Archive for January, 2012
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 31, 2012
The site director of the International Institute of New Hampshire put in his resignation this month. His last day was January 15. The resettlement agency has been mired in a battle with local elected officials. A column in the New Hampshire Union Leader notes the resignation:
…AFTER HAVING A TOUGH year going toe-to-toe with Gatsby over refugee policy, Michael Organdy has stepped down from his position as site director at the International Institute of New Hampshire. His last day was Jan. 15, which he announced in an email to the Manchester Health Department. He is being replaced by an interim, Susan Curry, who has worked with Manchester refugees for two years.
The city has also learned that 61 refugees were resettled in Manchester from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2011, including 45 adults and 16 children. All of the new arrivals were from Bhutan… Read column here
The International Institute has an announcement for the open position here. It seems that refugee resettlement services program experience is not required.
Posted in International Institute of NE, International Institute of New Hampshire, moratorium / restriction, New Hampshire | Tagged: International Institute of New England, International Institute of New Hampshire, manchester, refugees, resettlement, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI | 2 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 30, 2012
A reader sent me another article from earlier this month about that recent report by San Francisco State University, and the nonprofit Burma Family Refugee Network, about refugees from Burma living in extreme poverty in Oakland. It has details about a Karenni refugee woman in Oakland who had to give birth at home (because she couldn’t find a ride to the hospital). The director of the International Rescue Committee in Northern California says he would like to see services at resettlement agencies for a longer period than six months. (Bear in mind we are just now making our way out of this severe recession since 2009, and the IRC in Northern California still hasn’t extended services – in spite of the doubling of the US State Department per capita refugee grant 2 years ago — see analysis here.) The article is in the East Bay Express has added details about the problems:
Hae Htoo lives in a one-bedroom unit in East Oakland with five other family members [her husband, brother, and three children]. The twenty-year-old arrived in the US six months ago and hopes to learn English and find a job. But a recent report by San Francisco State University and nonprofit Burma Family Refugee Network shows that refugees from Burma who now live in Oakland, such as Hae Htoo, are facing dire circumstances…
…even…employed [refugees from Burma in Oakland] are living in poverty — 75 percent, according to the report — since jobs may be short-term, part-time, and low-wage. The study also found that some people eligible for welfare were not on it. Another paradox is that 90 percent said they had doctors, but healthcare was still one of their top problems, due to the language barrier. ”Even though they have doctors and insurance, they still don’t get healthcare,” said Jeung. “They didn’t understand how to get an appointment, or if they are given a prescription, how to take their drugs”…
…Hae Htoo gave birth to a newborn daughter just two months ago. That morning, she felt contractions but wasn’t sure if she was going into labor. By the time she was ready to give birth, she could not find a ride to the hospital. She gave birth in the bathroom; her husband caught the baby….Following [a] 911 operator’s instructions as translated by [a] neighbor, Hae’s husband tied one of his shoelaces around the umbilical cord and waited for an ambulance…
Mental health is also an issue; more than 70 percent [of the refugees surveyed in the study] reported stressors that impaired them. (The survey included culturally appropriate answers such as feeling “heaviness” or “head is hot,” mental states that prevent someone from focusing or being able to work). Jeung said mental health issues stem from both war trauma and the acculturative stress of having to adapt to a new land…
…[Ken Briggs, interim executive director of the International Rescue Committee in Northern California] hopes the [IRC] will be able to offer long-term case management in the future…”I would like to see services within the resettlement agencies that provides support for a longer period [than six months], particularly with job search and case management”…
…Hae Htoo…is worried. Her husband will be laid off from his bakery job in three months. “I am worried we won’t be able to pay rent and bills”…
Zar Ni Maung, co-founder of the Burma Family Refugee Network, said that even folks who have been here since 2007 still struggle. Some are exhausting their CalWorks lifetime benefits [The lifetime cap for welfare and CalWorks was recently cut from five to four years]. He fears some refugees will remain a permanent, poverty-stricken underclass.
