Archive for the ‘food’ Category
Posted by Christopher Coen on March 16, 2011
It looks as if the Catholic Diocese of Arlington switched from one type of disorganization to another from 2008 to 2010. A new State Department inspection report from 2008 indicates that the agency was placing refugee clients in Fredericksburg in housing with roach infestations, leaking windows and ceilings, and even demanded that a refugee sign an apartment lease without explaining it to her. She refused to sign it. A Burundian refugee father said that he appealed to the agency for six months to help him find a job but only worked about three days cleaning up shops.
Yet, two years later in 2010 local churches and volunteers were observing some very different forms of refugee neglect. Now, the agency was placing refugees in apartments without food or furniture and not giving refugees help with transportation. What is the rhyme and reason to these fluctuations?
If we assume that the State Department inspections — usually as rare as once in ten years — are at all effective, then what does it mean if noting one set of problems, and hopefully addressing them, simply leads to a sprouting of different problems?
One thing I know is that the State Department has no penalties for resettlement agencies’ failure to abide by even the minimum requirements of the government contracts. Could it be that the resettlement agency personnel sulk and pout over any criticism, and then temporarily fix the problems and then slack off on other minimum requirements? The reigning philosophy at many resettlement agencies seems to be that all problems are caused by 1) insufficient government funding (don’t raise the issue of the private funding they are supposed to raise to augment the public funding), 2) they don’t like having to do documentation of the services they claim to give refugees (who does like doing intensive paperwork?), 3) refugees are just so needy, and 4) hey, we just set up a new satellite office, so things won’t run well for a few years (what? refugees won’t even get food and a few used furnishings? why not?).
Whatever is happening, this case shows the limited effectiveness of current oversight in which 1) there are no penalties for failure to abide by contract obligations, 2) inspections are pre-announced, and 3) inspections are so rare that new problems can emerge in as a little as a few months or a year or two and the government inspectors won’t know until they come back ten years later.
It looks like we’re sorely overdue for a revamping of these inspections.
Posted in State Department, Burundian, faith-based, volunteers, employment services, Catholic, fredericksburg, Catholic Diocese of Arlington, churches, food, beds, transportation, community/cultural orientation, housing, substandard, fractious relationships with volunteers, furnishings, lack of, language interpretation/translation, lack of, Iranian, cultural/community orientation, post arrival, rats and roaches | Tagged: Burundian refugees, Catholic Diocese of Arlington, fredericksburg, inspection, Iranian refugees, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, State Department, U.S. Conference on Catholic Bishops, USCCB | 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 27, 2011
The State Department finally released another inspection report of YMCA International Services, a Houston USCRI affiliate, three years after we submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. I blogged about this case last June.
This report is from January 2008 and reports that YMCA International Services was “non-complaint” with most of the terms of its government refugee contract. That’s a nice way to say “contractual fraud” and “neglect and abuse of refugees”.
Here are some of the highlights of the report:
- All refugee homes inspected had significant roach and/or mice infestation.
- Refugees and YMCA expressed concern about safety of refugee apartment complexes. Refugee families at the Glendale Park Apartments complex reported that people were harassing them on their way to the supermarket and their children were getting into fights on the bus (being attacked?).
- YMCA did not give refugees ready-to-eat food upon arrival.
- Records were in complete disarray.
- Home visits to refugees were almost never documented.
- A Cuban refugee couple only had a bed with one small, thin blanket, a plastic folding table, and two folding chairs. The bed was extremely uncomfortable, if not unsafe, with protruding mattress springs. The family waited over 45 minutes at the airport for the YMCA case worker to arrive, who did not speak their language. YMCA did the housing and personal safety orientation using hand signals. The couple did not feel safe in the apartment complex. They had heard of local robberies and the police had come to their door warning them to.use caution in the parking lot. YMCA took 3½ months to give the family community and cultural orientation.
