Archive for the ‘Operational Guidance’ Category
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 16, 2012
The US Department of State is asking for feedback about the size and scope of the US refugee resettlement program. A meeting will be held at the Refugee Processing Center in Arlington, Virginia on May 1, which the public may attend. Or you can send comments via email.
I plan to comment about the size and scope of the program needing to strongly tied to effective administration and management of it. (Why are contractors still allowed to inspect themselves? How effective are State Department inspections when they are pre-announced, so rare (once in ten years or less), and that mainly rely on contractor’s records and not refugees’ feedback? Why are there no penalties for contractors that fail to comply with minimum requirements of the State Department contracts? Why are the minimum requirements – see Operational Guidance – so extremely minimal? Why don’t resettlement plans take into account local crime rates?, etc.)
A notice in the Federal Register gives details about the meeting:
There will be a meeting on the President’s FY 2013 U.S. Refugee Admissions Program on Tuesday, May 1, 2012 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. The meeting will be held at the Refugee Processing Center, 1401 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 1100, Arlington, Virginia. The meeting’s purpose is to hear the views of attendees on the appropriate size and scope of the FY 2013 U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.Show citation box
Persons wishing to attend this meeting must notify the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration at telephone (202) 453-9257 by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 24, 2012, to reserve a seat. Persons wishing to present written comments should submit them by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 24, 2012 via email to spruellda@state.gov or fax (202) 453-9393…
…If you have questions about the public meeting, please contact Delicia Spruell, PRM/Admissions Program Officer at (202) 453-9257…
Dated: March 22, 2012.
David Robinson,
Acting, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, Department of State.
[FR Doc. 2012-7700 Filed 3-29-12; 8:45 am]… Read more here
Posted in Operational Guidance, PRM, RPC (Refugee Processing Center) | Tagged: Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration, government contractors, oversight, PRM, Refugee Processing Center, refugees, resettlement, RPC, State Department, US Department of State | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on March 27, 2012
A single mother of a refugee family from the Central African Republic finds herself alone and isolated (a condition correlated with refugee suicides) five months after resettlement to Portland via Lutheran Community Services Northwest. Interviewed about six weeks after her arrival, she only knew how to get to the grocery store and to an organization which offers employment training and referrals, though her resettlement agency was required to give her community orientation. The family’s apartment is sparsely furnished, with not enough heat to stay warm and little light (this, though the State Department’s Operational Guidance contract document supposedly requires resettlement contractors to provide refugees with one lamp per room unless installed lighting is present). An article in the Portland Tribune describes the refugee family’s initial resettlement to Portland:
Monique Detoloum…[a] new Portland resident has found peace for herself and her four children, after surviving a reign of terror in the Central African Republic and six years in limbo in neighboring Cameroon…
…Monique and her children arrived here in late October, settling in East Portland. They are among the 944 refugees from more than a dozen nations who resettled in Oregon last year, mostly in Portland. Nearly 60,000 refugees from around the world have landed here since 1975. That’s an average of 135 newcomers a month, a steady stream of foreigners who are gradually expanding the Portland area’s ethnic mix and forever changing its complexion…
…Somewhat arbitrarily, since Monique had no family or connections here, she was assigned to Portland, aided by Lutheran Community Services Northwest.
Agency staff picked up Monique’s family at the airport, found her housing in an apartment on Southeast Division Street near 126th Avenue, helped enroll her children into David Douglas schools, arranged medical screenings and financial support.
Within her first week in town, Monique was referred to East Portland’s Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization [IRCO], which offers employment training and referrals, among other services…
…Interviewed about six weeks after her arrival, Monique knew how to get to IRCO and the Winco grocery store on Northeast 122nd Avenue, but hadn’t ventured further on her own. She was too flustered to think about going downtown, feeling pretty helpless without any English skills…
…Now, after five months, here she is still having trouble adjusting to cold weather. She just experienced her first snow, and says she doesn’t like it.