“They’ve been here long-term now,” he said. “Who’s going to pay for their rent? Who is helping them find a job? A lot of people have been placed [in jobs], but they do not continue going to work or have been laid off. Nobody seems to be looking into why this is happening. They don’t have skills. The issues are here. How are we going to fix it?” Read more here
Posted in IRC, R&P, Burma/Myanmar, Karenni, funding, housing, overcrowding, employment/jobs for refugees, Oakland, housing, safety, economic self-sufficiency, Catholic Charities of the East Bay (Oakland) | Tagged: refugees, karenni, IRC, resettlement, Oakland, International Rescue Committee, interpretation, poverty, east bay, Catholic Charities of the East Bay | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 29, 2012
The World Relief office in Greensboro has been coordinating with a Perdue Farms chicken processing plant in Rockingham that has been recruiting Myanmar and Nepali-Bhutanese refugees. An article in the Richmond County Daily Journal has more:
Employment assistants from the organization World Relief drove eight Burmese and Nepalese refugees from Greensboro on Thursday morning to apply for jobs at Perdue Farms in Rockingham.
When Townsend, Inc. chicken processing plants closed around the Triad area last summer, over 400 workers were left without jobs. According to Susie Jordan, English instructor for Perdue Farms, Perdue welcomes anyone with experience processing chicken…
…“We are employment assistance,” said World Relief Employment Assistant Sylvia Bikusa. “We help with training, learning how to fill out applications, everything they need to help them become self-sufficient…
…While in town, getting settled at their new jobs, the refugees will likely stay with friends and relatives, said Jordan. She is hoping to set up a temporary apartment for commuters to stay in during the week while they prepare to have their families relocate to Rockingham…
…“The [World Relief] office in Durham called and said they are looking for workers, too,” said Jordan… Read more here
Another WordPress blog mentions that in April 2010 there were also about 100 Myanmar refugees working at the Perdue Farms plant in Lumber Bridge — not far from Rockingham.
Posted in World Relief, Burma/Myanmar, Nepali Bhutanese, faith-based, Greensboro, Raleigh-Durham, secondary migration, refugee, poultry production | Tagged: refugees, nepalese, resettlement, chicken processing, Rockingham, Perdue Farms | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 28, 2012
If you follow this blog you might remember reading about the experience a volunteer helping refugees from Myanmar had with the Bowling Green International Center. Cindy Florez, who I spoke to and corresponded with in 2009 and 2010, met the refugees in a refugee camp when she was in Thailand and later drove to Bowling Green to welcome them when they arrived for resettlement. There, she found her friends living in filthy, rundown apartments, overrun with massive cockroach infestations – and commented about the problems on a website. Later, bringing the refugees a carload of donated items she was greeted by a hostile landlord (apparently a Burmese individual, and friend of the Institute?) who ordered her off the property, using the police to illegally remove her from the property (tenants may chose who their guests are, not landowners or police). A mystery person in the building also threw M-80 firecrackers at Florez and her female Karenni interpreter.
Now, two years after we placed a request with the State Department’s FOIA office for that public agency’s monitoring inspections reports of the private resettlement agencies for late 2008 and early 2009, the office has finally responded with a few reports. One of those reports is a March 31-April 1, 2009 inspection of the Bowling Green International Center. It turns out that the State Department monitors were able to conduct the rare once-in-5-or-10-year-inspection without discovering any of the problems that Florez documented in writing and on video (monitors did not find any infestation, even though two of the refugee cases they visited reported these). So, what went wrong?
That remains for the State Department monitors to explain, although their office has frequently repeated that they act only as a “partner” to their resettlement contractors. Even with that lack of authority in the oversight relationship I think it still remains for them to explain why they will not investigate any of the individual cases reported by members of the public and the community (instead, they selected only the usual small random sample, four refugee cases in this case, for home visits).
Part of what probably went wrong was an extensive clean-up before the monitors’ arrival, after the community member caught this resettlement contractor providing substandard services. No doubt other problems include the rarity of the monitorings and the great weight given to resettlement contractors’ own written records as “proof” of services they provided.
Finally, I notice that the report states that this refugee resettlement agency “reports a collaborative relationship with the state refugee coordinator” without mentioning that the “state” refugee coordinator is just another private refugee resettlement contractor – Catholic Charities of Louisville.
