About Us

Migration and Refugee Services (MRS), a department of Catholic Charities of Louisville, has been resettling refugees in the Louisville Metro Areas since 1975. The Program started with resettlement of the Southeast Asian Refugees. Now, MRS operates as the official representative of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB) in the state of Kentucky. USCCB is one of seven U.S. voluntary agencies that have cooperative agreements with the United States government to resettle refugees who have been legally admitted to the United States, as victims of prosecution because of their religious or political beliefs.

MRS has resettled over 10,000 refugees from 30 countries including Iraq, Vietnam, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Russia, Cuba, Haiti, Sudan, Sierra Leon, Rwanda, Togo, Cameroon, Liberia, Iran, Kosovo, Burma, Congo, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Colombia, Benin, Burundi, Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan, Eritrea, Azerbaijan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ghana.

Migration and Refugee Services welcomes the stranger and enables those escaping persecution to begin new lives with dignity through early self-sufficiency. Migration and Refugee Services now employs 36 people (Click here for the agency flow chart), who work both full and part time to serve refugees. Our staff speaks English, Spanish, French, Swahili, Arabic, Somali, Bosnian, Russian, Polish, Mai Mai, Urdu, German, Italian, and Farsi. Many of them have been admitted into the United States as refugees.

In addition, our Interpreter Services Department has a pool of interpreters that are able to provide interpretation or translation services in 40 world languages.