- Upon arrival YMCA gave an Iraqi refugee couple with a small child only one bed (no bed for the child) with one small, thin blanket, a plastic folding table, and two folding chairs. The bed was extremely uncomfortable, if not unsafe, with protruding mattress springs. The YMCA employee who picked them up at the airport did not speak their language. YMCA did the housing and personal safety orientation in English. The couple did not feel safe in the apartment complex as they had heard of local robberies and the police had come to their door warning them to
use caution in the parking lot. YMCA took 3½ months to give the family community and cultural orientation. There was no ready-to-eat food upon arrival. The family used money they brought from Iraq to buy food until they received their food stamps. Neighbors told them the apartment complex was “risky” and they wanted to move. The family received an electrical bill that began one month before they arrived, but YMCA told them they must pay it. No one from YMCA visited the family until three months after their arrival, and YMCA did not give them a community orientation so they did not even know how to use the bus system.
- YMCA placed a Burmese refugee family that arrived in December in an apartment that had a large hole in a ground-floor bedroom window, and the management still had not repaired it two weeks later. The bed YMCA gave them was so uncomfortable that they slept on the floor. No one from YMCA spoke their language at the airport. YMCA did the housing and personal safety orientation in English and hand signals. It was two months before someone from YMCA visited them at home.
- YMCA placed a Burundian refugee couple in an apartment complex surrounded by barbed wire. The only furniture upon arrival was four plastic folding chairs and five beds. For their first two months the family ate their meals on the floor. They pulled couches from the trash. No one from YMCA spoke their language at the airport. YMCA did the housing and personal safety orientation using hand signals. The family needed clothes but YMCA did not offer to help them.
- YMCA caseworkers were enthusiastic! Yipeeee!
- The State Department monitors had to order YMCA to check all fiscal year 2007 refugee cases and compensate refugees for all missing money.
- YMCA fired the Refugee Program Director, Gabriel Gebray, yet allowed the agency’s Executive Director, Jeff Watkins, to keep his job. He apparently got off scott-free.
Here is a question: if an Executive Director of an organization claimed he had no idea how his refugee clients were being neglected, what does that tell you about his performance? Don’t Executive Directors ever look at the records or talk to refugee clients?
I know ignorance is bliss but is it an excuse to not be accountable?
Posted in beds, Burma/Myanmar, Burundian, clothes, community/cultural orientation, Cuban, dangerous neighborhoods, food, furnishings, lack of, home visits, household items, missing or broken, housing, housing, substandard, Houston, Iraqi, language, language interpretation/translation, lack of, meeting refugees at the airport, rats and roaches, safety, State Department, USCRI, YMCA International Services | Tagged: Gabriel Gebray, houston, Jeff Watkins, refugee neglect, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, State Department, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI, YMCA International Services | 3 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 22, 2010
Nothing seems to have changed at Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of San Antonio, Inc. Last March we reported about the severe problems that Burmese refugee clients were having with the agency. Now Somali and Ethiopian refugee clients of the agency are coming forward to express their distress and frustrations. Refugees report that Catholic Charities placed them in small, roach-infested apartments without any home-safety orientation. When refugees call the agency they don’t hear anything back for days at a time, or case workers tell them they will be out to see them and then don’t show up. The agency has made late rent payments to landlords resulting in landlord warning letters to the refugees. Some refugees are also receiving electrical disconnect notices. Refugees lack transportation and report that overall communication with the agency is extremely poor. They asked to meet with the agency’s director of refugee programs, Paula Walker, but so far she will only speak to them by phone. Some refugees have been so desperate for help that they have resorted to calling 911.
An American volunteer said that some of the refugees asked him a couple of times to come and meet a group of new refugees “that nobody is helping”. He said he went and the small apartment soon filled with over 30 people. Most of the refugees were Somali and they were desperate. They shared some
of their stories. One said that his family was picked up at the airport and left for three days and two nights without enough food. Another refugee said that instead of the traditional rental assistance for six months, it was being cut to three months because of the huge influx of refugees into San Antonio. Yet another refugee said that they were a family with eight kids and had a two room apartment. None of the refugees had a job and no one was helping them look. The volunteer said he came out of the meeting and saw a refugee woman with a young child with hydrocephalus—the child’s head twice the normal size. The woman said the family had been in the country for a month and still had not seen a doctor, nor did they yet have a doctor’s appointment. The child clearly needed a shunt inserted into his head to relieve fluid buildup.