Posted in Bowling Green, Catholic Charities of Louisville Inc., housing, substandard, International Center in Bowling Green (Western Kentucky Refugee Mutual Assistance Association), Karenni, missed immunizations for refugee students, Office of Admissions, public/private partnership, rats and roaches, State Department, transportation | Tagged: Bowling Green, Catholic Charities of Louisville, International Center, karenni, monitoring, refugees, resettlement, State Department, Western Kentucky Refugee Mutual Assistance Association | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 27, 2012
Many refugee resettlement agencies nationwide have resorted to assisting in sending refugees off to distant locations, including to other states, to find employment with meatpacking companies, dairies, etc. The employment rate for Idaho’s employable refugees dropped to only 55 percent in 2009. Jan Reeves, who heads the Idaho Office for Refugees, says his office looked farther afield to find jobs for refugees. (Of course finding far-flung jobs, such as at a dairy in Boardman, Ore., do not come without risks. A refugee died in an auto-accident trying to drive to Boardman in 2010.) As a result, apparently, the employment rate has moved back up to more than 70 percent. An article in Idaho’s State Impact has more:
In the last few years, more than four thousand refugees have found their way to Idaho. They’ve come from Africa, and from East and South Asia. Most came to Boise. For years, the city’s strong economy, good quality affordable housing and supportive community created an especially favorable environment for refugee resettlement. Now, the recession has shifted that picture.
Most days, Nowela Virginie and her two young daughters are here, in her small apartment just off a busy thoroughfare on the outskirts of Boise.
Virginie is 23, and she arrived in Boise three years ago. She was born in Rwanda, but spent sixteen years of her life in a refugee camp in Tanzania…
…“You know, new country is supposed to be hard,” she says. “New language, everything is new…if you don’t speak any English, is so hard – really hard.”…
…Marcia Munden is a social worker with Catholic Charities of Idaho. She says Virginie is one of many refugees living in Boise who have found themselves stuck. “Three years ago we were just seeing a few extreme cases of refugees that had consistent difficulty with integration,” she says. “And then it really happened very suddenly where there were 50, 60, 100 families really struggling.”…
…The recession has complicated the hard task of refugee resettlement nationwide. But the shift is especially stark in Boise…
…Now, Boise is one of the places where the IRC has reduced the number of refugees it aims to resettle each year, cutting back by about a third. In addition, they and other local agencies that help refugees find work have adopted new strategies. Jan Reeves heads the Idaho Office for Refugees. “We’ve looked at other ways of opening doors that we’ve never had to look at before,” he says.
For example, Reeves says, they’ve looked farther afield, finding jobs for a number of refugees at a dairy in Boardman, Ore. The efforts appear to be paying off. Before the recession, in 2005, 95 percent of the office’s employable caseload found work. That dropped to 55 percent in 2009. It has since gone back up to more than 70 percent… Read more here
By the way, Jan Reeves is another person that came into government via the revolving door. Previously, he was the Director of the Mountain States Refugee Resettlement Program, and then Director of that agency’s Refugee Center.
Posted in economic self-sufficiency, employment/jobs for refugees, Idaho, IRC, meatpacking industry, revolving door, Rwandan, safety | Tagged: Boardman, employment, Idaho, International Rescue Committee, IRC, Jan Reeves, refugees, resettlement, Threemile Canyon Farms | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 26, 2012
This topic seems to fall under the “Do not do” section of the best practices category. According to the State Department resettlement contracts, resettlement contractors are not to place incoming refugee cases in temporary housing, rather they should place refugees in their own permanent housing, e.g. an apartment rental, upon their arrival. Nevertheless, some contractors do this despite the requirement (I understand that once in a while refugees arrive in the US on short notice from the State Department, but what other excuse contractors are using for use of temporary housing I am not aware of). According to a July 2009 monitoring inspection, World Relief Aurora – an affiliate of World Relief in Aurora, Illinois – is one of the contractors that government inspectors found which have failed to place refugees into their own housing upon arrival. In this case, the agency placed refugees into the homes of unrelated refugee host families.
