For one woman, the journey to St. Louis has been a rough one, and the problems didn't end when she arrived here.

The troubles of Philomene Iyesa-Boyonga, wife of a military man in the Democratic Republic of Congo, began years ago when her husband was kidnapped.

The rival military faction that took him, killed him and then kidnapped Iyesa-Boyonga. She escaped and fled to neighboring Nigeria but had to leave her four children.

For five years, she lived in a refugee camp. Finally, international authorities referred her to U.S. officials, and she was assigned to St. Louis, arriving on March 31.

These days her focus is on finding the means to get by. She's completed training at a refugee resettlement agency and wants to care for older adults but can't land any type of work.

Refugees and immigrants from around the world have settled in St. Louis by the tens of thousands over the last two decades.

But the sharp downturn in the economy is hitting the immigrant community hard.

In the 1990s, unemployment among new refugees was 2 percent. Now it is more than 20 percent. At the same time that joblessness is growing, help is often less available from resettlement agencies, churches and nonprofits.

Still, immigration is rising faster here than in other parts of the country. Immigrants are drawn by the area's continuing reputation for tranquility, responsive local institutions, excellent resettlement agencies and expanding kinship networks.

St. Louis stands apart from most metropolitan areas, including similar Midwestern cities, with a 40 percent rise over the past decade in the number of immigrants arriving. That dwarfs Cleveland's 5 percent increase or Pittsburgh's 13 percent growth - and is nearly double the national increase of 22 percent.

There are more than 120,000 foreign-born people in St. Louis, up from just over 80,000 in 2000 - and fewer than 50,000 in 1990. The population of undocumented immigrants is estimated by government agencies to exceed 20,000, up from about 12,000 in the mid-1990s.

Once they arrive in St. Louis, these shifting and growing streams of immigrants and refugees face obstacles beyond the downturn in jobs, including cutbacks in critical public services such as transportation, and institutions with fewer resources to help at a time when the needs are greater.

SHIFTING PATTERNS

Compared with most large metropolitan areas, St. Louis for decades saw very few foreign-born people settle in the area, either as immigrants moving here voluntarily or as refugees resettled here because of civil unrest.

Even the sharp increase in immigration that occurred in the 1990s and 2000s - far outpacing the nation as a whole - did little to make immigration a hot topic.

That's in part because the flow was so diverse, representing about 90 nationalities. As a result, Chinese and Pakistanis, Bosnians and Palestinians, Ethiopians and Romanians, Russian Jews and Cubans, Albanians and Mexicans, Vietnamese and Poles, Indians and Filipinos, Hondurans and Koreans and many others were threaded throughout the region.

And many were professionals, working in academic, technical or medical positions, which also differentiated St. Louis from other places, as did the unusually high proportion of refugees.

All these factors helped avert the formation of large ethnic enclaves into which the newcomers could retreat. As a result, they tended to adapt without fanfare to their new home, learning English, getting jobs and generally being integrated.

"The diversity and diffusion of the immigrant community have kept immigration under the radar in St. Louis and have contributed to the city's relative tolerance," says Steve Legomsky, a Washington University law professor and immigration expert.

But the local dynamics are changing. For years, the refugee flow consisted primarily of groups with sufficient education, occupational skills and familiarity with Western culture to make a relatively smooth transition.

Now, more refugees are coming from geographically or culturally remote areas. They often fled conflicts and spent years in temporary camps with little access to education or health care.

Once here they encounter a far more challenging economic environment than did their immediate predecessors such as the Bosnians of the 1990s, the city's biggest refugee group.

ECONOMIC WOES

Hussein Mada and Maria Kamero, a Somali couple, were resettled in St. Louis seven years ago. Things looked good for a while. He worked as a machine operator, making beds at a plant in St. Louis County; his wife was a bookbinder in St. Louis.

But both lost their jobs in 2008 as the economy soured.

With few material or human resources to draw on, their situation rapidly deteriorated.

When their gas bill exceeded $1,000 18 months ago, the utility cut off them off. Kamero sought help from a local church. But it was strapped for resources because of growing requests from others in similar situations, and because parishioners who normally donated had their own struggles. Determined to help, the church gave Kamero an electric hot plate to heat water so the couple's eight children could bathe.

The faltering economy has hit immigrants and refugees - often the newest on the job and facing language barriers - particularly hard. A few years ago, the International Institute of St. Louis, the area's leading refugee resettlement agency, regularly placed 98 percent of refugees in jobs within a few months. Now it regards itself as fortunate if it finds jobs for 80 percent - a tenfold rise in initial unemployment.

