Archive for the ‘Issues’ Category
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 17, 2013
Residents of the Boynton Terrace public housing site in Chattanooga report ongoing problems that refugees are having adapting to life in their new country. This is the same site where a woman from Burundi was raped by a neighbor in 2009 and it took five days to arrest the suspect because no translator was available to ask the victim what happened. Bridge Refugee Services helped resettle 80 of the Burundian refugees to Chattanooga in 2008. Residents now are pointing to the problem of refugee residents who have not been able to learn English since they resettled, and have been unable to adequately adapt to the new culture and community. An article in the Chattanooga Times Free Press explains the situation.
Evariste Simbananiye lives in a fully furnished apartment in Boynton Terrace but prefers squatting, as he did in his native Burundi, to sitting in a chair.
Simbananiye, 64, is among a handful of refugees from at least three countries who live in or near the public housing facility. They’ve been there since 2007, but Boynton residents say some refugees still don’t have the support they need to adjust to a new culture and language.
Another Burundi refugee has had so many apartment fires that some residents say he shouldn’t use the stove. Instead of using a pot or pan to hold his cooking food, he holds it directly over the electric burner, much as he would have done with a fire in his homeland.
Before coming to the United States under a federal resettlement program, these refugees may only have known life in a refugee camp. Once here, they often cling to their old way of life because they can’t communicate well enough to understand and adapt to cultural differences.
“They were brought here and just dumped off,” said Bennie Haynes, president of the Boynton Terrace Resident Council.
The result can be friction with neighbors, and even public safety or health problems.
One of the things Boynton Terrace residents say needs to be communicated is not to use the bathroom in public places like the elevator.
And they’re asking the Chattanooga Housing Authority or some other agency to supply a full-time language interpreter on site to help.
CHA Executive Director Betsy McCright said she wasn’t aware of the request…
…The need for better access to an interpreter isn’t new. In 2009 a woman from Burundi was raped by a neighbor. It took five days to arrest the suspect because no translator was available to ask the victim what happened, according to news reports…
…Between 2005 and 2008, Bridge brought about 80 of the Burundian refugees to Chattanooga.
Most have since relocated to other areas…Read more here
That fact, that most have moved away (know as “”secondary migration”), should not be ignored. It may mean that the refugees were not happy with this area as a resettlement site, for any number of reasons. Maybe they could not become economically self-sufficient here, felt neglected by the agency, or some other reason. We need to ask the State Department why they continue to resettle refugees to this site if there is this apparently heavy out-migration figure.
Posted in alienation-isolation, apartment building fires, Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services, Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services, Burundian, Chattanooga, community/cultural orientation, cultural adjustment, cultural/community orientation, post arrival, elderly refugees, housing, language, language interpretation/translation, lack of, secondary migration, refugee | Tagged: Boynton Terrace, Bridge Refugee Services, Burundi, CHA, Chattanooga, Chattanooga Housing Authority, interpreter, refugees, rsettlement | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 16, 2013
Larry Bartlett, director of refugee admissions for the U.S. State Department will visit Fort Wayne on Thursday. He will also visit local refugee resettlement efforts in Indianapolis and Detroit next week. As usual, the State Department will only meet with “stakeholders” – resettlement agencies, service providers, advocates, Mayor Tom Henry and refugees themselves. The only refugees that State visits are those chosen by the refugee resettlement contractor(s). Although “advocates” are newly listed as stakeholders, as a refugee advocate myself I can tell you that State has never, that I know of, responded to independent advocates with dissenting views or invited them to attend these meetings. Accepting criticism were due is not a skill modeled or practiced by the federal refugee resettlement oversight agencies or their contractors. An article in the Journal-Gazette has more:
FORT WAYNE – Officials for the U.S. State Department and the United Nations will visit Fort Wayne this week to learn more about refugee resettlement efforts.
Larry Bartlett, director of refugee admissions for State, and Shelly Pitterman, regional director of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, plan to meet Thursday with those described by Bartlett as “stakeholders” – resettlement agencies, service providers, advocates, Mayor Tom Henry and refugees themselves.
“We try to go to communities on a regular basis to really try to understand where the nuances are, how communities are coping and how we might, if we can, adjust some of the programs,” Bartlett said from his Washington, D.C., office in a telephone interview last week.
