Above: IILA President & CEO Cambria Tortorelli
February 20, 2024
Local journalist Andy Lippman recently sat down with IILA President & CEO Cambria Tortorelli to discuss the current refugee resettlement and immigration landscape.
“A drumbeat of controversy surrounds the discussion of immigration at America’s southern border, ” he writes.
“It’s drowned out a discussion of the Afghan refugees who been coming here since the fall of their country to the Taliban in August 2021. And it has overtaken some of those Ukrainians who have fled the current war with Russia.
I’ve written before about the International Institute of Los Angeles, which has been working with refugees since 1914 and is currently led by Cambria Tortorelli, the former administrator of Holy Family Catholic Church in South Pasadena.
The IILA has helped more than 1,000 Afghan refugees who had worked with the United States before the country fell to the Taliban. They are also helping Ukrainians who immigrated to the United States under a sponsorship program.
Many of that original group of Afghans are out on their own now, and about 400 people are still on the original IILA rolls. Some of the refugees have found Los Angeles too expensive and have moved on to other cities, but many others — now that federal help has expired for them — have found jobs and homes.”
Read the full article here:
