Seeing Ahmed’s mother upstairs, the soldier slung his weapon across his back and punched Ahmed in the head, forcing him down the steps to join his father and other family members in the living room.

The American soldiers were searching the neighborhood house-to-house and room-by-room for a sniper who was killing their comrades. Everyone was scared, from Ahmed to his family to the soldiers.

“People do things when they are afraid,” the now 25-year-old Ahmed said, understandingly. “There was a war, after all.”

As the soldiers went through Ahmed’s family home, they looked with alarm at drawings he had made of the life he saw outside of his window, a life of guns, tanks and death.

It took time to convince the American soldiers Ahmed was not a threat.

“We said, ‘Thank you, little Picasso,’” joked Ahmed’s mother, Huda Ammar. “You nearly got us killed.”

From the time he was 11, Yussuf Yussuf, now 36, saw first-hand the random violence of a civil war as Somali soldiers and militiamen beat, raped and murdered his fellow Somali Bantus. For 20 years he lived in Kenyan refugee camps so horrific that he declines to describe the details.

“The first camp we were in, it was dangerous, but we had ways to make a living,” he says. “The second camp, it was a bad camp.”

Ahmed, his mother, father and brothers are now Charlottesville residents, living in the same city as Yussuf, his wife and five sons.

In 2012, Yussuf stood on the platform at Monticello’s annual July Fourth ceremony and took the oath to become a U.S. citizen. On Monday, Ahmed’s father, Awadh, 58, and brothers Amjad, 24, and Majed, 21, will be among 80 immigrants to be sworn in as new citizens on the 240th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Both his mother and his brother Mohammed already have become citizens, and Ahmed is scheduled to take his oath later this summer.

“For 52 years, I was a refugee in Iraq because, even though I was born there, I was the son of a refugee, and therefore I was a refugee,” Awadh explains in nearly perfect English tinted with an accent. “My father was a refugee from Palestine in 1948. He came to Iraq as a refugee and he died as a refugee. I will be an American.”

From building walls to closing borders, from creating new government departments to amnesty, immigrants and refugees are not just people looking for a better, safer life, they are also a worldwide political issue that has surfaced in the U.S. presidential election and throughout Europe.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has called for a wall on the border with Mexico, deporting immigrants currently living in the U.S. illegally and suspending immigration from countries with histories of terrorism.

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has proposed a new federal bureaucracy to handle immigration, deplored the current administration’s use of widespread raids and mass deportations and vowed to create a procedure for those living here illegally to become citizens.

Many of those who backed Britain’s recent vote to leave the European Union complained that the EU rules allowed anyone from the union’s 27 countries to arrive in Britain to look for a job without the British government’s approval or review.

Net migration into Britain reached a near-record 330,000 in 2015, according to that country’s Office of National Statistics.

According to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, from July 2015 to May 2016, more than 1 million people applied for asylum in Europe, with immigrant populations increasing most in Sweden, Hungary, Austria and Norway.

More than 18 percent of the population in Sweden and Austria is foreign-born, according to Pew, and more than 15 percent of the people in Norway was born somewhere else.

Charlottesville and Albemarle County are not far behind. The 2014 update to the 2010 U.S. Census estimates that nearly 12 percent of Charlottesville residents and 10 percent of Albemarle County residents are foreign-born.

The number of foreign-born residents in Charlottesville increased from 3,107 in 2000 to 4,972 in 2010. It increased to 5,247 in 2015, peaking at 5,366 in 2013. Albemarle County’s foreign-born population increased from 5,753 in 2000 to 9,895 in 2010, according to Census figures. In 1990, the county had 2,883 foreign-born residents.

While immigration has become a topic of national debate, advocates note that refugees are immigrants, but not all immigrants are refugees.

According to the United Nations, one in every 113 people is a refugee, meaning that they are fleeing armed conflict or persecution and sometimes are crossing national borders, looking for safety.

Immigrants, known as migrants in U.N. parlance, move to improve their lives by finding work, education and other reasons and, unlike refugees, can return home without fear of reprisal.

The U.N. estimates that, at the end of the 2015, there were an estimated 21.3 million refugees worldwide, with Afghanistan and Syria accounting for about 2.5 million and another 1.1 million fleeing Somalia.

Of the 70,000 refugees who made it to the U.S. in 2015, 24,500 came from the Near East and South Asia, including Iraq, Iran, Bhutan and Afghanistan; 22,500 came from Africa and 18,500 from East Asia, including China, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Central Virginia is very welcoming of strangers.

An estimated 10 percent of students in Charlottesville Public Schools speak a language other than English at home. A large number of immigrants and refugees live in the district boundaries of Albemarle County’s Greer Elementary, making the school a veritable United Nations of elementary education.

The University of Virginia Medical Center has a family medical clinic dedicated specifically to refugees and immigrants that provides one-stop care that includes interpreters for those for whom English is a second or third language.