The last time a State Department official came to Fort Wayne to evaluate refugee resettlement services was in 2009. Bartlett also will visit refugee communities in Indianapolis and Detroit next week.
“Part of the responsibility we have is not just to see how our programs are faring but to see how the community is supporting refugees, to see where there are issues, challenges, weaknesses in the programs that we can be helpful with,” Bartlett said.
“We really do see this as a partnership with the community,” he said…
…Eric Schwartz, then an assistant secretary of the State Department, discovered what he called “heartening and dismaying” conditions for newly arriving refugees of various nationalities when he visited Fort Wayne…in 2009…
…Schwartz ended his dispatch by saying the State Department would increase its resettlement grants from $900 to $1,800 for each new refugee, an amount that has since grown to $1,875. Roughly half the money goes for administrative costs of resettlement agencies, Bartlett said, and half pays for rent, food and other necessities for the refugee…
…The State Department has a nationwide ceiling of 18,000 refugee arrivals from East Asia in fiscal 2013, which ends Sept. 30. It expects 17,500 of them to be ethnic minority Burmese who have been living in refugee camps in Malaysia and Thailand.
The department has approved Catholic Charities for 170 refugee resettlements in fiscal 2013. Read more here
We read that the State Department per head refugee resettlement grant had increased, from $1,800 in 2010 to the current $1,875 as it turns out, but this is the first mention I’ve seen in the media. The grant only covers initial resettlement efforts in the U.S. – the first 30-90 days – which the State Department claims they intend as “seed money” for the private resettlement contractors to use for resettlement, with significant private resources supposedly added in. I suppose allowing the contractors to use 50 percent of it for overhead though somewhat defeats the purpose of the “see money” policy, although it may be necessary in instances where they are unable to find private resources to add. Otherwise, wouldn’t you expect that they would use the private funding for overhead and transferring the $1,875 directly to the refugees in goods and services?
The article somewhat confuses the issue of who Burmese are by referring to “ethnic minority Burmese”. The Burmese are actually the ethnic majority group in Myanmar, with minority ethnic groups being the Arakan (aka Rakhine), Chin, Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Mon, Rohingyas, Shan, Zomi and others. At this blog we now refer to refugees from the country as Myanmar refugees. The Burmese were the group allied with the Japanese in World War II, while the U.S., the U.K. and others allied with the ethnic minority groups.
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, Catholic Charities of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese, democracy, Detroit area, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Office of Admissions, openess and transparency in government, State Department, UN (United Nations) | Tagged: advocates, catholic charities, Detroit, fort wayne, Indianapolis, Larry Bartlett, refugees, resettlement, stakeholders, State Department, UNHCR | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 14, 2013
At least 25 Bhutanese refugees have committed suicide in the U.S. since the group began to resettle here in 2008. This blog reported on the problem when a few reports began to show up in the media and covered the stories as they occurred (see cases in Pittsburgh, Nashville, Buffalo and Phoenix). Refugee resettlement agencies have been for the most part silent about the phenomena. Risk factors include depression, not being the family’s provider, feelings of limited social support, having family conflict after resettlement, and having been resettled here less than a year ago. An article in The Atlantic magazine now shines a brighter light on this issue:
…Mitra Mishra killed himself. Subedi, a case manager for Bhutanese refugees at Interfaith Works Center for New Americans in Syracuse, NY, was with the 20-year-old Mishra at Schiller Park the evening of July 3, 2010.
“We played soccer just the previous day until 6 p.m. and he was totally fine,” Subedi said of Mishra, who was not a client of the center. “He played with me and I drove him back to his home. There wasn’t any indication. Nothing was wrong.”
On Independence Day, early morning walkers found Mishra’s body hanging from a tree at the soccer field.
…Mishra’s death is part of a troubling pattern among Bhutanese refugees resettled in the U.S. In August of 2010, about a month after Mishra’s death, Dan Maya Gurung committed suicide in Buffalo, according to the Bhutan News Service. Gurung was in her late 30s and had been in the country just two weeks. The next month, Nirmala Niroula, 35, also living in Buffalo, hung herself in her apartment. Niroula had moved to the U.S. three months earlier. That December, 20-year-old Menuka Poudel was found dead in her Phoenix apartment, hanging from a noose fashioned from the shawl Bhutanese women wear with their traditional clothing. She had been in the States just two months.
