Archive for July, 2011
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 31, 2011
I don’t understand why we aren’t hearing anything from the State Department about the possible airlifting of our Iraqi friends to Guam while they wait for last security clearances to the enter the US. What that option would mean is that we would be able to both save our allies, and protect ourselves from any possible security threats. Wouldn’t people around the world be more likely to help us if they see that we take care of our friends? George Packer blogging for The New Yorker discusses the fate of Iraqi refugees, including Iraqi SIV’s (Special Immigrant Visa) – Iraqis who affiliated with the U.S. in Iraq. As these Iraqis get ever more desperate for resettlement, with the US set for a last pull out at the end of this year, we are now admitting fewer Iraqis than ever before.
Two weeks ago, Tim Arango of the Times wrote an expose of the Administration’s failure to admit into the U.S. more than a tiny number of Iraqis who were affiliated with the U.S. in Iraq. He got the government’s attention. Three days later, Senator Chuck Schumer wrote a letter to Secretaries Hillary Clinton and Janet Napolitano asking why so few Iraqis who helped America are making it here. Seven other senators wrote to Napolitano separately. “If these individuals do not deserve a visa,” Schumer wrote, “it is hard to imagine who does.” The Senator even went so far as to suggest the Guam option, first proposed on this blog almost four years ago…
…over the past few years almost thirty thousand such Iraqis have applied for a Special Immigrant Visa, specifically created by Congress to expedite their cases. Yet only four thousand have been processed, and of these a third have been denied.
And one more figure: until February of this year, the U.S. approved over eighty per cent of all Iraqi applicants—not just former U.S. employees—referred by the U.N. for resettlement here. Since February—when the government put in place a new “security-screening” regime—the number has dropped to around fifty per cent… Read more here
7-20-11 Letter, Sen. Leahy EtAl to Napolitano re. SIV’s
Posted in Iraqi, security/terrorism, SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) immigrants, State Department | Tagged: Guam, Iraq, Iraqi, refugee, resettlement, SIV, Special Immigrant Visa, State Department, US allies | 3 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 30, 2011
The U.S. Department of State has decided to guarantee funding to the private resettlement agencies this year as if 60,000 refugees had arrived, although the federal government expects less than 55,000 to enter the country this fiscal year. The State Department and their friends in private industry at the agencies are justifying the temporary change in policy by claiming that the agencies rely on per-refugee grants to pay staff, and they would otherwise be unable to keep staff due to the new security screenings that have drastically lowered the number of arriving refugees. (The State Department instituted a similar change in policy in 2001 after the cutoff of refugee arrivals following the terrorist attacks on September 11th.) An article in Christianity Today has more about the issue:
More than 77,000 refugees were expected to come to the United States in 2011. Instead, fewer than 55,000 will arrive, because of new security screening implemented abruptly this winter.
The U.S. State Department works with 11 agencies—including five Christian organizations—to help refugees start their new lives in America. The average number admitted annually since 1980 is 98,000, according to the Refugee Council USA.
Like many other resettlement offices, the World Relief branch in Durham, North Carolina, relies on per-refugee grants to pay staff. When no refugees arrived in Durham between late February and April, the office cut employee pay by 8 hours a week. Nationally, World Relief and Church World Service offices have experienced significant layoffs because of a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy.
In February, World Relief Durham was preparing for new refugees when the arrival flights were suddenly deleted from the tracking system. Resettlement director Andrew Castle says he called headquarters and heard that there were hundreds of unexpectedly canceled flights, attributed to a new DHS policy that requires a pre-departure check to make sure refugees are still eligible to come to the U.S.
“It seems … that even the State Department was somewhat caught off guard,” said Dan Kosten, chair of the Refugee Council USA…
…The State Department responded to resettlement agencies’ concerns about the low number of arrivals by guaranteeing funding for 60,000 refugee admissions. This ensures that agencies will be able to retain staff, no matter how few refugees actually arrive on U.S. soil… Read more here
I guess my question is why the agencies are unable to pay overhead and keep staff during a slowdown in arriving refugees if they are still allowed to use $700 of the State Department’s $1800 per refugee grant. In addition to that, they are supposedly required to give significant private resources of their own toward refugee resettlement. Couldn’t those private resources be diverted from the money they will not need to spend on refugees who will not arrive this year? We will have to continue to speculate until the State Department decides to open up and show the real numbers.
