Archive for June, 2010
Posted by Christopher Coen on June 30, 2010
An issue that remains unsolved in the U.S. refugee resettlement program is the safety of refugees resettled to some of the toughest urban neighborhoods in the U.S. I wrote a report about this issue back in 2005 and presented it to the then Assistant Secretary of State, Arthur Dewey of the PRM (here). Mr. Dewey wrote back a short note to say he would share the report with the refugee resettlement agencies. That was it. I wrote back several times asking what he and they had concluded, and Mr. Dewey never responded.
As of 2010 the State Department continues to resettle refugees to areas which are clearly not safe for them. An example is found in the blog of the Nepali-Bhutanese refugee Thakur Prasad Mishra, in the Bronx. One of his posts indicated that a 16-year-old refugee boy was assaulted three times in the Bronx neighborhood where the IRC resettled the refugees (here, scroll down to entry dated August 4, Question of Security).
Last year media reports focused on Nepali-Bhutanese refugees who attackers were brutalizing in Syracuse, here. Burmese refugees resettled to South Philly are also apparently experiencing violent attacks at their local high school, here. Iraqi and Nepali-Bhutanese refugees have been repeatedly assaulted in Oakland, California, here. We also just received a report that the USCCB is resettling refugees to a neighborhood in Rochester, NY that has the highest violent crime rate in all of New York state.
In the past refugee resettlement agencies have justified some of these resettlement areas as right for refugees due to good mass transit, local colleges and ESL programs, and affordable apartments. But what good is any of that to refugees who were assaulted and now have permanent vision loss or brain injuries? What about the extra emotional scars to these people, many of whom already have PTSD? What about all the refugees who were murdered in these neighborhoods? People are murdered in tough urban neighborhoods everyday, but the difference here is that our government agencies with responsibility for refugee resettlement are allowing the private resettlement agencies to place these people in harm’s way, when they don’t have to.
Anyone who knows of any other refugees who are being attacked, beaten or brutalized physically or emotionally, please send that information to us.
Posted in safety | Tagged: Arthur Dewey, assaults, attacks, bhutanese, bronx, Burma/Myanmar, Iraqi, IRC, nepalese, nepali bhutanese, Oakland, Philadelphia, PRM, refugees, resettlement, rochester, safety, south philly, State Department, syracuse, Thakur Prasad Mishra, urban, USCCB, violence | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on June 29, 2010
The USCCB’s Catholic Diocese of Arlington, Migration and Refugee Service was out of compliance with a federal government refugee contract in 2007 (here). That was three years before media accounts of their serious neglect of refugees at the Fredericksburg sub-office (here).
According to the State Department inspection report at least two refugee cases appeared to have been at risk as result of little or no contact from the agency. Case files were also inadequate.
In one case a Catholic Diocese of Arlington case worker never even visited a refugee (Somali) at home, even though the State Department contract requires at least one home visit during the first 30 days (here, scroll down to Home Visits). Case log notes also ended the day after the woman’s arrival, even though basic refugee services are to last 90 days, and contracts require documentation of any services rendered.
Inspectors noted that another refugee family (Ethiopian) did not have enough blankets or bed frames. The family of nine was living in a $1,500-a-month three-bedroom apartment, and had been in a two-bedroom apartment until just several days before the State Department inspection.
Another refugee woman (Somali) who was single and 8-months pregnant at the time of her arrival said she didn’t get any cash assistance, and did not receive food stamps until after her baby was born. She wanted to learn English and find a job but had no one to help care for her baby. She said that Catholic Diocese of Arlington staff told her to come in to the office to learn more about English classes, but no one at the agency had even showed her how to use the bus.
Apparently the State Department inspectors didn’t think to interview any of the Catholic Diocese of Arlington refugee clients at the Fredericksburg sub-office. Oops.
What is it about the State Department inspections in which inspectors note problems yet the problems just continue on after inspectors leave? Is it the lack of penalties? The lack of follow-up? Do the agencies just realize the State Department inspectors likely will not return for another ten years so that the agencies have little to worry about?
