Friends of Refugees

A U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program Watchdog Group

Archive for the ‘failure to enroll refugee children in school’ Category

Refugee student excels in school, though resettlement agency did not enroll him right away

Posted by Christopher Coen on October 6, 2011

A refugee student, now in college in Tucson, is excelling in school after making the honor roll and graduating from high school with a GPA above 3.5. Hussein Magale said that his refugee resettlement agency did not enroll him in school right away, so he had to enroll in school by himself. He took 10 courses, including advanced placement classes, in his first and only semester of high school in the US. An Arizona Daily Wildcat article tells his story:

…Hussein Magale, who fled Somalia with his family in 1992 because of the country’s civil war, lived in the city’s camp for most of his life. The biochemistry sophomore, who speaks three languages, began translating for Doctors Without Borders, a humanitarian organization helping his camp, when he was a teenager…

…Magale said he always excelled in class and valued education because it was the only way out of the camp…

…To receive the Kenyan Certificate of Primary Education, or KCPE, Magale said he had to place in the top 100 out of more than 600 students in his group taking the high school entrance exam…He was number 23.

Magale said he continued to excel in high school until he arrived in Tucson in November 2009 through a United Nations resettlement program…

…Dualeh said the agency that brought him here did not enroll him in school right away. So Magale took the initiative, called around and filled out the paperwork. A few months after he left Kenya’s refugee camps, he was already taking classes at Catalina High School.

He took 10 courses, including advanced placement classes, in his first and only semester of high school in the U.S. He made the honor roll and graduated with
a GPA above 3.5…

…Magale’s GPA is still well above a 3.5, he’s part of the Arizona Assurance Scholars Club, captain of a soccer team… Read more here

Posted in Arizona, failure to enroll refugee children in school, school for refugee children, schools, Somali, teenagers, Tucson | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Volunteers in Rochester Report Refugees Neglected by Catholic Family Center

Posted by Christopher Coen on October 14, 2010

Volunteers in Rochester, New York are not happy with Catholic Family Center (CFC), a USCCB affiliate. One volunteer contacted us and described the agency’s treatment of some of its refugee clients as “disgraceful” and “completely unhelpful”. Recently they “dumped” a Somali refugee family – would not return the family’s phone calls or give the family any appointments, and later the family became homeless.

In another case CFC placed a Burundian refugee family with nine kids in a neighborhood that has the highest murder rate in NY State. CFC told the family they had to rent a particular rundown apartment that rented for $765 a month, when the going rate in the neighborhood was much lower. The volunteer said that the rent for the apartment was more than most apartments on prime blocks in the best neighborhoods in economically depressed city.

The Burundian refugee family arrived around eleven month ago and had to wait two months before their children were registered for school. The volunteer also noted that the family didn’t seem to understand about answering the phone, making it difficult for any potential employer trying to call them. Apparently CFC’s cultural orientation had been somewhat less than helpful. She said the family didn’t understand dates, months, or hours, and that they couldn’t read letters from the welfare office threatening to cut off their benefits if they didn’t attend a meeting across town on a certain day. When a second volunteer went to the family’s apartment she found that they had no food. They said they ran out of food after having to barter some of their food stamps for other things they desperately needed, such as car rides.

The first volunteer said that after 8 months of being in Rochester the family still had no prospects for a job. The mother asked her to help them make calls since she and her husband speak almost no English. She also went with the woman’s husband to CFC during the walk in hours and spoke to the family’s case worker. She described the woman as being beyond rude to them and told them that the job search was not her problem since the family had been here more than six months. She referred them to another case manager – giving them his phone number, but saying that he was not yet available as he had just returned from Sudan. The volunteer said she then tried calling him twice a day for five days but that he did not respond. The refugee heard about a place that was hiring but he and the volunteer were unable to get his resume that he had on file with CFC, and the job opportunity was lost.

Posted in Burundian, Catholic, Catholic Family Center (Rochester), community/cultural orientation, cultural/community orientation, post arrival, dangerous neighborhoods, employment services, employment/jobs for refugees, failure to enroll refugee children in school, housing, substandard, Rochester, safety, school for refugee children, Somali | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

New report released on USCRI’s YMCA International Services, in Houston

Posted by Christopher Coen on June 12, 2010

U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants’ (USCRI) Houston affiliate, YMCA International Services, touts itself as an “agency that provides holistic services to Houston’s refugee and immigrant communities”. 

According to a June 2008 State Department inspection report we recently received these  so-called holistic services include:

1) Placing refugees in a dirty apartment complex, with apartments without smoke detectors, apartments infested with roaches and mice, broken, running sink faucets (not repaired for 2 months), inadequate clothing storage and no hangers, and refugee families packed into apartments too small for them, 2) making refugees wait 3 weeks after arrival for community and cultural orientation, so that until then they had no idea even how to use the bus, 3) failing to give refugees ready-to-eat food upon arrival after their long intercontinental flights to the U.S., 4) basic furnishings provided late, 5) waiting 2 and 3 months before enrolling refugee children in school,  6) leaving refugees without interpreters at medical appointments, and 7) mixing up refugee client records so that files contained missing reports, files contained documents from unrelated refugee cases, documents in the same file contradicted each other, and case notes that didn’t begin until four months after a refugee case’s arrival.

The State Department temporarily suspended refugee assignments to YMCA International Services, but not due to the above conditions. In fact, these conditions, which the State Department termed “partial compliance” (of refugee resettlement contract requirements) were what actually allowed the suspension to end. The suspension ended due to improvement from earlier worse conditions (“non-compliant” with contract conditions), which included among other things:

1) Placing refugees in roach and insect-infested apartments that the refugees did not feel safe in, 2) requiring refugees to pay for electricity for a time that predated their arrival to the U.S., 3) giving refugees sub-standard mattresses, as well as apparently a whole list of unmentionables, perhaps deemed unprintable.

Now wouldn’t you think that refugee resettlement would have been permanently terminated with this inept agency (or are they just uncompassionate?), and certainly not resumed? Apparently not. Yet, in what other areas of life is ”partial compliance” with contracts considered an acceptable form of business? It seems like this is accpetable only because the customers – the refugees and the taxpayers – are voiceless in the matter. The system doesn’t answer to them.

I think that State Department Office of Refugee Admissions officials have some explaining to do.

Posted in beds, Burma/Myanmar, Burundian, community/cultural orientation, Cuban, employment services, Ethiopian, failure to enroll refugee children in school, food, furnishings, lack of, housing, overcrowding, housing, substandard, Houston, Iraqi, R&P, State Department, Texas, transportation, USCRI, YMCA International Services | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

 
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