Posted in ceiling limit, refugee annual, Dept of Homeland Security, funding, NGO's (Non-governmental organizations), openess and transparency in government, public/private partnership, Raleigh-Durham, State Department, World Relief | Tagged: Andrew Castle, Dan Kosten, Durham, federal grant, government grant, RCUSA, Refugee Council USA, refugee resettlement, refugees, resettlement, security procedures, security screening, State Department, terrorism, World Relief | 5 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 29, 2011
In this week of federal debt trauma in walks an employee of U.S. Customs and Border Protection to tell us how federal employees at his agency get overtime pay in exchange for not working. But of course all of us who care about refugees and immigrants, for the human beings they are, already know this about government agency workers, as well as their friends in private industry at the resettlement agencies. Many of them do whatever they want to do, and they suffer no consequences whatsoever. That is why we so desperately need passage of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. Read more in Joe Davidson’s Washington Post column.
During a period when some in Congress and their related policy wonks think federal employees are overpaid, here comes Christian Sanchez, a Border Patrol agent who says he was punished for refusing overtime pay.
His bosses suggested that he get psychological help.
Instead, Sanchez has become a whistleblower, and on Friday he plans to tell gathering on Capitol Hill that he was retaliated against because he would not take overtime for doing no work.
Sanchez is an example of what the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower advocacy organization, calls “pocketbook whistleblowers.” They allegedly have suffered retaliation for actions that could save the government money.
This emphasis on guarding Uncle Sam’s pocketbook allows whistleblower advocates to broaden the appeal of legislation designed to expand legal protections for employees who disclose government waste, fraud and abuse. Supporting whistleblowers becomes more than helping individual employees who have been mistreated by the system — it becomes into an act of fiscal responsibility.
That approach could increase chances for the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. It’s come close to passage during the many years it has lingered in Congress, but proponents have not been able to push it across the finish line.
In a letter last month to President Obama and Congress, a group of federal whistleblowers urged them to approve the legislation, telling them that “you have allowed potentially billions of tax dollars to be wasted because all federal workers know they cannot speak up without engaging in professional suicide.”
Sanchez is speaking up, and he has paid a price.
There is little work to do at the Port Angeles, Wash., station, where he is assigned, he said. He calls it a “black hole” where agents have “no purpose, no mission.”
“The worst fraud on taxpayers is that we are getting paid overtime not to work,” Sanchez said in a prepared statement. When he first started working at the station, “I noticed it was common practice for everyone to get paid overtime not to work… Read more here
Our own experience with Customs and Border Protection also demonstrated how completely corrupt and debased that federal agency is. Before either the Left or the Right try to spin this case for their own interests, I’d like to remind everyone that for decades both the Democrats and the Republicans have repeatedly contributed to corruption by installing their own cronies in the federal agencies and courts, while turning a blind eye to the damage these people have done to the people and the nation.
I nominate Christian Sanchez as hero of the month. It helps to restore my faith in humanity when I see that our country still has people like this among our ranks.
Posted in Congress, funding, Government Accountability Project, immigration services, Obama administration, openess and transparency in government, police, revolving door, U.S. Customs & Border Protection, Washington | Tagged: Border Patrol, Christian Sanchez, Congress, Customs and Border Protection, Democrats, federal government, Government Accountability Project, immigrants, Port Angeles, refugees, Republicans, Washington, whistleblower, Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act | 1 Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 28, 2011
After the deadly events in Norway this week, in Oslo and on Utoya Island carried out by right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, Europeans are taking a new look at threats to society posed by the right-wing. An article in the New York Times has an analysis:
…Nonviolent political parties can hardly be blamed for the violent actions of a terrorist or a homicidal person. But politicians have begun to question inflammatory speech in the debate over immigrants, which has helped fuel the rise of right-leaning politicians across Europe in recent years.
The head of the Social Democratic Party in Germany, Sigmar Gabriel, told the German news service dpa on Wednesday that a trend toward xenophobia and nationalism in the region had fostered the attacks in Norway. In a society where anti-Islamic sentiment and isolation were tolerated “naturally on the margins of society, there will be crazy people who feel legitimized in taking harder measures,” he said.
“The center of society has to make clear that there is no room for this with us, even for sanitized versions,” Mr. Gabriel said. “There is a deep feeling in society that the pendulum has swung too far toward individualism.”…
…Mr. Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto, while full of calls for violence, also includes some passages that echo the concerns of mainstream political leaders about preserving national identity and values.
“So much of what he wrote could have been said by any right-wing politician,” said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, co-president of the Green bloc in the European Parliament. “A lot of arguments about immigrants and Islamic fundamentalism will now be much easier to question and to push back.”