The volunteer said he went back the next day and started on the myriad problems of one family – because the Catholic Charities’ caseworkers were refusing to help. While he was there, one refugee man called his Catholic Charities caseworker about an appointment to get scheduled inoculations for his family. The caseworker said that he couldn’t take the family because it wasn’t “in the budget”. Another refugee had an 85-year-old mother with hepatitis-C and a wife with a uterine infection – and again, no scheduled appointments. The volunteer reports that the number of serious complaints went on and on. Some refugees complained of verbal abuse from Catholic Charities staff, with an assistant director named Hisham telling one man that he “didn’t care about his problems!” All of this added to the volunteer’s experiences from earlier this year with the abandoned Catholic Charities Burmese refugee families. One Burmese refugee man hung himself and his body was found by children. The volunteer said that his conclusion is that there are hundreds of abandoned refugees in the Wurzbach-Gardendale-Datapoint streets area – and another 80 families are expected within weeks.
After the crisis with the recently arrived Somali refugees, a couple of days later the refugees called the police on Catholic Charities. Four police cars pulled up to the apartments. The police then called Catholic Charities to find out why they weren’t helping the refugees. Then two Catholic Charities administrators arrived and passed out $100 gift cards and told the refugees to go back into their apartments. A couple of days later, four blocks away, Catholic Charities held their annual “International Gala” at the Omni Hotel. The volunteer reports that San Antonio has been completely overwhelmed by vast numbers of refugees that continue to be mindlessly pumped in. The apartment complexes in the Wurzbach, Gardendale, and Datapoint streets area have basically become “refugee camps” of confused, frustrated, un-served, and under-served refugees.
Catholic Charities’ refugee program director Paula Walker was quoted last year in a news article about the agency saying, “In the past two years, the local program grew from helping 600 refugees settle into new lives to more than 1,000.” Perhaps this is the result of raising the number of refugees an agency receives so quickly in such a short period. That, of course, would be the State Department’s doing.
Posted in State Department, Burma/Myanmar, Somali, Somali Bantu, health, faith-based, Catholic, San Antonio, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of San Antonio Inc., food, transportation, housing, overcrowding, police, insufficient assistance with daily tasks, Ethiopian, late health screenings, housing, children, capacity | Tagged: Archdiocese of San Antonio, Burmese refugees, catholic charities, Ethiopian refugees, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, San Antonio, Somali refugees | 1 Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on August 17, 2010
A notice in Knoxvillebiz.com announces that Bridge Refugee Services Inc. is getting a new director:
Jennifer Ward Cornwell has been promoted to executive director of Bridge Refugee Services Inc. here
Who is this Jennifer Ward Cornwell? I looked her up and couldn’t find much of anything. Then I found a Facebook page with her name, which indicates that she just graduated from Furman University in 2007, and only just got a graduate degree this year. How is it possible that someone just out of school could be qualified to be the executive director of a refugee resettlement agency? (Although we hope she’s highly qualified and we wish her the best of luck, especially for the refugees’ sake.)
I suppose I should not be surprised by this at all in a field that also regularly employs people as caseworkers who have no experience working with refugees, and who often do not have masters degrees in social work. In fact you’re lucky as a refugee if your case worker even has a Bachelor’s degree in social work. But even in that case most of these people do not have a clue how to network with businesses to help refugees find jobs.
The other thing that resettlement agencies do is hire almost anyone who arrived here as a refugee themselves, and maybe has a college degree or worked for an NGO before they arrived in the US. But having been a refugee in no way automatically qualifies someone as a good case worker. I suspect that resettlement agencies hire refugees mainly for their foreign language abilities. Yet those skills often don’t help for long. Bosnian and other refugees from former-Yugoslavian republics are found all over the refugee resettlement field working as caseworkers and in other positions, and have language skills that are now fairly useless for the new set of refugees arriving these days. Although resettlement agencies are quick to tout the former-refugee experience of their caseworkers I think we should always ask, “but is this person a good case worker?”