The family’s two-bedroom, one-bath apartment is sparsely furnished, with little light and not enough heat to stay warm…
…Monique has found a Baptist Church she wants to attend. But she says she is feeling isolated here, with no friends to talk to, only her children…
…Refugees rarely go back to their home country, Tauch says, but they do move around once they’re here, especially to find work. In January, a recruiter came to town and offered seasonal jobs to 52 Portland-area refugees at a Kodiak, Alaska, cannery, Tauch says. Last year, a Nebraska employer offered 100 permanent jobs to local refugees… Read more here
Posted in alienation-isolation, Central African Republic, furnishings, lack of, housing, language, Lutheran Community Services Northwest, mental health, Operational Guidance, Portland | Tagged: Central African Republic, Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, irco, isolation, Lutheran Community Services Northwest, Portland, refugees, resettlement | 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 October 30, 2011
It turns out that resettlement agencies in Lancaster, Pennsylvania have not been giving coats or good shoes to refugees as early as the winter of 2009 (even though resettlement agencies sign a contract with the US State Department promising that they will give refugees Appropriate seasonal clothing required for work, school, and everyday use as required for all members of the family, including proper footwear for each member of the family, here). A school district official also visited refugee families and found instances where two or more Bhutanese families sharing an apartment. The two local resettlement agencies, Church World Service Lancaster and Lutheran Children and Family Service of Eastern PA, apparently had not even informed the School District of Lancaster – or at least the School District’s point person for homeless students – about the arrival of the Bhutanese families. An article in the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era covers this resettlement site:
In late 2009, with winter setting in, the children of some Bhutanese families were coming to school without coats or good shoes.
Ken Marzinko, School District of Lancaster’s point person for homeless students, started visiting the parents, and in some cases, found two or more Bhutanese families sharing an apartment.
“I was caught off guard,” Marzinko said of hearing about the refugees and their needs.
Like most Americans, Marzinko wasn’t aware the United States had in 2008 begun taking in 60,000 of the more than 100,000 Bhutanese crowding camps in Nepal. More than 800 now live in Lancaster County, and many more are in the pipeline... Read more here
The most recent State Department inspections of the two local resettlement agencies, from 2006, show other problems. The report for Church World Service Lancaster shows that only 53% of refugee clients were employed after 90 days, even though jobs at that time were quite plentiful in Lancaster, with an unemployment rate of only 3.4% in 2006. Agency staff had also used white out throughout the case logs.
The Lutheran Children and Family Service inspection report also showed that refugees’ relatives who helped with their resettlement did not understand that the agency was ultimately responsible for all contract requirements. Apparently the agency had duped these relatives into believing that they were responsible for the requirements of the agency’s contract (a common occurence according to these State Department monitoring reports). In three of four refugee homes that monitors visited, batteries in smoke detectors were dead.
Although the two agencies, the Lutheran agency being a subcontractor of LIRS, were vested with the State Department contract requirement that each refugee receive a physical health screening within 30 days, refugees were not being screened within that time requirement. Case logs also did not make references to airport reception of refugees and employment referals – as supposedly equired – so that there was no documentation that these services were provided by the resettlement agencies.
Posted in children, clothes, Cooperative Agreement, CWS, employment services, faith-based, housing, housing, overcrowding, late health screenings, Lutheran, Lutheran Children and Family Service of Eastern PA, meeting refugees at the airport, Nepali Bhutanese, Operational Guidance, Pennsylvania, State Department | Tagged: bhutanese, Church World Service, Church World Service Lancaster, CWS, federal contractors, LIRS, Lutheran Children and Family Service of Eastern Pennsylvania, Lutheran immigration and refugee services, refugees, resettlement | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on August 28, 2011
Ariel Roberta at the Buffalo Rising newspaper released her last installment of a three-part series on refugees in Buffalo (see Part l and Part ll). She notes local resettlement agencies’ involvement in the removal of the “Nickel City Smiler” documentary film from a local film festival, with the film festival organizers writing, “a number of our partners were passionately angered by the film, and were offended by our screening of it.” Apparently, these “partners” decided that they would not let the public decide for itself what it thought about the issue. Although the film was the only locally-produced documentary in the series, promoters screened another refugee documentary from Tennessee, though it too was controversial. She also quotes an AmeriCorps worker as saying she believed the censorship may have been due to, “the agencies preference to look ahead, not backward.”
