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Ahmed Museh, 22, isn’t sure what to do when he graduates from Winooski High School next month. He’s thinking college, then the Air Force. It’s been four years since Museh came to the United States from Kenya, where he spent his adolescence in a refugee camp. He hasn’t applied to college yet, and he doesn’t have the money.... Read more

Most Africans know their way around a garden. Cultivating the land is an integral part of the culture, whether the gardener's native language is Somali, French, Mai-Mai or Lingala. But there are some challenges in making the transition from the dusty Sahel to the soon-to-be verdant valleys of Vermont. That's where the Old North End's Association of Africans Living in Vermont comes in.... Read more

Some might say it takes major cojones to file a lawsuit against the United States government on behalf of yourself and several million Cuban-Americans over an entrenched, half-century-old foreign policy — especially if you’re neither Cuban-American nor a bona fide lawyer.

But for Jared Carter, a second-year student at Vermont Law School in South Royalton, all it took was love.... Read more

The experience of the refugees who have made their way to Vermont in recent years has often been presented as a feel-good story in which a tolerant, benevolent community welcomes hardworking newcomers. Charlotte-based Ned Castle’s series of photos and testimonies at the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury subverts that reigning narrative. “In Their Own Words: Stories from Refugees Settled in Vermont Communities” supplies a texture absent from many of the accounts composed by outsiders.... Read more

Ezzedine Fatnassi takes comfort in knowing that when his time comes, he can be buried in a Muslim-only section of a cemetery in his adopted hometown of Burlington.

Fatnassi, a 54-year-old immigrant from Tunisia, helped negotiate an agreement last summer that sets aside 60 burial plots for Muslims in the city-owned Lakeview Cemetery.... Read more

The Canadian border is frequently in the news these days, thanks to new ID rules from Homeland Security and the enhanced buying power of the loonie. Most Vermonters probably fret more about inconvenient lines and lost revenue than about terrorists and illegal immigrants. But at the Mexican border, seemingly a world away, it’s a caballo of a different color. Hey, we’re not building a fence to keep out the Québecois, right?... Read more

ESSEX JUNCTION — Ming’s at Essex Chinese Restaurant near Five Corners now sits dark and lifeless, with a commercial “FOR SALE” sign posted at the curb. Next door, a rundown commercial building, where kitchen help from the neighboring eatery once lived — in violation of local zoning ordinances — is also vacant and on the market. Behind Ming’s, the big, white Victorian at 2 Park Terrace is still occupied.... Read more

MIDDLEBURY — Middlebury police officers that encounter foreign nationals who may be in the country illegally will no longer detain them or contact federal immigration agents unless that person is known or suspected of committing a crime or terrorist act, according to a new policy adopted recently by the Middlebury Select Board.

The new protocol, which has actually been an unofficial practice for months, is aimed at encouraging victims and witnesses of crimes or accidents to call 9-1-1 without fearing that their immigration status will land them in hot water.... Read more

Picture a 3000-mile-long dinner table spanning the United States. Then imagine all 303 million Americans sitting down to eat. All of them, that is, except for members of Congress and a bunch of lobbyists and farm activists, who are in the kitchen planning our menu.... Read more

Not every Vermont town has a 45-bed hospital, a full-service pharmacy and an elite private college with its own health center. Middlebury does. But the seemingly affluent town and its environs are also home to low-income residents who struggle to access proper medical care.... Read more