3-18-11 **UPDATE** State Dept.’s Office of Admissions finally followed up with Fredericksburg refugees a year later in 2008. Found refugees in apartments with roaches, leaks, and little employment assistance.
Posted in arlington, beds, Catholic, Catholic Diocese of Arlington, employment services, ESL & ELL, Ethiopian, faith-based, fredericksburg, furnishings, lack of, household items, missing or broken, housing, overcrowding, insufficient assistance with daily tasks, Somali, State Department, transportation, USCCB, Virginia | Tagged: arlington, catholic church, Catholic Diocese of Arlington, fredericksburg, refugees, resettlement, State Department, us catholic conference of bishops, USCCB, VA, Virginia | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Melissa Sogard on June 27, 2010
The Refugee Council USA (RCUSA), the refugee resettlement agencies’ lobbying wing, is recommending to the President that we accept 100,000 refugees in fiscal year 2011, here and here. That would be 20,000 more than he recommended for this year – 80,000. Next year, no doubt, we’ll read well-placed media stories about how these additional refugees were forced onto the resettlement agencies, and how overwhelmed they are.
Unexplained is how the agencies would be able to find jobs for that many additional refugees in a down economy. According to RCUSA’s Fiscal Year 2011 Funding Urgently Needed for the Office of Refugee Resettlement:
… the federally funded programs administered by local refugee resettlement agencies are highly successful in assisting refugees in securing employment…
Is that true? According to the article, Arizona’s Neglected Immigrants, jobs in Phoenix are scarce for refugees:
The recession is having a strong impact on employment for Arizona’s refugees. Finding jobs for immigrants is a primary concern for the state-contracted refugee resettlement agencies, which bring a large portion of Africans to the Valley.
Only one in three of people in the refugee caseload entered the workforce in 2009, the lowest level in three years for the Office for Refugee Resettlement. Those who landed work received an average hourly wage of $7.17 here.
We know that jobs are scarce in most other states as well.
Taking at look at honey pot recommendations, RCUSA recommends more than doubling funding for the Matching Grant program from $60 million to $135 million. The program allows the resettlement agencies to give refugees donated stuff, a.k.a. ‘Junk for Jesus’, and the government matches it at a 2 to 1 ratio – two government dollars for each dollar of stuff. (Shouldn’t it be 1 to 1? The 2 to 1 is essentially a “mismatch”, isn’t it?)
They also want a $12.4 million increase for “Specialized Employment Services” for highly educated and professional refugees. But we’ve seen how they use current funding for Iraqi SIV immigrants, here. They already receive public funding for case management for each refugee whether they be refugees who are highly educated professionals or not. Why don’t they just use those dollars to connect the refugees with information at existing organizations that offer a wealth of information to help immigrant professionals, such as Upwardly Global?
RCUSA also wants $13 million more for its resettlement agency members for ‘Case Management for Highly Vulnerable Refugees’. Does that mean they are also willing to take a cut in funding for the refugees who are highly employable, well-adjusted and don’t need much case management? I suspect not.
They want an extra $4 million for community outreach. For example, the ORR funds ethnic food festivals in places like Lincoln, Nebraska here. I suspect that sort of thing is useful as a way to help refugees earn money, while creating a fun festival for the larger community, but with refugees facing evictions in the current economy is this really the best way to spend limited funds? Why isn’t current funding being shifted to help with emergencies?
Posted in employment/jobs for refugees, funding, Iraqi, Lincoln, Matching Grant program, Nebraska, Obama administration, ORR, Phoenix, Refugee Council USA (RCUSA), SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) immigrants | Tagged: AZ, Iraqi, Junk for Jesus, Lincoln, Matching grant, NB, Nebraska, Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, Phoenix, RCUSA, Refugee Council USA, refugees, resettlement, SIV | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on June 26, 2010
The refugee resettlement public and private partners have set upon a new idea – Iraqi refugees are difficult, troublesome, and hard to please. This point of view of course stems from just one vantage point, that of refugee resettlement agency workers and officials, and government “partners” disinterested in taking an oversight viewpoint, having accepted this defamation whole and unquestioned.