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) began to notice a pattern. Ultimately, 16 suicides were confirmed among U.S. resident Bhutanese refugees as of February 2012…
…The rate of depression among the Bhutanese surveyed was 21 percent, nearly three times that of the general U.S. population (6.7 percent). In addition to depression, risk factors for suicide included not being the family’s provider, feelings of limited social support, and having family conflict after resettlement. Most of the suicides were within a year of resettlement to the U.S. and, in all cases, the victims hanged themselves…
…the problem is not over just because the study period has ended. Nine more suicides have been reported to ORR since. The numbers may actually be higher, says Som Nath Subedi, the Portland caseworker. He says the community is reluctant to discuss suicides out of fear of how the news might affect resettlement, which continues today… Read more here
Posted in alienation-isolation, CDC, Hindu, mental health, Nepali Bhutanese, ORR, suicide | Tagged: bhutanese, Dan Maya Gurun, Menuka Poudel, Mitra Mishra, Nirmala Niroula, Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, refugees, resettlement, suicide | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 13, 2013
The death of two refugee children in a recent hit and run accident in Denver stresses the importance of resettlement workers orienting newly arrived refugees to the layout and rules of our communities. In this case the parent was crossing the road with the children where there was not a crosswalk. The family was clients of the ECDC African Community Center. Although many American neighborhoods are still not designed or managed for pedestrian friendliness it remains important that people do the extra walking that may be necessary to cross roads, especially busy ones, only where there are crosswalks. Some refugee clients who have been advised of this are also are not heeding instructions. By the way, this stresses the need for repetition in teaching. People need to hear information several times at least before that information settles into the mind. One time is usually not enough. CBS Denver has the story:
Two children killed in a hit and run crash in Denver last week were laid to rest … The search for the driver in the deadly crash continues.
The SUV struck Zamar Bee and her children, Zamay Kahn, 8, his brother Arzat, 6, near the intersection of 14th and Yosemite. The family was not using the crosswalk when they were struck.
Bee continues to recover from her serious injuries at Denver Health Medical Center.
“As you can imagine she’s not doing well. This is probably the most devastating thing that could happen to a mother,” said ECDC/African Community Center spokeswoman Jennifer Gueddiche…
Police said they’re still looking for the stroller that may have become wedged beneath the SUV. Parts of a stroller were found in the area of 14th and Yosemite but police have not confirmed if those are connected.
The ECDC/African Community Center has created a fund to help Bee with medical expenses and support…
Donations can be made at any Key Bank location under the Zamar Bee support fund. Read more here
Posted in African Community Center (Denver), Burma/Myanmar, children, cultural/community orientation, post arrival, dangerous neighborhoods, Denver, ECDC, safety | Tagged: African Community Center, children, crosswalk, Denver, ECDC, Ethiopian Community Development Council, hit & run, hit and run, refugees, resettlement | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 9, 2013
Last year the US State Department agreed to cut the number of refugees sent to Georgia for resettlement by 20 percent after the Republican-led state government asked for a 50 percent reduction. In a further discussion of that action an article claims some of the reasoning behind it is state and local budget concerns involving Medicaid, education and social services, including a rise in the number of refugee families requiring intervention by child welfare services. Also mentioned is a murdered Burmese student who and reports of robbery and refugee gang violence. An article in Governing the States and Localities looks at the issue:
…How refugees end up in certain states can be a complex process, and at least one state wants the federal government to slow down the pipeline…
…States Share Costs
The federal government pays for the relief programs created for refugees, but refugees and their families are also eligible for many safety net programs, including Medicaid and welfare, which states administer and help pay for. Their children also attend public school, which states help fund…
…At least one state, Georgia, says it has reached its capacity.
Last August, the state asked the federal government to reduce the number of refugees resettled in Georgia, particularly in the DeKalb County area, which includes part of Atlanta, citing state and local budget concerns involving Medicaid, education and social services.
“The DeKalb County Department of Family and Children Services has seen a rise in the number of refugee families requiring the intervention of child welfare services thus further straining our State’s budget,” Michael B. Singleton, Georgia state refugee coordinator, wrote in a letter to the Department of State last August.