Getting back to Bridge Refugee Services Inc., I just realized that we have a US Department of State inspection report for the agency from 2006. Bridge’s services leave a bit to be desired. Of all the refugees in the four families that the inspectors visited only one refugee was working. A Sudanese refugee family had arrived six months earlier yet the father was still unemployed even though he spoke good English. Refugees had to live in transitional housing for weeks – e.g. in a motel, a shelter, and in a host family’s home – before Bridge transferred them to permanent housing (this is a violation of basic requirements). Bridge also did not give ready-to-eat meals to all refugees upon arrival, as required. Files were often disorganized, incomplete or contained inappropriate documents. Caseworkers also did not know that refugees do not need social security cards to get a job, so the refugees were left to wait for months until social security cards arrived. I’m always struck with how we keep going year after year with the same basic mistakes being made over and over.
Bridge Refugee Services Inc. has had a several publicized problems this year — problems that the State Department inspectors obviously did not detect. See our previous coverage here, here and here.
Posted in State Department, CWS, EMM, Sudanese, Liberian, Meskhetian Turks (Ahiska
Turk), former Yugoslav republics, faith-based, Christian, food, Tennessee, Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services, Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services, employment/jobs for refugees, housing, Episcopal, Knoxsville | Tagged: State Department, refugees, resettlement, refugee resettlement program, refugee resettlement, Knoxsville, Bridge Refugee Services, refugee caseworkers | 2 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on August 11, 2010
Refugee resettlement services at Resettlement and Immigration Services of Atlanta (RRISA), a joint site of Church World Service (CWS) and Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM), is the focus of a recent article by a college student who did an internship at the organization, here. While having a good heart and trying her best to help the refugees the young woman also has obviously good critical thinking skills, and notices what works and what doesn’t work well in refugee resettlement.
For example, although she had never taught English before, RRISA assigned her the task of teaching English to Haitians.
One of my major tasks at RRISA was taking over the adult Haitian Medical Evacuees’ English classes. RRISA was the only resettlement agency in Atlanta assigned Haitian clients. I had never taught English before, and to make matters worse, I don’t know a word of Creole or French. One of the Haitians was fluent in Spanish, and when the barrier of communication was too great, I would translate into Spanish, and she would translate into Creole for the rest of the class.
This is one of the two most common complaints we hear from refugees – trying to learn English from people who do not speak their language. (Imagine sitting in a classroom and trying to learn Japanese from a someone who speaks no English at all.) The other most common complaint we hear is refugees who speak some English being placed in classes for beginners that are too easy for them and a waste of their time.
The intern also discusses RRISA caseworkers not even noticing when refugees’ Medicaid ran out, and not assisting refugee clients with serious health matters, even though these have a major impact on self-sufficiency.
Besides the Haitians, there are many refugees that come into the U.S. with chronic illnesses. Because RRISA’s goal is to encourage refugee self-sufficiency, case managers often do not address or have knowledge of the steps needed to ensure a client’s long-term medical care. Refugees are eligible for eight months of Medicaid upon arrival into the U.S. After that time, most are working and ineligible for public health benefits under current policy. For clients not receiving health benefits through employment, or needing procedures that Medicaid does not cover, Atlanta’s Grady Health System is a supposedly viable option for patients in need of specialist care. In my time at RRISA, I was assigned several health cases and acted as an advocate for clients.
Grady was a major source of frustration for my clients and me throughout the summer. Imagine waiting eleven hours in a Grady satellite clinic as a walk-in because your Medicaid ran out. Your case worker didn’t notice, and you have no more medication for your Hepatitis B. You wait, only to have the doctor see you for five minutes. Because you can’t speak English to him, he fails to read your file, which states that you still need treatment for your communicable disease. And to top it all off, you can’t work because of the illness.
I looked up the State Department monitoring report for RRISA and it is just unbelievable. Whereas some reports end with just 3-4 recommendations/criticisms of a resettlement agency, this report has 17.
Among the State Department’s findings: culturally appropriate ready-to-eat food was not provided to refugees upon arrival, staff retention was poor, financial records documenting expenditures for refugees were unclear and often inaccurate, in family reunion cases the agency showed a reliance on refugees’ relatives to give basic resettlement services, and RRISA acknowledged that their relations with the State Refugee Coordinator’s office was strained.