According to an anonymous, unnamed government official in an article at Governmentexecutive.com, Iraqi refugees “have had a particularly difficult time adjusting to their new circumstances” here.
As Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and State department officials begin consultations to make recommendations for the number of refugees allowed into the United States in 2011, the nation’s high unemployment is creating challenges for them.
“This is a new experience for the refugee admissions program,” said a State Department official with longtime experience in refugee and asylum programs. “Incoming refugees are facing a much harder time in achieving self sufficiency, which is the goal.”
…Program officials have begun providing information to would-be refugees before they enter the application process. “We want people to be aware — before they become committed to the U.S. as a resettlement country — of the current [unemployment] situation,” so they can pursue alternative countries for resettlement if they want, the State official said.
…A key problem for program officials is refugees often have inflated expectations of what life in the United States will be like.
“It’s hard to counter a lifetime of expectation,” said a senior official with the DHS’ Citizenship and Immigration Services bureau. Both DHS and State officials spoke on the condition they would not be named, during a briefing for reporters on the refugee and asylum programs.
…Iraqis, several thousand of whom have been resettled in the United States because their support for U.S. operations in Iraq placed them in danger, have had a particularly difficult time adjusting to their new circumstances, the State official said. The Iraqis, who are largely middle class, “are very surprised at the standard of living that the refugee resettlement program presents to someone,” she said.
(Notice that government officials no longer comment on the record. What sort of accountability, with openness and transparency — ordered for the federal agencies by President Obama – is offered by officials that always speak anonymously?)
Yet, are Iraqi refugees, particularly the SIV’s referred to in the article (“resettled in the United States because their support for U.S. operations in Iraq placed them in danger”) really so difficult, and have so-called unrealistic expectations? In fact, it seems as if these refugees are merely frustrated by the lack of assistance and extremely low-quality services offered to them by private agencies receiving public money to help refugees.
For example, in Sacramento refugee agencies took two SIV refugee men to fake interviews that not only wasted their time but did nothing to increase their chances to find any job, let alone the civil engineering jobs for which they were qualified (here). But the difference in this case was that these men dared to speak up about what the agencies did to them — they dared to speak truth to power. This troublesome tendency has also been found in other refugees labeled “difficult”, such as the Lost Boys of Sudan. Bear in mind that south Sudanese Dinka culture treasures freedom of speech as much as American culture does.
According to a reporter who recently wrote a series of articles about a resettlement agency that was severely neglecting its refugee clients, one of the first things an official offered to her as an excuse was that the Iraqi refugees are difficult. The statement astounded her because it was a refugee of a different nationality who was in crisis and left on his own that had started the inquiry. She thought to herself, “why were they trying to blame Iraqi refugees?” It was completely out of place.
Refugees who are troublesome are refugees who know too little and need too much help, or they are too educated and/or too outspoken. Resettlement agencies don’t like either group.
Posted in California, Dept of Homeland Security, employment/jobs for refugees, HHS, Iraqi, Obama administration, openess and transparency in government, Sacramento, SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) immigrants, State Department, USCIS | Tagged: Citizenship and Immigration Services, Dept of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, HHS, Homeland Security, Iraqi, refugees, resettlement, SIV, Special Immigrant Visa, State Department | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on June 23, 2010
Villanova University students taking a social-justice documentary course have made a documentary film about the arrival to Philadelphia of a teenage Burmese refugee, Meh Sha Lin (here). The film premiered at the Ritz at the Bourse, and will soon be entered in film festivals across the country. The 30-minute film was narrated by Phylicia Rashad, best-known for her role as Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show.
In one scene, he comically riffs on how in America, it seems as if anything that’s left unlocked or outside gets stolen. “I said, ‘Mom, don’t stand outside, somebody will steal you.’
He lives in a brick rowhouse with his sister and mother. Two older sisters live nearby. He’s a junior at South Philadelphia High, a troubled school where Asian students have been beaten and harassed.
Little of that seeps into the film.