It must be nice to have that kind of power – to control what the public is able to know – nice, although not particularly ethical. Although, perhaps the public has a right to look at both the past, present and future. Arial Roberta also quotes a Buffalo schoolteacher saying, “Some of my [adult refugee] students have been reduced to tears after their caseworker didn’t return phone calls or was rude to them.” The teacher also told her that although getting by in Buffalo is often a harrowing task, none of her students have complained about housing quality, and that anything is a step up from huts in the jungle.
…Heart of the City Neighborhoods, Inc. (HOTC) is a non-profit group that focuses on creating programs that improve the quality of housing along with promoting sustainable projects for the Lower West Side. HOTC hosted their first ever film series at Buffalo’s Theater of Youth during the months of June and July. Their goal was to have public screenings of documentary films relating to sustainable housing in order to create discussions around the films.
Chance Encounter Productions (CEP) was invited to show their film “Nickel City Smiler”. A short time after they sent their materials, however, they were informed via email from Heart of the City that their film was regretfully not going to be shown. The Heart of the City Community Outreach Coordinator stated in the email that “a number of our partners were passionately angered by the film, and were offended by our screening of it.”
NCS was the only locally made film slated to be featured in the series. Documentaries from other parts of America were shown, including one titled “Welcome to Shelbyville”, which has some of its own controversy swirling around it. CEP believes that they were censored by resettlement agencies, some of which are partners with Heart of the City.
“The goal of this film has always been to get the community involved,” says Director Scott Murchie. “My hopes were that the film would make its way from the heart of the city out to the surrounding communities, inspiring those people who can really make a difference. Instead, what we are seeing is overly defensive resettlement agencies thinking the film is about them. It’s not.”
Claire Essley, an AmeriCorps/Houghten College summer Jump Start coordinator at school 45, believes the censorship may be due to the agencies preference to look ahead, not backward. She thinks the resettlement agencies didn’t want to be ”showing issues that had been resolved… and addressed.”…
…[a Buffalo schoolteacher] who contacted me after reading my previous two articles in Buffalo Rising, wished to remain anonymous because she also had some criticisms about the resettlement process. ”Basically my experience with adult students is that their resettlement agency starts off with a bang (placement in apartments, getting clothes, etc.) but then fizzles out,” she said. “Some of my students have been reduced to tears after their caseworker didn’t return phone calls or was rude to them.” The teacher told me that although getting by in Buffalo is often a harrowing task for many of her students, none of them have complained about housing quality. According to her, anything is a step up from huts in the jungle… Read more here
That last part about any housing being a step up I will have to disagree with. Resettlement contractors sign contracts with the federal government to find housing that meets — at the least – some minimum standards (see Operational Guidance). I suspect agencies use similar reasoning each time refugees are assaulted or killed in some of the urban locations our refugee program resettles them too – “well, they might have died anyway if they had remained stuck in dangerous locations overseas.” But isn’t that a cop-out? It seems to me like a handy excuse for poor planning and poor services – and the refugees don’t deserve that.
Posted in Buffalo, housing, Journey's End Refugee Services, Journey's End Refugee Services, Karen, Operational Guidance | Tagged: Buffalo, CEP, Chance Encounter Productions, documentary, Nickel City Smiler, refugees, resettlement, Scott Murchie, Smiler Greeley, Welcome to Shelbyville | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 5, 2011
Today we found out about a truly pro-refugee documentary that CEP Films (Chance Encounter Productions) is debuting out of Buffalo. The film chronicles what its like for a Karen refugee family (from Burma/Myanmar) that the US government and its private partners resettled to Buffalo (the family was assigned to the US by the UNHCR).
Here’s a blurb from the CEP website:
Nickel City Smiler chronicles a refugee’s fight for survival and hope in the American Rust Belt.