The state, which in the past five years has accepted 12,703 refugees, also raised security issues in the city of Clarkston as another reason for wanting few new refugees. “In the past year, a Burmese student has been murdered and there have been reports of robbery and refugee gang violence,” Singleton wrote… Read more here
Although if we cut refugees off from states where someone is murdered who is in, or was once in, the refugee program we would have quite a few states who would no longer be shouldering their fair share of the program. The youth in gangs issue is what results when youth don’t feel that they belong anywhere, which is a problem across the board with disadvantaged youth in America. I think a big part of the solution is people in the community working one on one with these youth to guide them, teach them and show them people care about them. I do that myself with some refugee youth (I’ll devote a post on it sometime). We need more people volunteering.
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, capacity, child protective services, crime, gangs, Georgia, Hawaii, Medicaid, Montana, safety, schools, State Department, volunteers | Tagged: child welfare, gangs, georgia, Medicaid, reduction, refugees, resettlement, restriction, Social Services, State Department | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 6, 2013
In 2010 this blog reported on a case in Abilene, Texas in which a health district employee was accused of sexual assault of IRC refugee woman, then charged and jailed. Apparently after all this time the man has still not been tried in the matter. One of the constitutional rights we supposedly enjoy in this country is the right to a speedy trail, which is a potential concern in this case. Zane Travis in a letter to the Abilene Reporter-News expresses his own concern about the case:
I wish to alert Abilenians to a perceived injustice. You may have noticed recently that the trial for Aloys Nzeyimana was postponed for the 10th time.
Aloys was employed by the Abilene Health District as an interpreter for International Rescue Committee refugees and worked under my supervision and that of the official refugee nurse. For about five years. We watched him help refugees above and beyond expected duties, with kindness and humor. He was active in his church and at local organized refugee information meetings.
In December 2010, he was arrested in a parking lot as he was leaving the health department, apparently accused of sexually assaulting several refugee women. At the time of his arrest, he was held in the parking lot for 50 minutes until the newspaper could get there and take his picture, which was on the front page the next day. His office was quickly searched and contents removed.
His fellow employees (including me) were shocked at the charges. His bail was set at $450,000 — a heroic amount for no reported injuries. Nobody ever went to the E.R. claiming they had been raped or attacked. It is believed that the original charges may have been spurred by a disgruntled stepdaughter, who had been brought here from Africa at Aloys’ expense. Apparently there was a problem finding people who were allegedly hurt by him, since a notice was placed in Swahili on the front page of the paper asking for people to come forward who had been harmed by him… Read more here
Posted in Abilene, court, IRC, police, safety, women | Tagged: Abilene, constitutional, interpreter, IRC, refugees, resettlement, sexual assault, speedy trial | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 5, 2013
A group of nonprofit organizations in Buffalo, while admitting there are too many of them claim they are saving taxpayers $200 million per year through a variety of activities. One of the numerous local refugee resettlement agencies, Jewish Family Services of Buffalo and Erie County, claims it saves the taxpayer $2 million per year. The figures are based on a study by the group of nonprofits, the Agency Executives Association, which uses funny math to come up with the Jewish Family Services numbers. They claim that the 2008 LIRS cost analysis study (see our analysis here at D.5) of refugee resettlement claimed that expenditures per refugee was $3,480 per month. It wasn’t. It was $3,492 based on the first three months in the US per refugee case (a case could be a refugee family). Then, they don’t bother to subtract the amount that the government covers, e.g. the State Department contract money for initial resettlement. Instead, they give Jewish Family Services credit for paying all costs. An article at The Buffalo News has the story with claims based on these bizarre calculations:
Would you invest $1 to save $11?
That’s the return rate for tax dollars spent on a variety of services provided by area nonprofit agencies, according to a new study by a local group of nonprofit executives.
The study by the Agency Executives Association examined programs at two dozen area agencies to come up with its government savings estimates…
Taxpayers also save through services that reduce the number of kids who end up in juvenile detention and that move people from welfare into jobs…
The AEA, an affiliate of the United Way of Buffalo & Erie County, represents 142 nonprofit agencies.
Looking at programs run by 24 area agencies, the study found that taxpayers save an estimated $200 million per year.