Filmmaker Hezekiah Lewis III, a Villanova assistant professor, said he encouraged his students to tell a story that could create change. That may be why the students decided to cleanse the film of any of the realities of the refugee resettlement program. It’s too bad though, because if they showed the full picture of this refugee’s new life in America we may have had hope that perhaps we could do something to help change it.
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, dangerous neighborhoods, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, safety, schools | Tagged: Asian, Burma/Myanmar, documentary, film, Hezekiah Lewis, Meh Sha Lin, Myanmar, PA, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, refugees, resettlement, school, Villanova University | 1 Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on June 23, 2010
The Los Angeles Times has an article on President Obama’s NSC review of the resettlement program, but it seems they got all their information from the resettlement agencies and their friends in the government here.
The IRC’s Bob Carey claims refugee women can’t feed their children! Apparently then resettlement agency workers, such as those at the IRC, aren’t helping them to apply for food stamps and WIC.
“The system is broken,” said Robert Carey, chairman of Refugee Council USA, an umbrella group of resettlement and advocacy groups. “There are women who can’t feed their children adequately and people who are really being brought into poverty. … There is a federal obligation in this to ensure that people brought in here are given the basic tools to rebuild their lives.”
Among other myths being spread by the resettlement contractors is that the system is broken because it’s a “one-size-fits-all-system.”
When the system was established by Congress in 1980, the U.S. was responding to an influx of refugees fleeing Southeast Asia, said Eskinder Negash, director of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. Today, the caseload is more diverse and a one-size-fits-all approach is no longer effective, he said. In fiscal year 2009, the U.S. accepted nearly 75,000 refugees from more than 70 countries, including many with special needs, such as single mothers and torture victims.
It’s funny because none of these insiders mention that $200 of the State Department per person grant (not per family) may be used by the resettlement contractors for special needs of any of the agency’s refugees that they choose.
They also don’t mention that the resettlement contractors are the ones who are supposed to write a personalized plan for each employable refugee specific to that refugee — special needs, obstacles to employment, etc. One size doesn’t fit all, and that’s where federal resettlement agency contractors are supposed to use their supposed expertise to help refugees. Instead they say the government should solve the problem. Then why do we need their great “private sector contribution”, which they so often tout?
It’s also ironic that former resettlement agency worker, and new ORR Director, Eskinder Negash (via the revolving door) complains about the difficulties of taking in so many diverse refugees. The resettlement agencies are the ones who constantly begged for new refugee groups to come in. If they really wanted to help more people wouldn’t they take more refugees from fewer groups, rather than some refugees from ever-increasing multiple groups? Where was the planning that should have been put in place before taking in groups for whom the resettlement agencies had few interpreters, e.g. the Burmese Karen, Karenni, and Chin? There was 20 years to plan while the refugees rotted in refugee camps in Thailand. Oops, let’s not talk about that.
Yet another complaint from resettlement agencies is that benefits for refugees vary by state. They fail to mention that cost-of-living varies by state as well.
The amount of public assistance refugees are offered varies among states and often doesn’t cover basic needs. In San Diego, a family of four typically receives about $828 a month compared with $335 a month in Phoenix, according to resettlement workers.
But if you read the State Department monitoring reports for, say Phoenix (see our tab above) you quickly learn that Phoenix was sold as a good resettlement site for refugees specifically because apartment rents are low (no mention of the lousy mass transit for low-income workers, with jobs on one side of the sprawled city, and affordable housing on the other, and the grueling heat (try 120 degrees fareinheit) refugees must stand in waiting for buses with multiple connections). So why shouldn’t refugees in expensive San Diego get more for rent than those in Phoenix? Am I being too logical?
I’m waiting for any reporter to really analyze the so-called NSC “review” of the refugee program to see if it is really anything other than a review of various ways to get more free public money to the government’s refugee agencies and their private partner friends.
In the meantime, our group continues to struggle to help refugees, while not taking even one government nickel.
