Irco

By the mid-1980's, the United States began accepting an ever-increasing number of refugees in response to political repression, war and forced relocation among the refugee population. Accordingly, the ethnic composition of newly arrived refugees in Oregon began to alter and included Afghans, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Iranians, Romanians and other Eastern Europeans. In response to this new influx of refugees, the State of Oregon Refugee Program sponsored an inclusive retreat among all local refugee service providers to develop an integrated approach to assisting refugees to become self-sufficient through early employment. A major result of the retreat was that the ICSC and SEARF merged to form the International Refugee Center of Oregon (lRCO). Under this new structure, IRCO became the sole service provider of employment services and job training for all newly arrived refugees in the Tri-County area, a role IRCO has retained since that time. IRCO retained SEARF's economic development and language interpretation/translation services, known as the International Language Bank, and broadened its ethnically based board of directors and staff to incorporate members of the newly arrived refugee populations from Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.