In Burma, Smiler Greely fought against the brutal military government, who attacked, tortured, raped, and murdered thousands of the country’s ethnic minorities. After spending more than 20 years in the confinement of a refugee camp, Smiler and his family were selected for resettlement by the United States government and assigned to live in Buffalo, New York. Nickel City Smiler documents the struggle Smiler’s family and the refugee community encounter on the streets in one of America’s poorest cities. Fighting against poverty, violence and bureaucracy Smiler’s leadership inspires the hope and determination needed for a better future.
…Before filming, we met with the local resettlement agencies to get a better understanding of the processes by which refugees are relocated and supported.
What we encountered was typical bureaucratic posturing about how well the system works. The meetings conflicted with the true conditions and lack of support we were seeing in the community. We felt compelled to give the refugees a voice.
By filming from their point of view over a six month period, Nickel City Smiler documents the refugee’s hardship and their incredible determination to one day live in peace and ensure a better future for their children.
Check out the trailer for the film at the Nickel City Smiler website. A Karen refugee father shows us an apartment and says that a refugee family there didn’t get a blanket, didn’t get any soap, nor a toothbrush (all supposed “requirements” under the minimum standards of the State Department refugee contracts – see Operational Guidance). I hope the NSC’s Samantha Powers sees this documentary. Last year (as of Jan. 1, 2010) the State Department doubled the per capita (per refugee) public money that they give the resettlement agencies for refugees’ first 90 days of resettlement, so the resettlement agencies no longer have that excuse to violate the bare-minimum requirements.
Posted in Buffalo, Burma/Myanmar, funding, household items, missing or broken, Journey's End Refugee Services, Journey's End Refugee Services, Karen, neglect, Operational Guidance, safety, State Department | Tagged: Buffalo, Burma, CEP Films, Chance Encounter Productions, Journey's End, Karen refugees, Myanmar, National Security Council, Nickel City Smiler, refugees, Samantha Powers | 2 Comments »
Posted by Melissa Sogard on April 3, 2011
Refugee resettlement agencies seem to give nearly every refugee household old and worn non-stick pots and pans. The reason is that these are items are donated by organizations, religious groups, and individuals who are trying to help, are therefore plentiful. The problem is, these items are broken. Not only are they broken, but they are particularly dangerous for refugees who may never have cooked before on electric stoves (its not uncommon for refugees to leave empty pots on burners that are still on; that’s just a common error for people who are adapting to this new – to them -technology).
Why are these items dangerous? The problem lies with flaking non-stick coatings on this cookware and the resultant uneven heating that might accelerate emissions of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) – used in making the coatings. Emissions of this chemical into a home’s air – especially when overheated - can cause flu-like illnesses in people, and can actually kill pet birds (think of the use of canaries in coal mines). Refugees simply often overheat cookware on their electric stoves as they learn to use electric ranges for the first time in their lives.
The other problem is that most of the affordable apartments that refugee resettlement agencies place these refugees in have the typical nonventilating fans over the stove, which just recycle air through old filters that no one has changed in years. Also, refugee clients often use metal utencils on their pots and pans, and even if during 15-minute home-safety orientations resettlement personnel remember to mention to refugee clients not to do this, one or two times is rarely enough.
Donated cookware that has flaking non-stick coatings must be tossed in the garbage. None of us would use these items, and neither should refugee clients. Plus – the State Department contract makes it clear that agencies must not give items to refugees which are not “in good condition”.
That’s not optional. See Operational Guidance – [1] Furniture, household items and clothing listed need not be new, but must be clean, in good condition, and functional.
[emphasis added]
Posted in Cooperative Agreement, household items, missing or broken, Operational Guidance, safety, State Department | Tagged: Cooperative Agreement, human rights, non-stick coating, Operational Guidance, perfluorooctanoic acid, PFOA, refugee, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, resettlement, State Department | 2 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on March 10, 2011
Greg Wangerin, Executive Director of RefugeeONE (fka IRIM)
The Gapers Block -- a Chicago-centric web publication – has an article reporting about refugee clients of the refugee resettlement agency RefugeeONE (formerly known as Interfaith Refugee and
Immigration Ministries, and InterChurch Refugee and Immigration Ministries), an affiliate of CWS, EMM and LIRS. An audio interview details the abuses the couple suffered in Sierra Leone. When the US government resettled them to Chicago the woman shoveled snow into garbage bags and put them into the dumpster because she didn’t know what else to do with it. An elderly Somali man arrived and told her, “just push it to the side.”