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, funding, IRC, Karen, Karenni, NSC (National Security Council), Obama administration, ORR, Phoenix, R&P, reform, Refugees International, San Diego, State Department | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on June 22, 2010
An Iowa federal judge has announced a prison sentence of 27 years on financial fraud charges for Sholom Rubashkin, the 51-year-old Orthodox Jew and former manager of a kosher meatpacking plant, Agriprocessors, where ICE agents arrested hundreds of illegal immigrant workers in a 2008 raid that brought national scrutiny.
Rubashkin was earlier found guilty of 86 counts of financial fraud. Check out previous coverage here and here. (Ten other members of Agriprocessors management or office staff were also convicted on federal charges in the wake of the immigration raid. Two others, Hosam Amara and Zeev Levi, are believed to have fled the country to avoid prosecution and are considered fugitives.)
The judge noted that Mr. Rubashkin had misled the bank repeatedly about the finances of Agriprocessors, moving cash secretly in a shell game among different accounts, including some supposedly set aside for religious purposes, and ordered employees to create fake invoices. The sneaky actions caused a loss to the bank of $26 million, the judge said. The judge also ordered Mr. Rubashkin to pay almost $27 million in restitution to the financial institutions and businesses he defrauded.
On June 8 Mr. Rubashkin was acquitted of charges that he allowed minors to work at his plant. Mr. Rubashkin’s lawyers denied the charges, saying that his firing of minors was proof that he didn’t want to employ kids. They said minors who did work for the company only did so by tricking the company with false identification documents. As well, the minors who testified acknowledged that they had used false documents and lied about their ages to get a job.
But beef production manager Brent Beebe told the court that Mr. Rubashkin gave him $4,500 to buy false documents for the workers, and required the employees to pay the back these “loans”. Yet, according to jury foreman and Waterloo City Council member Quentin Hart, there never was any “clear line of communication” between Sholom about him knowing that the 26 were underage (What does that mean? No proof in writing?)
The almost impossible task before prosecutors in the child labor laws violations case was to prove that Mr. Rubashkin “willfully” violated child labor laws. Of coarse common sense would tell anyone that a CEO and co-vice president of a plant would know what was going on for months and years at his facility, but prosecutors had to produce specific proof of his culpability, a threshold they were unfortunately not able to reach.
In the meantime, legislators unanimously voted to add more teeth to Iowa’s child labor statutes, and now the standard is negligence. Employers will now be responsibile for making a common-sense degree of inquiry into the age of their employees. All of that, however, is too late to help Mr. Rubashkin’s and his fellow miscreant’s Mexican and Guatemalan teenage victims.
It should also be noted that millions of dollars were raised and spent to defend Sholom Rubashkin. There was even a gold drive for Rubashkin, calling people to donate their gold for his defense fund. In the meantime the hundreds of exploited immigrant workers were left on their own to cover their legal fees.
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), supposedly a group whose mission is to defend immigrants, instead threw their concern behind Rubashkin while saying almost nothing about the dozens of teenage immigrants who reported extreme abuse at Rubashkin’s Agriprocessors slaughterhouse — having to work 80-90 hour weeks, working with dangerous substances such as dry ice and chemicals, having to use dangerous power-driven saws and scissors, being struck by managers, and sexually assaulted.
In HIAS’ President and CEO Gideon Aronoff’s May 22, 2008 essay, ‘Postville a clarion call’, he wrote, “we cannot ignore that American workers are unwilling to meet businesses’ labor needs at prevailing wages.” Prevailing wages? Wages effected by an influx of millions of undocumented workers willing to work for just a few dollars? This case brought to light that, in fact, many of the immigrant workers were earning below minimum wage at Agriprocessors. Who is Mr. Aronoff defending?
HIAS, in protecting their own — demanding that Rubashkin be treated “fairly” — while saying almost nothing about the abuses inflicted on the underage immigrants I think has lost all credibility as an agency that the U.S. public can feel comfortable entrusting vulnerable refugees to.
Posted in HIAS, Jewish, Guatemalan, Iowa, meatpacking industry, abuse | Tagged: IA, religion, court, judge, child abuse, religious, meatpacking, Agriprocessors, Iowa, HIAS, Postville, Guatemalan, Sholom Rubashkin, child labor, slaughterhouse, Mexican, underage workers, charges, fraud, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Sociey, bank, Orthodox Jew | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on June 21, 2010
- These buildings at Columbia Square, in Utica, stand mostly vacant on Wednesday, May 12, 2010.
