2000, Muhorana fled horrific violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the relative safety of crowded refugee camps in Burundi, a neighboring country in central Africa.

Muhorana met his wife, Chantal, in one of those refugee camps. That’s where they got married. But in late 2014, Muhorana was approved for resettlement in the U.S. — a process that took nearly two years and began before he was married.

He came alone to the U.S. in 2015, expecting his wife would be able to join him soon after. That didn’t happen. His daughter, Deborah, will be 3 years old in December. He has never met her in person.

His wife and daughter left the refugee camps and now live in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. They’re working with World Relief Fox Valley in an effort to get to the U.S., but so far haven’t been successful.

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Muhorana tries to stay positive, but it’s difficult not to be frustrated. He doesn’t know when his family will be back together.

“This experience will never happen to me again,” he said. “It’s a very bad experience, not to be with your family.”

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The situation isn’t likely to improve anytime soon. The number of refugees being allowed to settle in the U.S. has sharply fallen in the last two years.

In September, the Trump administration announced a plan to limit the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the U.S. this fiscal year to 30,000, down from a limit of 45,000 set last fiscal year — already the lowest since Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980. The limit during the final year of the Obama administration was 110,000.

Despite the limit of 45,000 last fiscal year, the U.S. only admitted 22,491 refugees, which is the lowest number in decades, according to State Department records.

About 25.4 million refugees exist worldwide, according the U.N. refugee agency.

The number of refugees arriving in northeast Wisconsin has also significantly declined in the last two years. World Relief Fox Valley, which has offices in Appleton and Oshkosh, had 209 arrivals in fiscal year 2016. That fell to 70 in fiscal year 2017 and 57 in fiscal year 2018, which ended Sept. 30.

Phil Stoffel, immigration manager for World Relief Fox Valley, said the situation for refugees trying to bring close relatives to the U.S. has gotten more difficult recently.

“People all across the nation in networks and affiliates that we work with are telling me they’re not getting any answers for any of these cases right now,” he said.

Many refugees have started to lose trust in the system they’re relying on to help them, Stoffel said. World Relief Fox Valley has at least 50 cases of refugees trying to bring close relatives to the U.S., but it doesn’t appear anything is going to change in the near future, he said.

“There’s no other way to explain what’s going on,” he said. “The politics in this are really bad right now.”

Stoffel has one piece of advice to anyone unsure whether the U.S. should welcome refugees at all: meet one.

“Once you meet one, it changes,” he said.

‘A very tough moment’

In 1998, Muhorana fled with his family from their village in Katanga, a former province in the southern part of Congo. The country was descending into war. He was just 12 years old.

He still remembers the night they left. It was about 6 p.m. That’s when they started walking. They didn’t stop until about 2 p.m. the next day. And his family wasn’t alone.

“Thousands of people moving at one time, just walking,” he said. “It was very painful.”

Muhorana didn’t bring much with him, other than what he could carry. He remembers a cousin asking him to hold a bottle for her baby, to help her as they were walking.

They walked for weeks without enough food to eat and in constant danger of being caught up in the violence unfolding around them.

“At that time, what mattered was just to save our lives,” he said.

But they couldn’t always avoid the fighting. The exposure to violence left many people traumatized — or worse, Muhorana said.

“I saw some people who were hurt or shot, some other people were killed on the way,” he said. “It was a very tough moment.”

Muhorana, though, safely found his way to Kalemie, a town on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika, where a relief organization provided food to the crowd of refugees. He stayed there for more than a month, but safety was still a concern.

He eventually continued north to South Kivu, a province near the border with Burundi, and stayed there for almost two years, despite treacherous living conditions. He stayed in churches or schools, often in close quarters with thousands of other people.

“We didn’t have enough food to eat. We didn’t have medical assistance,” he said. “So, everything was just a little bit. It wasn’t enough.”

Disease was a problem, too. Many people got sick. Some died. But safety from the violence remained the primary concern, Muhorana said.

“People were still being killed there,” he said.