The clearest evidence of a change in tone at this early stage may be the way anti-immigrant parties try to rein in their members. A member of the National Front, Jacques Coutela, was suspended for calling Mr. Breivik “an icon” on his blog. He replaced it with a note saying that he denounced Mr. Breivik’s actions…
…far-right groups have sought to distance themselves from Mr. Breivik and his actions, and violent acts in general…
Europol, the European Union’s police agency [has] created a task force to investigate threats in Scandinavia and links to extremist groups across Europe… Read more here
Posted in anti-Islamic, police, right-wing, security/terrorism, xenophobia/nationalism/isolationism | Tagged: Anders Behring Breivik, anti-immigrant, anti-Islamic, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Europe, Europol, Green bloc in the European Parliament, immigrants, individualism, isolationism, Jacques Coutela, National Front, nationalism, Norway, Oslo, preserving national identity, right-wing, Scandinavia, Utoya Island, xenophobia | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 27, 2011
A woman in Seattle who has been helping hundreds of local Iraqi refugees has found herself up against the law. A column by Danny Westneat in The Seattle Times has more:
Civil disobedience comes in many forms, from the sit-in to the walkout. You don’t usually stick it to the man by holding a garage sale.
Yet that is what’s likely to happen at Rita Zawaideh’s place in the next week, in an absurd showdown with the city of Seattle.
“I’m not going to stop,” Zawaideh told me when I dropped by her Wallingford office. “This city has got to have better things to do than go after some lady holding garage sales to help people.”
Apparently the city does not. Neither did some neighbor or passer-by who, in late May, called the city to allege that Zawaideh, a 60-year-old Jordanian immigrant and Middle East tour operator, is running an illegal flea market out of her home.
“We have had a complaint concerning endless garage sales on your property,” reads the warning letter from the city’s code-compliance program.
The letter said that holding more than four garage sales a year is “considered a commercial activity” and, as such, is banned in residential areas.
The letter ordered Zawaideh to stop, adding that “violations are subject to $150 and $500 citations.”… Read more here
Posted in Iraqi, Seattle, State Department | Tagged: Arab American Community Coalition, garage sale, human rights, Iraqi refugees, Jordan, refugee, resettlement, Rita Zawaideh, seattle, Syria | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 26, 2011
Larry Gilbert, the Mayor of Lewiston, Maine spoke about refugee resettlement at a Senate hearing on immigration reform today. He claimed, incorrectly, that federal refugee assistance cannot be redirected when refugees migrate to new locations (secondary migration). In fact it is transferable. Further, he claimed that the assistance is inadequate, apparently unaware that the State Department just last year doubled initial resettlement assistance to $1800 per refugee. An article in the Morning Sentinel has more:
WASHINGTON – Lewiston’s experience with an influx of Somali immigrants shows the economic energy they can bring, but also the need for the federal government to do more to help the new residents settle into their new life, says Lewiston Mayor Larry Gilbert.
Gilbert testified Tuesday at a Senate hearing on immigration reform, a session that mostly focused on the system for attracting and retaining high-skill foreign workers in fields such as computer sciences and engineering.
But Gilbert was one of three mayors from around the country invited to address the broader topic of the economic impact of legal immigrants on local communities…
…more support, some of it from the federal government, is needed to help the immigrants living in Lewiston in areas such as workforce training and learning English, Gilbert said.
Aid from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement is often available to help immigrants adjust to their new lives. However, the assistance is good for just eight months and does not follow an immigrant to a new city. If an immigrant starts receiving the assistance in, say, Atlanta, and then leaves that city after several months to live in Lewiston, the aid is cut off, Gilbert said.
This makes it harder for immigrants to find jobs and creates more of a hardship on the secondary migration city, Gilbert said.
The “inadequate federal funding associated with a refugee resettlement program simply does not meet the many needs of our refugee residents,” Gilbert said.
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Read more here
Posted in State Department, Congress, Somali, funding, secondary migration, refugee, Lewiston | Tagged: ORR, State Department, refugee, resettlement, Office of Refugee Resettlement, Maine, Lewiston, Larry Gilbert, Senate hearing, immigration reform, federal assistance | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 25, 2011
The Los Angeles Times has a recent article about new procedures the federal government has instituted which will rescreen 58,000 Iraqi refugees who have already been resettled to the U.S. The recheck will include a smaller number of refugees from Yemen, Somalia and other countries where terrorist groups are active.