Plummeting population levels in and around Utica, NY over the past 25 years have been offset in part by refugee resettlement, via the LIRS’ affiliate, Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees. Residents, however, voiced concerns at a school district meeting about rising school costs as the population level remains flat and the economy remains depressed, here. In response to community member’s concerns the Utica schools Superintendent James Willis said the following:
“We need more revenue, flat out,” Willis said. “We are growing. We need more support because of the refugee center.”
The district is expected to add another 200 to 300 refugee students next year based on estimates from the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, Willis said.
Refugee students and those with special needs cost more to educate than other students because of the additional staff needed to interpret and help students.
Of course, this is part of the problem when residents are not considered “stakeholders” in refugee resettlement. People discover impact on schools and other institutions later on, and not upfront.
Jobs have also become increasing difficult for refugees to find in the current recession, which seems to have hit Utica harder than other areas of the country. Yet, the U.S. State Department’s Office of Admissions apparently plans to continue placing refugees in Utica at current levels, if the superintendent expects 200-300 more refugee children next year.
An empty jobs board is seen at the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees April 27, 2010.
Posted in employment/jobs for refugees, LIRS, Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, New York, schools, State Department, Utica | Tagged: children, employment, jobs, LIRS, Lutheran immigration and refugee services, Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, New York, NY, refugees, resettlement, schools, Utica | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on June 21, 2010
In the latest monitoring report from the State Department evaluating the USCRI’s International Institute of Erie, the State Department rated the agency as being in “partial compliance” with their refugee services contract (here). They rated housing and furnishings provided to refugees by the International Institute of Erie as “not in compliance” with R&P (resettlement & placement) requirements, and refugee employment, at 41%, was below established targets (75%).
The International Institute of Erie made it into the newspaper in recent months with a report that a Burmese refugee family was left at the airport overnight and had to sleep on the floor, here and here. We inquired with the director of the Institute, John Flanagan, to find out why the refugees were left there, but he never responded.
The State Department report, the product of a second State Department inspection in eight years (unusual), found that of four refugee families visited, three reported that the Institute had delivered some required furnishings and done some repairs the DAY BEFORE the monitors’ visit. The housing and furnishings were also generally below minimum standards. The monitors suggested that the Institute’s director Mr. Flanagan, visit the homes of the Burundian, Iraqi, and Burmese refugee families (gee, what a novel idea).
According to the report:
In the apartment of the Burundian family, monitors observed water leaking through electrical wiring, evidence of rodent and insect infestation, and several broken chairs. The oven did not work and the rear entrance to the apartment had been boarded up. Furniture was arranged in one bedroom in a way that would make exit difficult in an emergency. The family reported that affiliate staff delivered a sofa and alarm clock and repaired a moldy, leaking bathroom ceiling the day before the monitors’ visit. Monitors asked that alternative housing be found immediately for the family.
The Iraqi family informed monitors that they were extremely uncomfortable in their home and were often afraid to leave the apartment because they feel the neighborhood is unsafe. They described an instance where a woman screamed all night in the street outside their apartment, and said they have witnessed drug dealers fighting and frequent police activity in the neighborhood. They complained that the house is dirty and infested with insects, the bathroom did not work for two weeks after their arrival; and the lock on the door to the basement is broken. Clothing storage had been provide by [the International Institute of Erie] the day before the monitors’ visit. Monitors observed garbage stored in the hallway outside the family’s kitchen, and moldy carpet in the bathroom. There was no working smoke detector in the apartment. …the husband said he was relying on Iraqi friends to help him find work because International Institute of Erie staff had told him there was no work available.
…Monitors asked that the affiliate assist the Iraqi [family] to find new housing.
Read more. It doesn’t get much better.