Monitors visited four refugee families and found that none of the adults were working yet, even though they were eager to work — one family had been in Aurora for four months, and another refugee man three months earlier. In addition, none of the refugees had received an initial health screening, which the Operational Guidance contract document requires be done within 30 days of their arrival. With regard to the housing:
…All of the refugees that monitors visited except [an] Iraqi family had been placed with unrelated refugee host families for a few days when they first arrived until they could sign leases for their own apartments. No form of written agreement showed what the host families had agreed to provide or for what period. The affiliate assured monitors that they provide bedding and other supplies, and that families usually volunteered. The Burmese Chin refugee told monitors that his bed and other items belonged to a previous tenant who had moved away. A case note in his file also revealed that the affiliate had asked the refugee to pay a previous tenant’s rent share for a period before the refugee moved in. The young Karenni refugee did not understand what furnishings were his to keep if he moved out… Read report here
Here is a snippet from a February 2010 posting which shows World Relief has long-placed refugees into non-permanent housing upon arrival.
… [a] Burundian refugee woman in Boise should not have lived with church members after initially arriving in Boise. The State Department’s Admissions Office has repeatedly warned World Relief affiliates (here, here and here) that this practice is prohibited…
Posted in best practices, Chicago, Cooperative Agreement, faith-based, housing, Karenni, late health screenings, Operational Guidance, World Relief | Tagged: best practices, Cooperative Agreement, inspection, monitoring, refugees, Relief Aurora, resettlement, World | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 25, 2012
A New Hampshire man drove a 20-pound rock through the window of an Iraqi restaurant in downtown Lowell, Mass. owned and run by Iraqi refugees. The owner of the restaurant is an Iraqi refugee who was an influential Iraqi television journalist targeted abroad for violence for “telling the truth’’ about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. A veterans group joined by Lowell Mayor Patrick Murphy held a show of support in front of the restaurant as they took turns sitting down inside to eat meals. An article in the Lowell Sun covers the story:
LOWELL — An area veterans group pledged to fill every seat in Babylon, a downtown Iraqi restaurant where owners feared hatred drove a man to throw a 20-pound rock through a window last Wednesday.
Instead, those veterans filled every seat twice.
Lowell police said they identified the man who threw the stone, and that he confessed…
…The suspect, a New Hampshire man who will not be identified until he is arraigned, will be summonsed…
…to court to face a charge of breaking glass in a building, a misdemeanor.
Patrick Scanlon, a Vietnam veteran and coordinator of Veterans for Peace who organized the show of support, voiced skepticism that hate wasn’t involved, but said it was nonetheless important to show support for the family that had been hit hard by fear.
Scanlon was joined at 25 Merrimack St. by veterans of the Iraq war, such as former Army Sgt. Rachel McNeill, of Allston, who served from 2002 to 2010 and spent a year in Iraq serving on a gun truck that escorted convoys, and Chris Borden, of Chelmsford, who continues to serve in the Army Reserves after deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan…
…The veterans, joined by the likes of Lowell Mayor Patrick Murphy, held flags and signs in front of the restaurant as they took turns sitting down inside to eat meals.
Owner Leyla Al-Zubaydi and her father Ahmed Al-Zubaidi said their family was terrified the vandalism was fueled by hate… Read more here
A Boston Globe article gives details about the Iraqi refugees who own the restaurant:
LOWELL – Coming home from work one night, Ahmad Al Zubaidi was attacked by seven men in dark clothing. They savagely beat the influential Iraqi television journalist and left him for dead on the streets of Uzbekistan.
Targeted for “telling the truth’’ about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the Iraq native spent a month in a hospital recovering. The message was unmistakable: Leave or be killed.
Eight years later, half a world away, the 57-year-old recounts the tale in the colorful confines of Babylon Restaurant, his six-month-old establishment in downtown Lowell… Read more here
Posted in hate crimes, International Institute of Lowell, Iraqi, Lowell | Tagged: hate crime, Iraqi, Lowell, refugees, resettlement, veterans | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 24, 2012
Today the State Department’s PRM Bureau had a live chat session on their Facebook page with Acting Assistant Secretary David Robinson. This was my question:
Christopher Coen’s question: Why are Office of Admissions’ inspections of refugee resettlement contractors not unannounced, and why are there no penalties for the contractors’ failure to meet Cooperative Agreement contract requirements?