But what about this resettlement agency? It turns out that they recently rebranded themselves as RefugeeONE, after long being known as Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries (IRIM). Why the name change? Sometimes I worry that these agencies think they can rid themselves of past errors and weaknesses (wrongdoings?) by essentially becoming a completely different agency, in the public’s mind at least, via a name change.
So what is in the agency’s past? It turns out we have an old State Department monitoring report of IRIM, when the agency was under the directorship of someone named May Campbell. This is the most recent available inspection report (which tells me that they are just about ready for another once-in-ten-years inspection, or the Admissions Office has been illegally holding back reports from our FOIA’s. It’s either one or the other.)
Let’s see — 1) Placed a refugee in an apartment with a leaking bathroom ceiling and a broken door lock, and another in an apartment with a “water problem” (normal for Chicago low-income apartments after all), 2) left a refugee family, including an elderly woman, to sleep on the floor of their apartment for almost five months (until the day before the pre-announced monitoring visit – funny how that works). It turned out that the eleventh-hour delivery of beds (two single beds for four people) was the only home visit the case worker did (supposed to be done within 30 days, not at 4.5 months), 3) apparently didn’t bother to give another refugee family any chairs or couch, lamp, or a bed for their one-year-old child — just a dresser, three tables, and a double-bed (???), 4) no table or lamp for another family. [Check out so-called "minimum-requirements" in Operational Guidance to see why this is cheating the refugees and the taxpayers], 5) staff were not meeting with refugee families to make sure that they were giving them basic services and meeting their essential needs.
The refugee family that was sleeping on the floor of their apartment also reported that their employer was taking advantage of them by requiring them to make up bathroom break times at the end of the day. Apparently IRIM (now RefugeeONE) did nothing to help these refugees with this blatantly unfair treatment. No doubt the excuse would be that the agency ”didn’t know about it” (yet aren’t these contractors paid to know what’s happening to their refugee clients? If the only people watching over these refugees in their first several months don’t know what’s going on then who would? No one.) Apparently the refugee clients also reported that the agency had not told them what to do — via required community/cultural orientation – in the event that they experienced unfair, exploitive or illegal labor practices. By the way when I made a trip back to Chicago in 2001 some Lost Boys of Sudan” refugee clients of the Heartland Alliance agency told me that coworkers at an O’hare airport baggage handling company where they worked where screaming at them and physically threatening them. They said they told their Heartland Alliance case workers but nothing happened. Things just seem to keep happening when government monitors are away — for 10 years at a time.
On a last note, in 2009 journalists at the Chicago Tribune quote RefugeeONE’s current director, Greg Wangerin, saying,”I’m ashamed. I feel like I’m selling a lie”, in reference to all the problems in refugee resettlement during the recession. Here’s my question: Do these private refugee resettlement agencies ever look to themselves when pointing the finger of responsibility?
Posted in State Department, CWS, Operational Guidance, Sierra Leonean, faith-based, Christian, beds, community/cultural orientation, Chicago, housing, substandard, furnishings, lack of, housing, Episcopal, Lutheran, Baptist, home visits, employment abuses, RefugeeONE (formerly, Interfaith Refugee & Immigration Ministries), RefugeeONE (formerly, Interfaith Refugee & Immigration Ministries), RefugeeONE (formerly, Interfaith Refugee & Immigration Ministries) | Tagged: Chicago, Church World Service, Church World Services, CWS, EMM, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Greg Wangerin, heartland alliance, human rights, Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries, IRSA, LIRS, Lutheran immigration and refugee services, Lutheran Immigration and Refugees Service, May Campbell, refugee neglect, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, RefugeeOne, refugees, resettlement, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on March 3, 2011
There is a new State Department monitoring report that we acquired via a FOIA that documents neglect of refugees. The State Department cited the Houston-based refugee resettlement agency, Alliance for Multicultural Community Services, an ECDC affiliate, for “partial-compliance” with their State Department refugee resettlement contract. Findings include:
- The Alliance had placed all three refugee families visited at home by monitors in housing with problems, including serious mold, roach infestation, and a serious plumbing problem that forced an Iraqi refugee family to move.
