Sabira is fighting to save her sight.
Medicaid cuts affecting legally present refugees are taking that away.
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Sabira was born in 1983 into a loving home in the sweepingly beautiful jungles of Burma. She was born Rhongiyan, an ethnic minority group from Rakhine State. For over 1,000 years, her ancestors lived on and worked the land as farmers. Her ancestors lived like many of our ancestors: being born, growing up, falling in love, having children, working, having grandchildren, and leaving this world. However, this thousand-year cycle was abruptly broken when the new Myanmar government decided to ethnically cleanse the country of groups like the Rohingya.
When Sabira was just five years old, her family had to flee the only home they had ever known because the genocide against their people was escalating. They fled to nearby Malaysia, running for their lives as they hoped to start a new life somewhere safe.
Rohyingyan people fleeing Burma (SOURCE: NYT, 2017)
Sabira is the oldest of seven children, and since migrant children couldn’t attend public schools in Malaysia, her focus became caring for her family. At 24, she started working at a local restaurant, and at 29, she got married and had children. She and her husband welcomed three beautiful babies into their lives, and joy soon filled their home.
In 2023, Sabira and her husband were accepted to come to the United States via the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. When they found this out, they knew they had to say yes. This would give their children the opportunity to attend school and allow Sabira to finally access doctors who could help with her eyesight.
Sabira and her daughter have diabetes. About 10 years ago, her vision started to blur. Things got even worse after an accident when hot cooking oil splashed into her left eye, leaving it worse off than her right. She tried getting medical help while in Malaysia, but treatments were too expensive for her family to afford. She couldn’t even purchase a pair of glasses, and had to live with eyesight that left her legally blind.
When Sabira, her husband, and their three children (all under age 12) came to the USA in 2024, her husband started working immediately at a meatpacking plant. After one year of being in America, they were able to submit their green card applications. Because of Sabira’s sight, she could not work or drive. Due to the family’s low income and Sabira’s disability, she qualified for Medicaid. And finally, after years of being unable to see properly, she finally received medical help! She was able to get her first pair of glasses and prescription eye drops. And also learned for the first time that she had cataracts and glaucoma. Thankfully, the eye doctor told her she could undergo surgery to save the vision in her left eye! With her eyesight restored, she could start working, driving, and experiencing life like many others around her.
Sabira shows family educator, Chit Thel Oo, her prescription eye medicine that is helping her eyes.
The life-changing eye surgery was scheduled for Thursday, October 1st, 2026: the day that Medicaid ended for all refugees whose green cards haven’t been processed yet by the federal government. A few days before the procedure, Sabira received a call:
“Surgery is being canceled because Medicaid is telling us that you are no longer eligible.”
Her heart sank as she heard these words. Ten long years of being legally blind, and the cure was almost in sight. Without surgery, Sabira’s eyesight is likely to worsen and may lead to irreversible blindness.
Sabira stands in her kitchen looking out the window. She longs for the day when she can fully see the world.
In addition to losing Medicaid, her family also lost $550/month in food assistance through SNAP. Without SNAP, the family has had a very difficult time obtaining enough food. Sabira told Restoring Dignity’s family educator, Chit Thel Oo,
“We carefully budget every paycheck. The first check is for rent, and the second is for utilities. We feed our children with whatever money remains. We can’t get to food pantries right now because my husband has to work a lot and he needs the car, and I can’t drive anyway. We don’t buy new clothes. We go to thrift stores if clothes wear out.”
Sabira and her family were recently referred to Restoring Dignity’s Feed A Family program because they cannot obtain enough food for their children. Thanks to our incredibly generous donors, we can provide her family with monthly grocery gift cards. We will also set them up with food pantry deliveries soon. Sabira and her family are currently taking our Pathways to Financial Stability classes and learning as many cost-saving/cost-cutting methods as they can to survive.
Sabira fills out a “Smart Spending” budgeting worksheet in our Pathways to Financial Stability class.
Sabira told us that she wants to work. She wants to contribute. She is a hard worker; it’s just her eyesight that is standing in the way. She and her husband want to live without needing assistance. But without surgery, these aspirations remain out of reach.
A Deeper Dive…
In 1980, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program was voted into law. We agreed as a nation that we would help contribute to alleviating the suffering of those who have been severely affected by war, genocide, and persecution across the world. We knew we couldn’t help everyone. There are tens of millions of refugees around the world. But we decided we would do our small part.
The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has been a very popular, bipartisan effort. Regardless of political or religious affiliation, refugee resettlement has been broadly supported by Congress and past U.S. Presidents. Every year, the President decides how many refugees will come to America, and then local agencies across the country resettle families into new lives. Prior to coming to America, families are vetted by 6 national security agencies (a process that takes years).
Once a family arrives, they must wait one year before applying for their green card. After obtaining their green card, they must wait five years before applying for U.S. Citizenship. All refugees are legal immigrants and are on a path to citizenship. They are brought to America by the U.S. Government, where they are given the opportunity to restart and rebuild lives that were previously torn away from them.