U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration: PRM announces visits up to two weeks in advance, and home visits two days in advance. Just so you know, PRM requires corrective actions that correspond with the level of non-compliance. This could include stopping placement of refugees through a particular contractor. In fact, this year, monitoring findings factored into the Cooperative Agreement awards. In general, we view our auditing and monitoring and evaluation programs as cooperative tools to correct mistakes and respond to inadequacies. In the rare instances we find faults too serious to fix, we take immediate action, including the possible removal of an organization from our work.
Don’t unannounced inspections reveal how a place really operates? Announced inspections allow the refugee resettlement contractors to make preparations (clean things up?). If you read through some of the State Department monitoring reports you will see that the contractors’ refugee case notes (part of the record that the monitors use to test the contractors’ quality of services) often do not correspond to the services and material items that the refugees say that the agencies gave them. The case notes also sometimes do not conform to what the monitors find in other parts of the records, and in their interviews with a small sample of refugees (3-4 refugee cases). Announced inspections allow for altering of the records (monitoring reports show the use of white-out liquid, and pro forma individual refugee self-sufficiency plans). Computerized case management notes can make the possible alteration of records difficult to detect.
The other problem is how rare these inspections are – once in ten years or more, according to the results of our monitoring reports FOIA requests (once in five according to a senior State Department official I spoke with in 2010 who refused to speak for attribution).
It’s good to see that State Department monitoring findings are finally being factored into the Cooperative Agreement awards (the State Department’s non-competitive grants to the private resettlement contractors), yet how are they being factored in? Why are their no penalties for non-compliance with contract requirements other than the rarely used temporary suspension or removal of an “affiliate” — a subcontractor — resettlement agency?
A friend of our group asked the following question:
U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration: I want to repost and answer Cevon Anderson’s earlier question.
Have you performed any financial audits of the numerous resettlement agencies you have found to be not in compliance with State Department cooperative agreement requirements?
U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration: Thanks for your question, Cevon. As government officials and taxpayers, we believe strongly that we must be good stewards of our tax dollars. We regularly monitor programs, and our cooperative agreements require quarterly financial status reports and a final financial report be submitted to the Bureau’s Office of the Comptroller. In addition, recipients of our financing must have an appropriate audit performed by independent public accountants in accordance with U.S. Government Auditing standards. That audit must include confirmation that the reported quarterly charges were actually incurred in the amounts and during the periods specified and that the reported charges were not based on average costs, estimates, or predetermined fees.
U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration: Finally, we implement an aggressive monitoring and evaluation program throughout the year, visiting dozens of resettlement sites around the country and our facilities overseas to assure compliance with our standards, rules and regulations.
Yet, when State Department monitors primarily rely on contractors’ own written records as proof of compliance with basic requirements of the State Department contracts (services to refugees), aren’t those records the basis that the audits rest upon? These resettlement contractors’ records are also sometimes left incomplete.
It’s also hard for me to think of these monitoring inspections as “aggressive” when they are so rare, and there are no penalties for non-compliance (again, other than the very rare suspension or termination of a refugee resettlement contractor). How does the State Department “assure compliance with…standards, rules and regulations” when these once-in-5-to-10 years-or-more-inspections show that the contractors quite regularly are not even complying with the “minimum” standards of the contracts? Other federal government agencies make contractors give back contract money when there is proof of lack of contract compliance. Isn’t that the minimum we should expect? Why would private resettlement contractors have any incentive to prevent continuing and future problems in their services when there are no teeth in the government oversight? That just seems like management 101 to me.