When the State Department inspectors requested to visit four refugees cases, RRISA notified them that all had out-migrated from Atlanta. (This often indicates poor services. Refugees will flee to new locations when their basic needs are not met.) The inspectors then requested to visit four other refugee families. The inspectors noted that RRISA delivered basic furnishings to three of the four refugees families, dressers and lamps, only the day before the State Department inspection (RRISA’s executive director acknowledged that it can take months for them to give refugee clients basic furnishings). All four of the refugees’ apartments also had insect infestations. A Somali refugee said that her young son had been repeatedly ill due to either insecticide inhalation or ingesting insects. The apartment RRISA placed her in was substandard – a non-working smoke alarm, a toilet seat broken in half, non-functioning appliances (dishwasher, freezer section of the refrigerator, and two stove burners), peeling paint, water leaking in from the door leading to the patio, and an inadequate seal on the from door (see Operational Guidance for minimum standards of services for refugees). She said that both RRISA and the apartment maintenance staff had been unresponsive to her complaints.
The Somali woman as well as an Iraqi refugee woman were both unemployed. Both claimed that RRISA had pressured them to find jobs immediately without regard to their circumstances (child care in the Somali case; home health care for the Iraqi woman’s ill elderly mother). The Somali refugee woman was unable to take English classes since she lacked childcare. Both women also said that they had never used public transportation nor had anyone at RRISA showed they how to use it. Another refugee family said that RRISA did not give them any baby food for their infant upon their arrival.
The State Department also found that RRISA had been improperly charging refugees for moving vans, apparently for delivering furniture to their apartments, from the State Department money intended for the refugees, and not charging it from the money the State Department pays for the agency’s overhead. One case had an outstanding balance due to the refugee at nearly 180 days after the refugee’s arrival. RRISA was also regularly stretching State Department funds for refugees beyond the 90 day maximum time limit (resettlement agencies must give refugees any remaining balance of their funds at the end of the 90 day State Department contract period).
There are many more deficiencies noted. Read the report, here.
Posted in Atlanta, childcare, Christian, CWS, EMM, employment services, employment/jobs for refugees, Episcopal, ESL & ELL, faith-based, food, furnishings, lack of, Georgia, Haitian, health, household items, missing or broken, housing, housing, substandard, Iraqi, Kenyen, Meskhetian Turks (Ahiska
Turk), Operational Guidance, RRISA, RRISA, secondary migration, refugee, Somali, State Department | Tagged: Atlanta, Church World Service, English as a Second Language, Episcopal Migration Ministries, ESL, Haitian Refugees, humanitarian paroles, Iraqi refugees, Medicaid, Operational Guidance To Resettlement Agencies, Refugee Medical Assistance, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement program, refugee self-sufficiency, refugees, resettlement, Resettlement and Immigration Services of Atlanta, RMA, RRISA, Somali refugees, State Department | 2 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on August 9, 2010
An article in Westlake Malibu Magazine and East County Magazine Refugee Resettlement: A Southern California Snapshot, written by a San Diego Red Cross employee, announces that San Diego is now the nation’s number 1 refugee resettlement site.
The author also claims that refugee arrivals in the United States accounted for less than 8% of all legal foreign migration to the United States in 2009, which was something I wasn’t aware of.
The article also contains an oft-repeated defamation of Iraqi refugees. According to the president of San Diego’s Refugee Forum, Iraqi refugees are troublesome due to their unrealistic expectations about standards of living.
As Ralph Achenbach, president of San Diego’s Refugee Forum points out “many of the [San Diego] refugees arriving are highly educated and skilled, with great potential to immediately contribute to their new communities.” Unfortunately, this can also be a double-edged sword as these refugees are accustomed to a higher standard of living in their home country and arrive in the United States’ harsh economic climate with unrealistic expectations. here
This belief about Iraqi refugees seems as if it is becoming deeply inculturated into the refugee resettlement community. It pops up all the time, even in inappropriate situations. In fact, most refugees with professional credentials and experience, including Iraqi refugees, simply want a chance to find a job in their areas of expertise, while most resettlement agencies are determined to make them take the shortest and easiest path to employment, which by the way also takes the least amount of work from resettlement workers. Resettlement agencies should be required to help refugees with professional credentials to write professional quality resumes, show them how to network for professional jobs, and refer them to organizations such as Upwardly Global, etc. Otherwise they are not only cheating the refugees, they are short-changing our society from benefiting from the refugees’ skills.