Posted in State Department, USCRI, R&P, Burma/Myanmar, Nepali Bhutanese, Burundian, Iraqi, Pennsylvania, International Institute of Erie, meeting refugees at the airport, employment services, neglect, housing, substandard, household items, missing or broken, Erie, furnishings, lack of | Tagged: R&P, PA, USCRI, State Department, monitors, refugee, refugees, resettlement, monitor, Pennsylvania, International Institute of Erie, erie, John flanagan, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, monitoring | 2 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on June 18, 2010
June 20th marks World Refugee Day, a day when we look at the plight of all refugees, not just those resettled to the U.S., but the overwhelming majority of refugees who will never be resettled here or to any other nation. While the world’s refugee population is growing, the world is able to resettle less than 1% of them. The cost of resettling refugees is inarguable enormous, which always brings up the issue of the best way to spend limited resources on the world’s refugee population.
A 2002 study by North Dakota State University in Fargo estimated that a refugee family of four costs the taxpayer $21,965, just for the initial resettlement period. Although there are certain advantages to resettlement — refugees who are able to thrive in the U.S. are then able to significantly aid their cohorts who stay behind — there is no doubt that we could aid far more refugees by redirecting the dollars used on resettlement for those who stay behind in limbo. The 99% of refugees who stay behind are desperately in need of food, medicine, medical care, and protection. Only people deluded by the PR of domestic refugee resettlement agency contractors — exalted “partners” in refugee resettlement speak – who claim that resettlement is unquestionable, would not be bothered by this dilemma.
It would help if the U.S. refugee program did refugee resettlement well, but we are regularly deluged with accounts from refugees whom resettlement agencies have placed in deplorable conditions, often times in dangerous urban neighborhoods, and left to fend for themselves with little of the minimum-required help that the agencies promise to give when taking public funds. Regularly refugees must scrounge for furnishings and household items from dumpsters. Regularly resettlement agencies fail to give even used clothing, to adequately help refugees to look for jobs, or to help refugees to adequately deal with American ways, such as endless paperwork, which are foreign to them. In response to this neglect, and often times even abuse, the resettlement agencies’ friends in government regularly conspire to coverup and whitewash the offenses. This leaves many of us in the community who help refugees wondering how much of our system’s response to the world refugee issue is based on solid and wise thinking and strategy, and how much of it is just the corruption, cronyism, and egotism we regularly see in the resettlement program in our own communities.
For those groups who claim to really care for the world’s refugees it is now past the time when they need to put their money where their mouths are. Instead of depending on constant easy government money for the “charity” they take credit for, they need to start raising significant private funds for refugee assistance. They must also be honest with the American people and open their refugee programs to real public scrutiny. The U.S. Refuge Admissions Program is a public program serving the people of the United States, not a club for elite “partners”.
We also take this occasion of World Refugee Day, with 2010 marking the 30th anniversary of the Refugee Act of 1980, to call on Samantha Powers (Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director, Multilateral and Humanitarian Affairs, National Security Council) to open up to the public the NSC’s comprehensive interagency review of the U.S. refugee resettlement program. So far there has been zero effort to include the views of anyone outside the refugee resettlement establishment, including any views considered to dissent from the standard “refugee resettlement agencies and their friends in government can do no wrong” canon. In the name of democracy and human rights we call on Dr. Powers to immediately make public all documents of the interagency task force, and open discussion of the plan for reform to all community groups, not just those government agencies and so-called refugee charities who hope to benefit from increased government funding of their programs.
Posted in abuse, neglect, NSC (National Security Council), Samantha Powers, World Refugee Day | Tagged: contractors, June 20, national security agency, NSC, partners, partnership, refugee, Refugee Act of 1980, refugees, resettlement, volags, World Refugee Day | 1 Comment »
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
An issue that remains unsolved in the U.S. refugee resettlement program is the safety of refugees resettled to some of the toughest urban neighborhoods in the U.S. I wrote a report about this issue back in 2005 and presented it to the then Assistant Secretary of State, Arthur Dewey of the PRM (here). Mr. Dewey wrote back a short note to say he would share the report with the refugee resettlement agencies. That was it. I wrote back several times asking what he and they had concluded, and Mr. Dewey never responded.