- A Burundian refugee woman did not know how to use either the stove or a thermostat in her apartment.
- The Burundian family’s second bedroom had no furniture, so the couple’s infant and 2-year-old toddler had to sleep in the parent’s room.
- The Burundian refugee family and a Burmese refugee family reported that the Alliance failed to give them required living-room furnishings, so the families had to garbage-pick sofas and chairs from dumpsters.
- The Alliance did not give refugees pocket-money, as required.
- The Burundian refugee family — with the infant and toddler — reported that the Alliance did not give them food or supplies for their infant upon their arrival as required, and that the Alliance did not use child safety seats when transporting the family to appointments.
- The Burmese refugee family reported that the Alliance did not have interpretation at the airport upon their arrival or during orientation. The Alliance finally hired someone who spoke their Karen dialect over four months after their arrival.
- Orientation to health care services in the area appeared to be incomplete, as both the Burundian and Burmese families expressed anxiety over their children’s medical needs and uncertainty about how to handle emergencies.
- The Burundian and Burmese families expressed anxiety over their prospects for self-sufficiency.
- The Alliance did not provide any structured training plan to new employees, as required.
- Refugee client case note logs contained minimal information, and often failed to record home visits. Monitors were often unable to verify that the Alliance provided refugee clients with the minimum-required services of the State Department refugee contracts (see contract documents – the Cooperative Agreement and Operational Guidance).
- Monitors noted Insect infestation in one or more refugee apartments.
- Monitors noted that the Alliance did not give some refugee(s) a ready-to eat meal upon arrival after long intercontinental flights, as required.
Then there are these comments about the Alliance from 2010. Note that three years after this State Department monitoring the Alliance is still putting refugees in substandard housing, etc.
So, in other words, the State Department noticed all these problems and three years later many of the problems have not ceased. What does that tell us about the effectiveness of the State Department monitoring trips? The State Department does not use any penalties for resettlement agencies’ they find in “non-compliance” or “partial-compliance” with the so-called minimum requirements of the State Department refugee contracts. Resettlement agencies don’t have to give back any of the government contract money they received for agreeing to provide minimum services and then not providing them.
Posted in Alliance for Multicultural Community Services, beds, Burma/Myanmar, Burundian, children, Cooperative Agreement, cultural/community orientation, post arrival, ECDC, food, furnishings, lack of, health, home visits, housing, housing, substandard, Houston, Iraqi, Karen, language, language interpretation/translation, lack of, meeting refugees at the airport, Operational Guidance, pocket-money, rats and roaches, State Department, Texas, transportation | Tagged: Alliance for Multicultural Community Services, Burmese refugees, Burundian refugees, ECDC, Ethiopian Community Development Council, houston, human rights, Iraqi refugees, Karen refugees, Kassahun Bisrat, refugee neglect, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, State Department | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on February 28, 2011
According to a U.S. State Department Office of Admissions’ monitoring report recently released Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Rockford is yet another refugee resettlement agency that didn’t bother to meet even the minimum requirements of its refugee contract.
The 2007 inspection report noted the following:
Also see the Operational Guidance contract document which lists minimum requirements that resettlement agencies promise to give refugee clients.
Posted in State Department, USCCB, Operational Guidance, Cooperative Agreement, Illinois, Burma/Myanmar, Burundian, faith-based, Catholic, community/cultural orientation, housing, substandard, Karen, language interpretation/translation, lack of, Chin, housing, cultural/community orientation, post arrival, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Rockford, Rockford | Tagged: State Department, refugees, USCCB, resettlement, Operational Guidance, refugee resettlement program, refugee resettlement, Cooperative Agreement, refugee resettlement agencies, Burmese refugees, Burundian refugees, Karen refugees, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Rockford, Catholic Charities Rockford, jeanne lindberg, Rockford, substandard housing, Chin refugees | Leave a Comment »
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
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