“Charlottesville tends to be an accepting community that values diversity,” said Del. David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville, who served as a city councilor and Charlottesville’s mayor before running for the state legislature.

He said the increasing number of refugees and immigrants in the area is related to the region’s willingness to accept different cultures.

“The fact that we are a university town makes it even more attractive,” he said. “We already have people here from all over the world, and it helps create a climate of acceptance of diversity.”

Figures released by the state of Virginia for 2014 show a similar profile: the state’s foreign-born population, including immigrants and refugees, comprised more than 10 percent of the population and 15 percent of the workforce.

Nearly 70 percent of the state’s immigrants lived in Northern Virginia. About 10 percent lived in Hampton Roads and 10 percent were residents in the Richmond area.

Advocates say the refugees and immigrants add diversity and culture to the area, such as in the restaurant or fashion industries, contribute to the economy and bolster local houses of worship.

Satyendra Huja, 75, was born in what was India and now is part of Pakistan, and immigrated to the U.S. in 1960. With a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in urban planning from Michigan State University, he came to Charlottesville in 1973 to work in the city’s community planning department.

He later led the department, served on the city council and as mayor. In 1987, he stood up at Monticello’s July 4 ceremony to take his oath of citizenship.

“When I first came to Charlottesville, I was not a citizen, but I soon realized that this was my hometown,” he said. “My children were here, the future was here and this was where I lived.”

The International Rescue Committee has resettled more than 3,000 refugees in the Charlottesville area since 1998, according to Harriet Kuhr, executive director of the IRC’s Charlottesville office. Many have since moved to other cities across the country.

“Refugees actually don’t have a choice where they go. If they have relatives who are already here who want them to resettle near them, then they can ask to come to Charlottesville,” Kuhr said. “But refugees without any existing family ties don’t get to pick where they go.”

Kuhr said refugees appreciate the calm and safe atmosphere of the area and “can have a ‘normal’ life without fear.”

The Alsrya family came to Charlottesville because they had a relative living in Charlottesville who had come to the U.S. after helping American officials in Iraq.

Yussuf Yussuf and his wife had no connections in Charlottesville. They arrived from a Kenyan refugee camp through luck of the draw.

“We did not know of Charlottesville or Virginia,” Yussuf said. “We just knew we were coming to America. We really didn’t know much about where we were going.”

In 1992, Yussuf was 11 years old when the danger and din of the Somali civil war came to his home as rebels and government troops clashed and battled. The only thing both sides could agree on was dislike of the country’s Somali Bantu minority.

According to a 2002 report from the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, the Bantu were a minority whose ancestors were seized from other parts of Africa by Arab slave traders in the 18th and 19th centuries.

After slavery in Somalia was abolished by Italian colonialists around 1890, the Bantu remained widely discriminated against by the Italians until the end of the colonial period and by the Somalis into the 21st century.

Primarily farmers, they were easy prey for warlord rebels and government soldiers during the civil war who robbed, raped and killed the mostly unarmed Bantus.

Many died. Many others, Yussuf’s family among them, fled Somalia for Kenya.

“It took two weeks walking through the forest to Kenya, but when we got there, the Kenya army said we couldn’t come in. The United Nations came and put us in trucks and took us to the first refugee camp.” Yussuf recalled.

They stayed in the camp with other Somali refugees but continued to endure discrimination and regular violence.

In 2002, 20 years after his family fled their home, the U.S. agreed to resettle Bantus. Yussuf and his then-fiancé, Muslimo Rasulow, were moved to Kenya’s Kakuma camp for processing. After two years of vetting by immigration officials, they boarded an airliner for their new home.

The International Rescue Committee brought Yussuf and Rasulow to Charlottesville, set them up with a place to live and arranged for immediate medical care and jobs.

“The IRC began resettling in Charlottesville in 1998,” Kuhr said. “A good site has a couple of key elements: affordable and available rental housing, job opportunities and a welcoming community. Good schools and accessible health care are important, as well, but housing and jobs are really crucial.”

* * *

Awadh Alsrya sits on the mint-green couch bedecked with matching hand-crocheted doilies, leans forward and says with great pride that he will soon be an American.

That’s important. When he and two of his four sons stand on Monticello’s back porch and take the oath of American citizenship, it will be the first time in his 58 years that Awadh has had a country to call his own.

The Alsrya family was born in Iraq, both the parents and children. They lived in Baghdad, where Awadh helped run successful businesses with an Iraqi partner. But always they were refugees from a war that happened a decade before Awadh was born, a war in which the state of Israel was created and the nation of Palestine erased.

As the sons and grandsons of a Palestinian refugee, the family had no status. They had no citizenship. They had no passports. They were legal strangers in the land of their birth.

As Awadh, his wife and sons Ahmed, Amjad and Majed sit in the living room of the family’s Charlottesville home, they laugh easily at the past and the present and find humor even in the events that terrified them.

There have been many. In 1990 came the Gulf War. In 2003, it was the U.S.-Iraq War, followed by outbreaks of sectarian violence that worsened after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

They laugh when they recount how each son was born during a conflict.