Another problem here that I’ve noted, illustrated by the San Diego Refugee Forum president’s defamation of Iraqi refugees with professional skills, is that the refugee resettlement program is insular, and they do not well tolerate different perspectives. Far from being true believers in diversity, most resettlement agencies are quick to criticize any dissenting, diverse viewpoints. In other words, diversity is good if it brings in more types of foreign culinary delights, music, and exotic looks and fashions, but diversity of viewpoints is something that will not be tolerated. Criticize the resettlement agencies and you will get a quick lesson in this.
The author also covers the issue of refugees being screened by US agencies for security threats.
If seeking resettlement in the United States, the Department of State takes on the case and will refer it to the Department of Homeland Security. Both agencies will then screen and interview the applicant to make sure that they pose no security threat.
But how can officials decide from interviews that refugees pose no security threat? Questioning them about their background. Looking for inconsistencies in their stories. Gut instinct. But let’s be clear, none of that is infallible. The system cannot stop all people with ill-intent, and determined to fool authorities by posing as refugees, from entering the US.
And then this blanket statement.
It is important to remember that refugees are not the ones partaking in the violence of their home country; they are the ones fleeing it.
Again, this is not entirely true. While most refugees resettled here are indeed fleeing from violence, there are some offenders among them. For example, an AP article just published details the case of Hutu Rwandan refugee Beatrice Munyenyezi, resettled in New Hampshire by Catholic Charities of Manchester in 1998. She now stands accused of genocidal crimes, including killing Tutsis, as well as participation in roadblocks and ID checks that resulted in untold other Tutsi rapes and killings.
Court papers give a graphic account of Munyeynezi allegedly striking a young Tutsi boy so hard in the head with a wooden club that he died instantly. here
Then of course we have the case last week of Somali immigrants in the US, refugees no doubt, that the federal government accuses of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization. In Rochester, Mn two Somali women were recently indited, along with five other Somali men in Minnesota (the case that now has 21 defendants from at least three different states — Minnesota, Alabama and California) here, here, here and here. By the way, U.S. Attorney for Minnesota B. Todd Jones said people from the local Somali community provided important tips in the investigations.
Finally, the author also claims that Catholic Charities, the largest refugee resettlement agency in San Diego, typically processes upwards of 1,200 refugees per annum. I was surprised when I read this as a State Department inspection report from 2006 indicated that in 2005 Catholic Charities resettled just 165 refugees, and only 42 refugees in the first four months of FY 2006. Why the huge increase, and how can an agency be expected to resettle such a huge surge of new refugees? It seems like a prescription for neglect.
According to that report the father in a Somali family resettled by Catholic Charities claimed that the agency did not give enough cash for the family to buy food, and did not give them any baby supplies for their child. In addition, Catholic Charities did not give any of the refugees lamps (a minimum-required item according to the Operational Guidance contract document) and did not give refugees’ relatives a chance to decline stepping in for Catholic Charities to supply basic services to refugee clients, if in fact the relatives were not able to do so.
Posted in State Department, Dept of Homeland Security, Operational Guidance, California, Somali, Iraqi, Rwandan, faith-based, employment services, Catholic, food, household items, missing or broken, employment/jobs for refugees, San Diego, Catholic Charities of San Diego | Tagged: State Department, refugees, resettlement, Operational Guidance, refugee resettlement, Upwardly Global, Catholic Charities of San Diego, San Diego, Iraqi refugees, San Diego Refugee Forum, Department of Homeland Security, Beatrice Munyenyezi, Rwandan refugee, Catholic Charities of Manchester, genocide, Somali refugee | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 10, 2010
The African Community Center and the State Department are continuing to resettle refugees to Las Vegas despite the city’s official unemployment rate of 14.2% (some estimate the “real” unemploymaent rate is closer to 25%). An article in the Vegas Seven publication extolls African Community Center’s virtues, while not asking any questions, here.