Reporting from Washington— In a far-reaching inquiry, authorities are rescreening more than 58,000 Iraqi refugees living in the United States amid concerns that lapses in immigration security may have allowed former insurgents and potential terrorists to enter the country, U.S. officials said.
The investigation was given added urgency after U.S. intelligence agencies warned that Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq and Yemen had tried to target the U.S. refugee
stream, or exploit other immigration loopholes, in an attempt to infiltrate the country with operatives.
..So far, immigration authorities have given the FBI about 300 names of Iraqi refugees for further investigation. The FBI won’t say whether any have been arrested or pose a potential threat.
The individuals may have only tenuous links to known or suspected terrorists. The names were identified when authorities rechecked phone numbers, email addresses, fingerprints, iris scans and other data in immigration files of Iraqis given asylum since the war began in 2003.
They checked the data against military, law enforcement and intelligence databases that were not available or were not utilized during the initial screening process, or were not searched using sufficient Arabic spelling and name variations.
It addition to the Iraqis, authorities have rescreened a smaller number of refugees from Yemen, Somalia and other countries where terrorist groups are active.
…The enhanced screening procedures have caused a logjam in regular visa admissions from Iraq, even for those who risked their lives to aid American troops and who now fear reprisals as the Obama administration winds down the U.S. military presence… Read more here
Posted in Dept of Homeland Security, FBI, government, Iraqi, security/terrorism, SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) immigrants, Somali, The List Project | Tagged: Al Qaeda, human rights, Iraqi, refugee, resettlement, security screening, Somali, terrorism, visas, Yemen | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 24, 2011
The tricky part of miscommunication is that people don’t realize they’re having it. They think they’re talking to another person,
understanding that person and being understood, but in fact they
aren’t. The miscommunication is invisible. Such is the case with a
recent AMBER alert in Alaska. A Hmong mother arrived at the police station with her 13-year-old daughter to report that her 16-year-old daughter had run away to elope. Police were certain they understood the two to say that someone abducted the 16-year-old, so they didn’t even think to use Language Line Services that the department pays a fee to subscribe to. In retrospect the use of a 13-year-old as an interpreter should probably have been a red flag (by the way, people should not use minors as translators. Not only does it result in miscommunications but it also places unhealthy pressure on the minor). KTUU-TV in Anchorage has the details:
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — …[an] AMBER alert last week, [prompted] a search for a 16-year-old girl across the state.
The alert didn’t turn out to be an emergency afterall — only a boyfriend and girlfriend looking to elope. But a communication barrier with the Hmong mother who called into police got in the way.
The mother didn’t speak English, and her 13-year-old daughter translated the mother’s words to the police.
Because of that communication barrier, police say they weren’t able to pin down the girl’s age right away…
“In the same way we’ve learned to provide interpreting for someone who is deaf, we need to get used to the logistics that are needed in order to help somebody who doesn’t speak English,” said Karen Ferguson, a state refugee coordinator.
In some instances, police are able to use an Outside phone service called “Language Line” to get instant access to interpreters when they need it. APD has a contract with the service, which bills the department each time they use one of the service’s interpreters. Read more here
Posted in Alaska, Hmong, language, police, teenagers | Tagged: Alaska, AMBER alert, Anchorage, elope, interpretation, Language Line, police | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 22, 2011
Lavinia Limon, the head of the USCRI national refugee resettlement agency, says that the moratorium on refugee resettlement in Manchester, NH makes no sense, as all the refugees destined to Manchester are family reunion cases, not “free case” refugees (refugees with no ties to the area), so refugees will move to Manchester no matter where the State Department resettle them. Yet, a Manchester city council member and a Quaker organization claim that the refugees are not being taken care of. The World media outlet has more:
…Lavinia Limon heads the U.S. Committee of Refugees and Immigrants, the agency that oversees the contract to resettle people in Manchester. She said people need to understand the only refugees who are being resettled in the city have family there, so a moratorium doesn’t make sense. “We can put those people someplace else. And then they will come there on their own to be with their family. Just like you or I would. So we think it’s better to do it initially and have the funds with their resettlement, rather than put them in Indiana and have them show up two weeks later.”
Everyone from the State Department on down agrees refugees need more resources to get on their feet. But Limon knows, at a time when Congress is embroiled in a nasty debate on paying off the nation’s debt, the refugee issue is way down the totem pole…
and
…William Gillette, who chairs the agency’s board, claims refugees are making new lives here. “Under any definition, the refugees are better here, than they were, where they were coming from,” he said.