He couldn’t think about his plans for the future. The situation didn’t allow it. So, in an effort to find peace and a place he could think about his goals in life, he and his family decided to flee for Burundi.

‘We were limited’

Muhorana was a teenager by the time his family crossed the border into Burundi and arrived at their first refugee camp. They stayed for more than a year, then were forced to move to another camp in the northeast part of country.

The violence unfolding in Congo was behind them. But in the camps, his family encountered other problems. Sickness, mostly.

“I would see people dying every month, every year,” Muhorana said. “You bury a lot of people.”

Their camp was packed with about 10,000 people, he said. And it wasn’t the only camp around. Burundi had multiple refugee camps set up for those fleeing across the border.

The camp was not a good place to live, Muhorana said. He felt trapped, unable to go anywhere without asking permission first.

“When you are young, you have dreams. You have goals. You have ambition. You have something in your heart you desire to achieve,” he said. “In the camp, we were limited.”

Still, despite the limitations, Muhorana found a way to work toward a better life. He left the camp after a few years and made his way to Rwanda, a country to the north of Burundi. There, he was able to finish high school and get a college scholarship, which he used to earn a bachelor’s degree in business.

Then, in 2013, Muhorana returned to the camp, where his family still lived. That’s when he met the woman who later became his wife. She had fled a similar situation in Congo and was already living in the camp when he returned.

He found a lot to like about her, Muhorana said, but her generosity stood out to him. The prospect of getting married in the camp wasn’t ideal, he said. But, in 2015, without other options, that’s exactly what he did.

He hadn’t specifically planned on coming to the U.S. — he simply wanted to find a country where he could live a normal life. But when he was approved for resettlement in the U.S., the prospect excited him.

“We were thinking that maybe life was going to be different than what we have here,” he said.

The process of getting approved for resettlement took nearly two years. And when it was over, Muhorana didn’t get to choose where he was sent. His wife, who hadn’t yet been approved, wouldn’t be able to join him.

“We couldn’t travel together because I was already at the final step,” he said. “I was already ready to come.”

So, with no other choice, he left on his own.

‘Change will come’

Muhorana didn’t speak English — not much, at least — when he arrived in the U.S. in 2015. And that was far from the only challenge he faced.

He was thrilled to arrive, but those first few years weren’t easy at all, he said. The culture was entirely new to him and it took time to adjust.

“I couldn’t imagine that I would have friends and I would get familiar with people here,” he said.

World Relief Fox Valley has services meant to help refugees acclimate to life in the U.S., said Tami McLaughlin, the organization’s executive director.

The organization recruits volunteers who spend time with refugees and serve as companions and valuable sources of information, McLaughlin said.

“Those friendships make the difference in how well somebody transitions into a completely new culture and community,” she said.

To do basic things, such as apply for a job, enroll a child in school, or get health care, can be overwhelming at first for refugees who are often simply relieved to be safe, McLaughlin said.

“You celebrate the little wins and take the little steps,” she said.

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As much as Muhorana tries to remain optimistic about his future, it’s difficult not to be upset with his wife and daughter living thousands of miles away, he said.

The conversations he has with them tend to focus, almost inevitably, on when they might see each other again.They’re still working hard to have a life together, despite the distance between them.

“I try to share my life, my experience here, so I can tell them the difference,” he said.

Muhorana has been working with Stoffel, the immigration manager, for about two years to get his wife and daughter to the U.S., but it’s unclear how much progress they’ve made.

“I can’t begin to tell you how much paperwork we’ve had to file and go through,” Stoffel said. “It’s just a constant back-and-forth with no clear answers from the government.”

Any refugee trying to enter the U.S. has to go through exhaustive background checks, according to U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services. Muhorana’s wife and daughter both have passed those checks, but attempts to get updates on the status of their case have gone unanswered, Stoffel said.

But despite the frustration and the length of time the couple has spent apart, his wife is still excited by the idea of coming to the U.S., Muhorana said.

“She can dream of a bright future too,” he said.

For now, Muhorana will wait. It’s all he can do.

“In life, nothing is permanent,” he said. “Everything is subject to change. So, change will come.”

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