Since 2003, the ECDC African Community Center has helped hundreds of legally admitted refugees resettle in Las Vegas, often working with Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada and Nevada Partners to provide much-needed resources such as health insurance, language classes, job training and cash.
“One of the missions of the ECDC is to resettle and to help refugees, to integrate them fully in their new community and to help them find their way around in the new community, and to organize all the resources available, public and private, toward that end,” says Berihun Teferra, managing director of the African Community Center.
The center obtains funding from federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which offers a variety of assistance programs. The programs’ qualifications vary, and the center sifts through the details to find funding sources for every refugee. The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration also provides $1,100 of direct assistance for each refugee, which the African Community Center manages on their behalf.
Prior to the recession, the African Community Center saw 80 percent of its refugee clients placed in jobs within three months of arrival, which limited the amount of monetary assistance they needed. Now it usually takes six to nine months for refugees with training and knowledge of English to find work.
“Times are tough,” Teferra says. “Nevada is leading the nation in unemployment. That makes our task more difficult, but we’re not giving up. We have to do everything possible, and we are optimistic that the public is still generous.”
Private donations help bridge the gap when federal funding runs out, Teferra says. The African Community Center also relies on its partnerships with local hotel-casinos to find jobs for new refugees.
Yet, why is the State Department, the African Community Center, and ECDC (Ethiopian Community Development Council) continuing to resettle refugees to a state and city with such a high unemployment rates? Does it make any sense to do so? The ECDC and the African Community Center would no doubt protest that they would have to shut down operations in Nevada if the State Department were to cut the flow of refugees and federal funding, but at what price does this come to refugees to continue to resettle them to a place with such low employment prospects? What is more important, jobs for refugees or jobs for refugee resettlement workers? I guess we know th answer.
I also notice that the African Community Center’s managing director Berihun Teferra refers to private funding that her organization supposedly gathers for refugees, yet doesn’t give any details. This always seems to be the way it is with the private refugee resettlement agencies. They claim their involvement in the US refugee program is critically important as a “private sector” contribution, but give no information about what funds they actually give.
We know that these groups’ participation comes at a price to the refugees and the public, e.g. some of the agencies discriminate in hiring against the public and the refugees based on their religions. Also, the private resettlement contractors don’t have to answer to the public. They use layers of contractors and subcontractors, and the public is not able to look at their books the way we can with government agencies. So again, what are we getting for having to give up so much? How much do they actually give in real private funding?
Finally, a quick look at the State Department’s inspection report for the African Community Center indicates that they did not always bother to deliver the minimum-required items and services they contract to give, here.
Health screenings are often not done until well after the required first thirty-days. The African Community Center doesn’t give ready-made, culturally appropriate meals to the refugees upon their arrival after long intercontinental flights (refugees often haven’t eaten for two days because they are not familiar with food served on airlines). The agency jammed one refugee family into a small apartment that required seven children to sleep in one bedroom and violated local occupancy codes. Refugee families did not have minimum furnishings for their apartments — missing lamps, shower curtains, dresses. Refugees did not know that they had to report new addresses to Homeland Security. Case files were spotty (missing written records means possible missing services to refugees).
Posted in State Department, ECDC, Rwandan, funding, food, housing, overcrowding, household items, missing or broken, public/private partnership, discrimination in hiring, furnishings, lack of, employment/jobs for refugees, late health screenings, housing, African Community Center (Las Vegas), Nevada, Las Vegas, Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada | Tagged: African Community Center, Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada, ECDC, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Las Vegas, Nevada, refugees, resettlement | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on June 15, 2010
The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) has done it again. YET ANOTHER one of their offices or affiliates was found out of compliance with the bare minimum requirements of the State Department refugee contract (the Cooperative Agreement and its attachments) - this time in Raleigh, North Carolina here.
The State Department found that this USCRI field office was “non-compliant” with many aspects of the contract, including core (basic) services that were not always provided within required time frames, core services delegated to churches without a co-sponsorship agreement, and case files that were seriously deficient. In addition two of the four refugee homes (apartments) visited by the State Department inspectors were roach-infested and needed maintenance.