An important part of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program is identifying people living in refugee camps who have significant health issues and cannot get the proper medical care they need. These individuals are chosen by our government to come to the U.S. to receive medical care that they cannot get in the camp/country where they are located. This is part of the United States’ contribution to helping respond to the global refugee crisis. While most refugees brought here are not in need of sustained medical care, a minority are, and are specifically chosen for that purpose. People like Sabira were brought here so she could receive appropriate eye care.
This is one reason why the Medicaid cuts that happened last Thursday are so confusing and concerning:
The very people who were brought to the United States to receive medical care are now being denied it.
These Medicaid cuts are a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4th, 2025. Medicaid is part of a long list of cuts, changes, and executive orders that began shortly after the presidential inauguration in January 2025. SNAP has also been cut, and at the end of the year, access to Healthcare.gov health insurance tax credits and Medicare will no longer be available for refugees.
Nebraska’s five elected federal delegates (Ricketts, Fischer, Bacon, Flood and Smith) all voted in favor of this bill. None have yet been willing to repeal the portions that are negatively impacting our refugee neighbors.
A refugee family that arrived in the last two years just finished our Pathways to Financial Stability classes. The impact of recent federal legislation has been profound on their family.
None of what is happening is in line with how America has historically treated or welcomed refugees. Before the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, there was no requirement that refugees need a green card to access SNAP or Medicaid. Having refugee status (having an “I-94”) was a perfectly legal and federally supported designation that qualified refugees for federal support as they worked to build their lives from nothing.
Back in 1996, there was a welfare reform law, known as PRWORA, which greatly restricted which immigrants could receive federal public benefits. It created a category called “qualified immigrants” and required many lawful immigrants to wait five years before they could receive programs such as Medicaid and SNAP. Refugees were treated differently: because they were admitted to the United States through the federal refugee program, Congress specifically classified them as qualified immigrants and exempted them from the five-year waiting period, allowing eligible refugee families to receive assistance while they rebuilt their lives in the United States. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 went significantly further by narrowing eligibility for programs such as SNAP and Medicaid. Under the new law, being legally admitted as a refugee is no longer, by itself, enough to qualify for these programs; most refugees must first obtain lawful permanent resident (green card) status before they can qualify. In other words, protections that had existed for refugees for nearly 30 years under the 1996 welfare law were removed for SNAP, Medicaid, Medicare and Healthcare.gov.
The severe changes happening now for refugees are not all because of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Since last January, this Administration has made almost 800 federal-level policy and rule changes affecting refugees and immigrants. 191 of the policy and rule changes directly impact humanitarian groups, such as refugees. Many of the nearly 800 rule changes have been internal (made by agencies such as DHS and USCIS, which are led by Presidential appointees). These rules are not voted on by Congress, but still have a substantial impact on people’s lives. One such rule change is the decision not to process green card applications of refugees. This decision has made it impossible for families like Sabira to receive their green cards. Even though they have done everything right, they are locked out of SNAP and Medicaid assistance due to these internal agency rules & the new green card eligibility rule set forth by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
A family learning how to do “survival budgeting” in our Pathways to Financial Stability class.
While people like Sabira will be able to live even if her eyesight is permanently gone, there are medically fragile refugees who are facing stark and life-threatening realities. This is not hyperbole. Restoring Dignity has been present for recent conversations where we have heard from local medical doctors and healthcare providers. It is clear that Medicaid cuts will have dire consequences on many patients, including those who need treatment and medication for cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and other life-threatening illnesses and disorders.
When a refugee is brought to the United States, they are provided 90 days of support from their local resettlement agency before being expected to be self-sufficient. It is nearly impossible for a family to obtain employment, buy a car, find a home, and not need any assistance in a mere 90 days. Keep in mind that all of this is also done without credit or work history. Most families need some modicum of support through SNAP and Medicaid, while they work on getting on their feet.
Once stabilized, many refugees no longer need SNAP or Medicaid. In 2024, the Federal Government released a study that analyzed the fiscal impact of refugees and asylees. Over a 15-year period, government data found that refugees and asylees contributed $123.8 billion more than they used in government resources. The narrative that refugees are draining the social support system is false.
Restoring Dignity, alongside many other non-profits, faith communities, and volunteers, is shocked and confused as to why our federal government is treating refugees with such harshness. Or why our Nebraska federal delegates are not doing anything to repeal the harmful food and healthcare sections from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Nebraska has historically been extremely welcoming to refugees. Nebraskans of all faiths and political ideologies have banded together for decades to resettle refugees and welcome them into our community. We do not think that the current rhetoric and situation unfolding against refugees is actually representative of how Nebraskans think or feel.
The relationship between Nebraska and our refugee population is symbiotic. Nebraska provides a safe and stable environment for refugee families to restart their lives. And refugees fill critical jobs that we cannot staff with our current population, often in meatpacking plants and factories. We both need each other.
At the end of the day, we are left with a terrible situation. We have families who cannot feed their children. We have very sick people who cannot get medical care and medicine from their doctors.
And we are in an environment where the federal rules keep changing, making it difficult and even impossible for these families to survive here.
Sincerely,
Hannah Vlach Perez
Founder & Executive Director
Restoring Dignity
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