“My parents find war romantic,” jokes Amjad, 24. “Gee, dear, the bombs are falling and the sky is a beautiful orange!”

Other memories are not so funny. There was the time that Huda was shot in the shoulder while shopping, caught in a crossfire between U.S. troops and insurgents.

There was the time insurgents opened fire on a soccer field where Ahmed and friends were playing, killing one of his best friends.

“There were a lot of different groups fighting each other, and we just wanted to survive,” recalls Awadh. “When you opened the door every morning, you saw bodies.”

When Awadh’s Sunni Muslim business partner was shot and killed by a Shia Muslim militia, the family packed up and left Baghdad for the Iraqi desert. They lived for more than three years in a tent city in the desert not far from Syria with 3,200 other Iraqi Palestinians, scorpions, snakes, scorching heat and freezing cold.

Refugees seeking asylum or citizenship in the U.S. are divided into three categories by the priority in which they will be accepted.

Those who are the highest priority, like Yussuf and the Alsryas, face persecution in their original country or the country to which they have sought refuge.

The second priority is “special concern” groups selected by the Department of State. They include persons such as those who served as interpreters for the U.S. military or assisted the U.S. in places such as the former Soviet Union, Cuba, Congo, Iraq, Iran, Burma and Bhutan.

The third priority of refugees is parents, spouses or unmarried children under 21 of those already settled in the U.S.

Before admission, each refugee must prove a case of “well-founded fear,” regardless of the person’s country, circumstance or classification in a priority category.

“People don’t become refugees because of an earthquake or a tsunami or economic reasons,” Kuhr said. “It’s legally defined as a reasonable fear of persecution.”

But risk itself is no assurance of acceptance. Refugees may be excluded from the country for health issues, criminal past or security risk. They also may be excluded for polygamy, lying on applications, smuggling and having been previously departed.

Refugees resettled in the United States do not need to have a sponsor. If a refugee approved for admission does have a relative living in the United States, every effort will be made to place the refugee near the relative.

According to the U.S. Department of State, the process can take an average of 18 months to two years to complete, a timeframe often criticized as too long by some human rights organizations.

The IRC steps in after the refugee has been approved to make sure new arrivals have a furnished home, help with rent, health care, food, English instruction, assistance from social services, education for children, legal services toward residency and citizenship and help finding employment and building job skills.

After eight months, refugees are expected to be employed and on their own. After a year, a refugee may apply for permanent residency. After five years, they may petition for citizenship.

That’s what the entire Alsrya family did.

“When you are a refugee, you have nothing. You have no home, no business, no country. You have a tent. That’s it,” Awadh says.

And tents are not much protection. In the winter, heavy snows collapsed them. In the summer, winds blow cooking fires onto the tents, causing fires that quickly blaze through crowded camps.

“We would run through the camp and cut open tents with knives to pull people out before the tents caught fire,” Ahmed recalls. “Once, a strong wind blew the tent structure from the [latrine] and it cut straight through my tent. If I had been inside, I would have died.”

The camp was located near a U.S. military base, and that brought some assistance from the Americans who would bring water and other necessities.

“We originally wanted to go Syria because it was stable at the time,” Awadh recalls. “Now, I’m glad they didn’t let us in.”

* * *

The Alsryas have wanted to belong all of their lives.

Some 415 families lived in the Iraqi desert camp along with 120 single persons. The conditions were rough and often proved fatal to the weak among them.

To go back to Baghdad would mean death, so the camp set up a board of directors on which Awadh sat and made the best life they could. On behalf of the board, he worked with the U.S. officials at the nearby camp and the United Nations.

Eventually, the agencies were convinced to move the lifelong refugees to other countries in Europe and the U.S. A family member had worked with the U.S. as an interpreter and lived in Charlottesville, so the Alsryas came to town.

Mohammed, 28, Amjad and Ahmed attended Piedmont Virginia Community College and Majed, 21, attended Charlottesville High School. When they became eligible for citizenship, they jumped at the chance.

Yussuf works as a maintenance worker in the evenings at Monticello and a translator during the day for the IRC. He speaks Swahili, Somali and a native Bantu dialect of Somali known as Maay Maay. He is fluent in English, which he learned in the refugee camps, at Piedmont Virginia Community College and from years of total immersion in the American culture.

He and his wife were married in the Kakuma camp just prior to coming to Charlottesville, and their five sons all were born here.

That’s a major reason why he decided to go through the process to become a citizen.

“I did it because my children were born here and they are Americans, and if they grow up Americans and their father isn’t an American, too, well, it seems like there is some shame in that,” he said. “Charlottesville and the U.S. are our home. This is where we want to live. We wanted to be Americans, too.”

“When I took the test and the person who gave me the test told me I had passed, I asked for a moment so that I could I pray,” Awadh recalls. “And I kissed the floor that, after all of this time, I could call someplace home.”