The institute said it used to place only 10 percent to 15 percent of new refugees in the state welfare system, now it's 50 percent.

And immigrants fortunate enough to have work earn 18 percent to 20 percent less than native workers in the same field, according to a national study by the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.

Refugees and immigrants have been particularly affected by the area's decline in manufacturing and construction jobs - two areas that typically pay relatively well and don't require much English-speaking ability.

"We used to get calls from employers who wanted warm bodies for their factories and didn't even care if they spoke English," said Ron Klutho, who has long worked closely with Bosnians and other refugees. "Now if I call a potential employer asking about a job, they won't even talk to me. Before, they would take any refugee, because they had the reputation of being good workers. They probably still do, but there are a lot of Americans who need the job - and who speak good English."

Not only newer immigrants and refugees are affected. Bethuel Moalusi, a refugee from South Africa, spent 16 years in St. Louis, much of it as a truck driver, before losing his job more than two years ago.

After moving to St. Louis, his family had invested its economic future partly in his wife, who received associate's, bachelor's and master's degrees, but she died in 2007.

Now, while he studies for his GED, he survives on food stamps and the money his 17-year-old special needs son gets from SSI.

"A lot of people are coming here, but there are no jobs," he says. "They bring people from all over the world. Why do they do that? People are suffering."

GETTING TO THE JOBS

Employment is not the only issue. Housing and transportation challenges also are having an impact.

Immigrants tend to live initially in the city of St. Louis, because of the availability of affordable housing, the prospect of blending in by living in apartment buildings, and the presence of resettlement agencies that provide services for refugees.

But for the most part the jobs are elsewhere. The bulk of the job growth has occurred in places like St. Charles County and other suburbs, where housing tends to be more expensive and there are fewer rental units.

That creates transportation dilemmas for immigrants and others, especially given the increasing patchwork of part-time jobs that many might have to string together in this economy. Workers washing dishes for a few hours a night in a distant restaurant may spend more time in transit than on the job, and if their shift ends late, they might spend most of their pay on a taxi to get home.

"Transportation is really at the heart of much of this," says Anna Crosslin, president of the International Institute. "Living out there is not affordable. If you work a second shift at Harrah's, how do you get back?"

Gideon Ndam, who came here from Cameroon, quickly found work as a dietary aide in a nursing home in Chesterfield. For 14 months, he spent two hours a day each way on two buses and a train. When he lost that job, he made train parts at a factory in Granite City, until that job vanished in early 2009.

"We are surprised but we don't have any options. We have to beg," he says - an admission never heard in the past from St. Louis' refugees or immigrants, and one that makes him feel "not comfortable."

The organizations helping immigrants are strapped for resources because more people require help, fewer residents are able to donate and government has cut services.

Federal assistance often lasts just a few months for refugees, who are expected to land a job within four months or so. A few years ago most had multiple job offers, but now refugees are fortunate to receive a single, often undesirable, offer.

Iyesa-Boyonga, the Congolese refugee, regularly shows up at an agency seeking work. And every time, she is told to return the next day.

"Before coming here, I thought there would be work," she says.

Still, she feels positively about St. Louis. "People are nice. They like foreigners," she says.

One recent afternoon, her three months of assistance for rent and utilities from the refugee agency about to run out, with no job prospects, nowhere else to turn and her telephone - her only link to her children - about to be disconnected, she showed up at the office of Sister Paulette Weindel of St. Pius V Catholic Church on South Grand Boulevard.

"She's lonely, doesn't know many people, she's frightened, doesn't have many friends, her family's not here, everything is complicated," Sister Paulette said.

When this happens, she wants the refugee to "feel safe and comfortable and that someone is listening."

"And then, I panic, because I don't have the resources. I'm trying to think, ‘Whom can I connect them to?'"

Federal funding, though recently increased, covers significantly less than what the International Institute, St. Louis' top refugee resettlement agency, spends now on a population far needier and more expensive to serve, given the multiplicity of uncommon languages spoken by new refugees.

Sheiknur Hassan, president of the Somali Bantu Community of Missouri, tries to help his countrymen with housing or work. But he has been running the organization without a salary since October, and his own situation is growing dire.

An agricultural expert in Somalia, he helped make new farming technology useful for small farmers before he fled civil war. Now he struggles to provide diapers for the two smallest of his five children.

And he struggles to keep up the spirits of those he is trying to help.

"The dream is not true," he laments. "The dream we are dreaming as refugees when we came here is not true."