Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
ORR director -- Eskinder Negash
Last March I blogged about the issue of World Relief Seattle refusing to hire a Muslim man who volunteered with them as an interpreter because he “might not feel comfortable while they prayed at staff meetings.” But regulations supposedly prohibit using government funding for any form of worship (praying at staff meetings in a public program resettling refugees). Oops.
I wrote to the Deputy Director of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), Ken Tota (ORR director Eskinder Negash’s second in command) last April and asked them to look into World Relief and Catholic Charities’ announcements that they would be discriminating in hiring based on religious affiliation.
After waiting two months and getting no response I wrote to Mr. Tota again on June 10, 2010 and asked for an update. Mr. Tota finally responded on June 22, 2010 and wrote that the ORR would be conducting an investigation (now more than two months after my complaint) and that I “should not hesitate to contact [him] should [I] have questions or follow-up concerns in this regard.”
Then, four more months went by with no response from Mr. Tota or anyone else at the ORR, so, once again, I wrote to Mr. Tota on October 19, 2010 asking for an update. Mr. Tota wrote back on November 2, 2010 and claimed that his agency needed at least two more months to close its “investigation”, and said that he would send me the conclusions by late December. December came and went.
On January 20, 2011 I wrote to Mr. Tota yet again to find out what was happening. No response. On February 8, 2011 – almost one year after my original complaint – I wrote again to Mr. Tota to ask what was happening. Again, he has not responded.
This Hosni Mubarak Egyptian-regime-style of responsiveness, accountability and transparency shows me that the ORR does not take its responsibilities seriously, and apparently views the public, whom they supposedly serve, as nothing more than an irritant. Of course, this is an agency that has also refused to release to the Congress their annual reports for 2008, 2009 and 2010, even though the law requires it.
It’s clear that laws and regulations don’t seem to matter much to these federal agencies or these public servants. How do we explain to refugees that their new country of residence has government agencies as non-accountable to the people as the governments they have escaped from?