But Manchester Alderman Pat Long disagrees. “You know what, that’s a nice sound bite, but I don’t accept that,” Long said. He said that some refugees in the city are living in terrible conditions. He described the bedroom of one nine-year-old boy he visited. “There was a mural on the wall of blood from bed bugs being squashed. It’s lines, there were 200, 500 lines of bed bugs, when he squish it, he would drag it, and there were lines of blood on the guy’s wall. It’s stuck in my head forever.”
Long said Manchester should stop taking in refugees until it’s clear that there are adequate resources for them…
…Maggie Fogarty, a refugee advocate with the American Friends Service Committee. “Refugees are being placed into poverty. There are refugees who have been here five, six, seven years and cannot earn their own income to live independently, which is what they want to do. There are refugees who are passing through the school system with their language needs unattended to. We are not doing a good enough job.”
But Fogarty doesn’t think Manchester should shut the door on refugees… Read more here
If we always use the conditions from which refugees are escaping (horrible) as an excuse for any poor conditions we resettle them into, won’t that always be an excuse for substandard refugee resettlement? I think it’s a copout.
Posted in State Department, USCRI, Nepali Bhutanese, New Hampshire, International Institute of NE, housing, substandard, International Institute of New Hampshire, schools, children, moratorium / restriction, bed bugs | Tagged: USCRI, International Institute, manchester, lavinia limon, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, William Gillette, Pat Long, American Friends Service Committee, Quakers | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 20, 2011
It looks as if U.S. Department of State staff once again played a little retaliation game – a potential deadly one – on an Iraqi translator who saved the lives of three Americans [note: this article is from 2009]. It seems that the State Department may have considered the war hero a “nuisance” for exposing potentially embarrassing information about the U.S. Embassy and other U.S. and Iraqi government agencies operating in Bagdad’s Green Zone. Fox News covered the story:
An Iraqi translator who has earned commendations for risking his life repeatedly to save the lives of many American soldiers in combat has been denied a visa to live in the United States because of nonviolent actions he took to overthrow Saddam Hussein — at the same time the U.S. government was calling for regime change in Iraq.
Jasim, whose name is being withheld for his safety, has received strong support from the U.S. military, and the Department of Homeland Security approved his application for a visa. But the State Department has denied Jasim a visa because he was arrested in 1996 for actions against the Saddam dictatorship.
…Jasim’s supporters, however, believe the real reason he’s been denied a visa is that he has become a “nuisance” to State Department personnel at the Baghdad Embassy. The State Department, citing privacy concerns, declined to discuss Jasim’s case…
Some of Jasim’s supporters believe the State Department has ulterior motives for denying the visa. “When all the other agencies, including DHS, give their stamp of approval, I have a hard time believing that there is a generous explanation for this decision,”
says Maj. Leslie Parks, who served in Iraq coordinating outreach to local Iraqi civilian and government officials.
Parks, who worked with Jasim and estimates that the translator has gone on 1,300 combat patrols, believes the State Department may be singling out Jasim for being a “nuisance.”
“Jasim’s been high-profile for a while, starting with being featured on 60 Minutes in early 2007 (as ‘Timmy,’ his previous cover name) about translators who weren’t getting the visas, despite their lives being threatened,” Parks said.
“He’s also been a whistleblower on a few occasions, exposing potentially embarrassing information regarding the Embassy and other U.S. and Iraqi government agencies operating in the Green Zone.”
Starting a few months ago, Jasim organized his fellow translators to oppose a provision negotiated by the State Department to hand over the names and personal information of all translators to the Iraqi government. Translators feared that their lives would be at risk if their identities were learned by Iraqis who view them as “traitors.”
Making sure their voices would be heard, Jasim gathered a public meeting of over 100 translators in Baghdad last December — during the time his visa application was being processed.
In a FOXNews.com story on this issue in January, Jasim criticized the State Department’s deal. “We work so hard to get the bad guys, to capture terrorists, and now, because of a political deal, they’re putting our lives at risk,” he said. FOXNews.com identified him only by first name in that story. The consular officer who denied Jasim’s visa, though, admitted that he knew of Jasim’s role in leading opposition to the release of translators’ personal information… Read more here
Posted in Dept of Homeland Security, Iraqi, SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) immigrants, State Department | Tagged: government agencies, Green Zone, Iraqi, SIV, Special Immigrant Visa, State Department, translator, U.S. Department of State, whistleblower | 1 Comment »
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
