Still Refugees, Seven Years On

Aida Brcic didn't pack her dishes when the family left her last home, believing she'd be back in three or four days. That was seven years ago in Bosnia, when Serbian troops arrived.

Today they are reconstructing their lives in Nashville. Because Aida is a Bosnian Muslim and Vltako is a Croatian Catholic, the family isn't welcome anywhere in the ethnically segregated Balkans. Since 1992, they have been on the run as refugees, reports CBS News Correspondent Jeffrey Kofman.

First they sought refuge in Croatia. Bombing there sent them to Hungary. Two months later Austria. In 1997 they tried to resettle on the Croatian coast, but Aida couldn't get citizenship. That is when they moved to America.

The family's grueling journey is typical of the path most refugees follow before settling in a place like Nashville. In recent years more than 80,000 Bosnians have come to this country as refugees and while the U.S. government hasn't made any official decision yet, refugee settlement groups are preparing for what they think will be the next big wave: Kosovars.

As director of the Nashville branch of World Relief, a refugee settlement group, Lee Ebey likes to say he lives in the delayed headlines of the world.

Ebey said, "It's going to be a year or two down the road before we see any Kosovar ethnic Albanians, but we're prepared, should that happen."

Should that happen they will probably begin their new lives doing jobs that most Americans won't do. Vlatko was a construction foreman in Bosnia, now he works nights and weekends as a janitor at Nashville airport.

"We came because of the children, they can build their future here. For us the time is gone, but for the children they have the time so they can build here," said Aida.

As the Brcic's see it, rebuilding is the only thing they can do, otherwise they'd have given up long before they got to America.

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