In neighborhoods and church groups, word has spread about the stateside plight of refugees. And in many cases, Utah has opened its arms to this community.

Ron Anderson heads up a group informally called the First Unitarian Church Household Goods Committee. Their job: setting up the apartments of incoming refugees with enough donated furnishings to live.

End tables, sofas, living room chairs, lamps, rugs, beds, clothes, towels, blankets and sheets.

Anderson, who retired six years ago from a federal government contracting job, gathers supplies from one of four donated garage spaces, loads a truck and takes them to an address provided by the IRC.

Globokar and Jackie Menk coordinate the contributions of clothes, furniture, towels, bikes and bedding. One day recently, 21 bags of clothes were donated and piled high in Menk's living room.

Anderson checks up on families long after the furniture is in place.

"I don't want to brag, but I've got a whole group of people who rely on me still," Anderson said.

He helped one Bosnian family set up a cleaning business. He checks up on a couple of Afghani families. He takes care of a single mom from the Somali Bantu clan, who has a number of children, including a baby. He bonded with the child on his second visit, when he ended up spending all night at Primary Children's Medical Center with the girl, who had a 104-degree temperature and was gravely ill.

Dozens of Utahns are doing similar work, adopting families and helping them wade through the red tape of taxes, school district bureaucracy or housing authority paperwork.

"In general, Salt Lake has been warm and welcoming, but we can all do much better," said Mollie Murphy Dale, executive director of the Utah Health & Human Rights Project.

"We have too many of our friends and neighbors who don't know what refugees are."

"Picture yourself being plopped down in China or Afghanistan," she said. "When you do know about them, you have a sense of responsibility."

Barry Hatch feels no such responsibility.

The impact of refugees is not much different from the impact of an "illegal alien," he said.

They come without anything, and they burden communities.

"If you feel badly for refugees," he said, "feel more compassion for this country than you do them.

"Let's stop all of this uncontrolled immigration whether it's refugee or illegal or anything in between until we can get a handle on our country and on the direction of this nation and our language and the unity."

Refugees often are lumped with immigrants and undocumented workers. Even educated people don't always understand there is a difference.