Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
The Los Angeles Times has an article on President Obama’s NSC review of the resettlement program, but it seems they got all their information from the resettlement agencies and their friends in the government here.
The IRC’s Bob Carey claims refugee women can’t feed their children! Apparently then resettlement agency workers, such as those at the IRC, aren’t helping them to apply for food stamps and WIC.
“The system is broken,” said Robert Carey, chairman of Refugee Council USA, an umbrella group of resettlement and advocacy groups. “There are women who can’t feed their children adequately and people who are really being brought into poverty. … There is a federal obligation in this to ensure that people brought in here are given the basic tools to rebuild their lives.”
Among other myths being spread by the resettlement contractors is that the system is broken because it’s a “one-size-fits-all-system.”
When the system was established by Congress in 1980, the U.S. was responding to an influx of refugees fleeing Southeast Asia, said Eskinder Negash, director of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. Today, the caseload is more diverse and a one-size-fits-all approach is no longer effective, he said. In fiscal year 2009, the U.S. accepted nearly 75,000 refugees from more than 70 countries, including many with special needs, such as single mothers and torture victims.
It’s funny because none of these insiders mention that $200 of the State Department per person grant (not per family) may be used by the resettlement contractors for special needs of any of the agency’s refugees that they choose.
They also don’t mention that the resettlement contractors are the ones who are supposed to write a personalized plan for each employable refugee specific to that refugee — special needs, obstacles to employment, etc. One size doesn’t fit all, and that’s where federal resettlement agency contractors are supposed to use their supposed expertise to help refugees. Instead they say the government should solve the problem. Then why do we need their great “private sector contribution”, which they so often tout?
It’s also ironic that former resettlement agency worker, and new ORR Director, Eskinder Negash (via the revolving door) complains about the difficulties of taking in so many diverse refugees. The resettlement agencies are the ones who constantly begged for new refugee groups to come in. If they really wanted to help more people wouldn’t they take more refugees from fewer groups, rather than some refugees from ever-increasing multiple groups? Where was the planning that should have been put in place before taking in groups for whom the resettlement agencies had few interpreters, e.g. the Burmese Karen, Karenni, and Chin? There was 20 years to plan while the refugees rotted in refugee camps in Thailand. Oops, let’s not talk about that.
Yet another complaint from resettlement agencies is that benefits for refugees vary by state. They fail to mention that cost-of-living varies by state as well.
The amount of public assistance refugees are offered varies among states and often doesn’t cover basic needs. In San Diego, a family of four typically receives about $828 a month compared with $335 a month in Phoenix, according to resettlement workers.
But if you read the State Department monitoring reports for, say Phoenix (see our tab above) you quickly learn that Phoenix was sold as a good resettlement site for refugees specifically because apartment rents are low (no mention of the lousy mass transit for low-income workers, with jobs on one side of the sprawled city, and affordable housing on the other, and the grueling heat (try 120 degrees fareinheit) refugees must stand in waiting for buses with multiple connections). So why shouldn’t refugees in expensive San Diego get more for rent than those in Phoenix? Am I being too logical?
I’m waiting for any reporter to really analyze the so-called NSC “review” of the refugee program to see if it is really anything other than a review of various ways to get more free public money to the government’s refugee agencies and their private partner friends.
In the meantime, our group continues to struggle to help refugees, while not taking even one government nickel.