Posted in Assistant Secretary of the PRM, Cooperative Agreement, funding, neglect, openess and transparency in government, public/private partnership, State Department | Tagged: assistant secretary, Cooperative Agreement, David Robinson, government contractors, government contrcats, Population Refugees and Migration, PRM, public/private partnership, refugees, resettlement | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 23, 2012
In New Haven three refugee cases, including a family of eleven, were displaced after their apartments were condemned due to broken pipes and black mold contamination. The city housing inspector said his office previously cited the landlord for violations at other properties. An article in the New Haven Independent explains the situation:
When kids living in a Nash Street house kept showing up at the hospital with respiratory problems, city housing inspector Rafael Ramos went to their home and found black mold covered the bedroom walls of an apartment holding 11 Congolese refugees.
Ramos condemned 17 Nash St.‘s first floor on Dec. 22. The family has since been living in a hotel—at the Nash Street landlord’s expense—until they can find another place to live.
This month, Ramos returned and condemned the second floor, removing two other refugees who were living there, after pipes burst on the third floor…
…“In the seven years I’ve been doing this, this has been our most serious problem,” said Chris George, the head of Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS). That organization helped settle the Congolese family in New Haven when it first arrived more than two years ago…
…Now IRIS is reconsidering some of its policies, looking to see if the period of supervision of new refugees should be extended to ensure the safety and success of settlements. And the city is looking to work more closely with IRIS to insure that other newcomers to the United States don’t end up in similar straits…
…The property slipped through the cracks of the city’s Residential Licensing Program. That program is designed to ensure that the city safeguards the living conditions of all renters, even if—like some new immigrants—they don’t speak English well or otherwise aren’t equipped to complain about their situation…
…George said he heard about the problems from neighbors. “I visited the family a couple of times. I met with them in the backyard to go over the problems. I never went into the house. I realize now that was a mistake.”…
…on Dec. 22, Ramos got a call from a medical anthropologist working at the Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital, who said he had visited 17 Nash St. after kids living there kept showing up at the hospital with respiratory problems.
Ramos visited the house and went into the bedrooms he hadn’t visited earlier. He took pictures of what he found there: Black mold covering the walls, right next to beds where children slept.
Somehow moisture was entering the home through the walls, seeping in and warming up, making it an ideal environment for mold growth. Airborne mold spores were then making the children sick. Ramos immediately condemned the first floor…
…LCI returned earlier this month after pipes burst in the third floor. The furnace apparently broke, lowering temperatures and bursting pipes, Ramos said. LCI removed two single men—also refugees—living on the second floor.
Ramos said LCI has previously cited the [landlord] for violations at other properties. He said what happened at 17 Nash St. is a perfect example of why the residential licensing program is important. “This family didn’t know that they could complain without retribution. They didn’t know we have ordinances in place to protect their health and safety.”… Read more here
Posted in children, Congolese, housing, Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS), Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS), New Haven, safety | Tagged: Chris George, Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, IRIS, New haven, refugees, resettlement, slum lord, slumlord | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 22, 2012
Oh gosh. World Relief, in my opinion one of the public’s most intransigent and problem-plagued refugee resettlement contractors, continues to spread itself out (problems including refusing to hire an interpreter because he was Muslim, partner church staff and members moving into apartment complexes with refugees to “foster deeper relationships”, alienating other partner churches and having refugee clients work without pay, and placing new refugees in other refugee clients’ homes without agreements.) The group will soon open a new office in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and may begin resettling its first group of refugees in February. A reader-submitted announcement about the office opening is found at The Oshkosh Northwestern:
International humanitarian agency World Relief will open an office in Oshkosh this month. With approval and funding from the U.S. Department of State, World Relief has selected the Fox Cities as a Wisconsin base for a nationwide program of refugee resettlement and support.
Longtime Oshkosh resident Norm Leatherwood will direct this office and UW Oshkosh Human Services graduate Sarah Kurer will serve as a case-worker and Resettlement and Placement Program coordinator…
…As an agency partner with the U.S. Department of State for the past 30 years, World Relief has assisted more than 200,000 victims of persecution resettle as legal immigrants in the United States…
…While details are still being finalized, the first group of refugees could move to Oshkosh by the middle of February… Read more here
Posted in churches, evangelical, faith-based, Oshkosh, World Relief | Tagged: Oshkosh, refugees, resettlement, World Relief | Leave a Comment »
Christopher Coen
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