What’s it like for deaf refugees once they arrive in the U.S.? The Voice of San Diego has an article about a 24-year-old deaf Burmese refugee named Har Sin who arrived in San Diego in 2008. His resettlement agency (Alliance for African Assistance) never even bothered to help him sign up for programs that could have helped, like disability insurance or deaf social services.
He grew up in Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma, where an oppressive military regime and feuding ethnic groups forced millions to flee to neighboring countries. Har Sin’s family was poor, and he never went to school. He never learned to read. He never learned to write or to speak.
Beyond a few rudimentary hand gestures — eat, drink, walk, go — he never learned to formally communicate.
[He] was boxed in and brushed off by people who assumed his disability made him forever dependent. All fostered by their belief that the deaf child, then teen, then adult, could never stand on his own, hold down a job or find a girlfriend. He didn’t share that belief — look at his eager eyes — but it defined him anyway….
…His mother, who had coddled him, died when he was a child. His sister took responsibility for his upbringing. When men with guns showed up at their rural home and forced them out in the late 1990s, they had no choice. They fled to neighboring Thailand, where they lived for nine years in a teeming refugee camp on the Burmese border.
While children around him went to school, Har Sin stayed home. There was no school for the deaf in Burma or the camp. No one to teach the deaf child.
Har Sin never saw sign language. He never knew there was a way for someone like him to communicate with the world around him. He never imagined he could convey those complex emotions that are only hinted at in his expressive eyes — about how he felt, what he feared, what his dreams were — to anyone but himself.
He assumed he was alone.
In the summer of 2008, the family of eight Burmese refugees arrived in San Diego, their new home.
Har Sin was 22. He moved into a threadbare City Heights apartment with his sister, her husband, Mat Sa Pi, and their five children. Paint was peeling from the wooden front door. The family of eight slept on four mattresses in two small, dimly lit bedrooms...
…When he first arrived, Har Sin, like all refugees, was eligible for eight months of federal aid. Each month, he got a check in the mail, a temporary source of income to help him get through the difficult transition all refugees face integrating into a society they do not know.
The adjustment was a challenge for his family. It was all but impossible for Har Sin...
A year after arriving, his cash aid had run out. His formal connection to the resettlement agency had been cut. But he hadn’t signed up for programs that could’ve helped, like disability insurance or deaf social services.
Resettlement agencies aren’t required to sign clients up for those programs, and overburdened caseworkers often can’t provide more than the basic services the agencies are required to by law…
Once hopeful he might hear, by the summer of 2009, Har Sin was still silently idling within the walls of Apartment 7.
He had fallen through the cracks, alone in his quiet…Read more here
I would have to disagree when the reporter says that an overburdened caseworker “can’t provide” more than basic services. How much effort or time would it have taken to refer this refugee to deaf social services? As far as resettlement agencies not being required to do this, if we have to require these “partners” to do even the most basic thing that a refugee needs then why do we keep them on? Why not just hire a real contractor, instead of exalted “partners” (with rights), and list every obvious thing they need to do, and then nudge out the contractors that don’t full-fill their contracts? We’d probably have much happier refugees, and we’d get better services for our tax dollars.
I also note that “the family of eight slept on four mattresses in two small, dimly lit bedrooms”. Bed frames are a minimum-required item that resettlement agencies supposedly give to refugees. The family must also have enough beds for each family member, i.e. the Alliance for African Assistance should have given this family a minimum of seven beds. Dimly lit bedrooms? “One lamp per room, unless installed lighting is present” is the so-called minimum standard. Of course, all the requirements in the world don’t matter when requirements aren’t enforced.
A 2008 State Department inspection report for the Alliance for African Assistance didn’t seem to tease out many of the problems, however a volunteer contacted us a couple of months ago to report poor treatment of refugee clients.
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