The State Department’s refugee office seems to grasp the concept of a representative sample of refugees, selecting refugee cases themselves from the files, or at least not allowing the contractor to select the refugee cases — in contrast to the ORR allowing resettlement contractors to hand-select refugees to speak at the Annual Consultation. I’ll give them credit for that. For this inspection of the USCRI Raleigh field office they selected four refugee cases to visit.
The first refugee case was a Burmese family — a husband, a wife, and their four-year-old daughter. They said the USCRI had placed them in an apartment without food (the Operational Guidance to Resettlement Agencies requires resettlement agencies to give the refugees food upon the their arrival). The inspectors also noticed that the case file notes indicated in one place that USCRI purchased food for the family before their arrival, and in another place indicated they purchased it after their arrival. Suspicious, they then found an altered Food Lion receipt in the file to make it seem that USCRI had purchased the food before the refugee family’s arrival. Nice try.
The second refugee case was a Burmese refugee family consisting of a husband, wife, and three young children. The wife said no one from USCRI had talked with her about employment, and that the family didn’t have beds for the adults or youngest child, nor a couch, until a week after they arrived. The family’s apartment also had second-floor windows that were in disrepair, presenting a danger to the young children. The USCRI listed a church as the responsible party for certain core services even though USCRI Raleigh does not use co-sponsors. The church was supposedly responsible for registering the school-age child for school, yet there was no notation when that had happened.
Another Burmese refugee said USCRI placed him in a heavily roach-infested apartment, with roaches crawling in every room. Again there was no food in the apartment upon arrival. He said his couch had broken springs, he had inadequate clothing storage, and the stove had broken burners.
A Montagnard (Degar – Vietamese highland people) refugee woman who arrived with her son told inspectors that USCRI Raleigh, similarly, never gave her any help to find a job. The USCRI also assigned her to the church that was not an official co-sponsor, and later a church volunteer ruined her efforts to get Medicaid, failing to take her to the interview in the required time-period and failing to bring the proper paperwork to the interview. USCRI also visited this refugee woman a week late (since home visits are only required to be done once in the first 30 days, that means this one didn’t happen until the refugee woman had been here for over 5 weeks!).
In addition, the agency’s case files were an utter and complete mess. Two files had no case notes at all, and a third contained only one post-arrival case note. Another case file began nearly two months after the refugee’s arrival, and four others ended only one month after the refugees’ arrival, even though the core-service period is 90 days. The agency also failed to document referrals to employment assistance, ESL, and whether or not they had provided food and home furnishings.
Unbelievably there is no sign that the State Department did even its usual wrist slapping by temporarily suspending assignment of refugees to this negligent USCRI field office.
Sadly, I suppose that this type of contract-cheating and refugee neglect from the State Departments “partners” is so common that it just doesn’t seem to call for much of a response.
Posted in beds, Burma/Myanmar, churches, Cooperative Agreement, employment services, food, furnishings, lack of, household items, missing or broken, housing, substandard, Montagnard/Degar (indigenous mountain people), neglect, North Carolina, ORR, Raleigh field office, Raleigh-Durham, State Department, USCRI | Tagged: Burma/Myanmar, Cooperative Agreement, Degar, employment assistance, ESL, field office, Medicaid, Montagnard, NC, North Carolina, ORR, Raleigh-Durham, refugee, refugees, roaches, State Department, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI, Vietamese | Leave a Comment »
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: contract, houston, monitoring report, R&P, refugee, refugees, resettlement, roaches, State Department, Texas, TX, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI, YMCA International Services | 4 Comments »
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
It looks as if the Catholic Diocese of Arlington switched from one type of disorganization to another from 2008 to 2010. A new State Department inspection report from 2008 indicates that the agency was placing refugee clients in Fredericksburg in housing with roach infestations, leaking windows and ceilings, and even demanded that a refugee sign an apartment lease without explaining it to her. She refused to sign it. A Burundian refugee father said that he appealed to the agency for six months to help him find a job but only worked about three days cleaning up shops.