Some other nonprofits in the report included… Jewish Family Services…
Jewish Family Services’ refugee resettlement program, which costs $333,812 for 150 refugees, is estimated to save the government $2.5 million. Compass House provides shelter for 307 young people at a cost of $520,590, saving an estimated $10.9 million – the expense of housing those youth in a detention facility for a year.
The programs represent a broad cross section of services provided by an estimated 6,000 nonprofit organizations. Nearly 300 of those agencies operate with revenues of more than $1 million, generating a local economic impact of $2.7 billion.
“The whole intent was not to produce a definitive study on the issue. The whole intent was to begin the discussion,” said Paul C. Atkinson, chief executive officer and president of Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Buffalo and president of the AEA…
Atkinson acknowledged – as many funders have argued in the past – that the area probably has too many nonprofit organizations.
But an appropriate discussion should be held to determine adequate funding levels and to find agencies and programs that can deliver services most effectively and efficiently, he said… Read more here
Posted in funding, Jewish Family Service of Buffalo & Erie County | Tagged: Buffalo, government program, nonprofits, refugees, resettlement, savings, spending, taxpayers | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 4, 2013
The Heartland Alliance refugee resettlement agency in Chicago claims it doesn’t have the funding to help its refugee clients enroll their children in preschool. But Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries (now RefugeeONE) says kids who don’t go to preschool start school at a deficit because of the language. That’s why it began helping its refugee clients with preschool enrollment a year ago. Yet, the process of enrollment is confusing, time-consuming and difficult to navigate. [Note: article from 2009, apparently republished now] An article in Catalyst-Chicago explains:
Less than half of the children of immigrant parents are in preschool, one study found. Advocates say families need extra help navigating the pre-k maze.
When Krishna Rimal left a refugee camp in the South Asian nation of Bhutan for Chicago, he dreamed of a better education for his two children.
After the family arrived in December, Rimal’s son was quickly enrolled in 1st grade. But his daughter, Anisha, who turned 5 after Sept. 1, has been unable to get into preschool. She is not eligible to enroll in kindergarten until next year.
Social workers at Heartland Alliance, a refugee resettlement agency that is helping the family with English classes and job training, told Rimal that free preschool is available, but they don’t have time to help him find one and fill out the paperwork. Rimal doesn’t speak enough English to do it himself.
“We are new, and we don’t know where to go,” says Rimal, 34, who lives in Edgewater.
Ashley Ginter, youth case manager at Heartland, has given the family some paper and crayons for Anisha, but says she can’t do more. Ginter has a caseload of 140 children from kindergarten to 12th grade. “There would need to be another person, part time, to help with all the families with young kids,” she says. “We just don’t have the funding.”
Experts in early childhood education say that children of immigrants and refugees benefit tremendously from preschool. At the very least, they expand their English vocabulary at an early age. But their parents’ poor English skills and lack of awareness keep many of the kids at home.
Just 46 percent of children of immigrants were enrolled in preschool, compared to 63 percent of other children, according to a 2006 study published in Social Science Quarterly…
…Until a year ago, families being served by Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries weren’t offered help enrolling their children in preschool. Amy Hill’s job as acting youth program coordinator didn’t include the younger children. But Hill says she was bothered by seeing several families with kids at home during the day. As a former teacher, she said she knew the kids “would already start school at a deficit because of the language.” So she began investigating preschool programs.
Even for Hill, the process of getting an immigrant child enrolled in preschool was confusing and laborious. Not every elementary school offers preschool, so calls have to be made to the district’s early childhood education office to find out what is available in a certain neighborhood. Some programs fill up as early as the previous year. More slots are available in half-day programs, but most families need full-day because of childcare issues. Applications can be complicated because families must prove that they meet income guidelines.
And sometimes, enrolling isn’t as simple as filling out some forms. Hill says that she had to call one school several times after turning in Head Start applications last spring for two children from Burundi and one from Burma. She eventually discovered that the school required all parents to meet in the fall for an interview process. Nobody was given an appointment, so many parents had to show up for several days to get an interview.
Knowing how much difficulty she had, Hill says families “on their own, would have never been able to do this.” Just 15 percent of the 120 kids on Hill’s caseload are preschool age, but she estimates spending a disproportionately greater amount of time working on their enrollment.
“They need to make it more uniform throughout,” Hill says of preschool enrollment policies. “There needs to be one way to do it, and one schedule.”… Read more here
Posted in Chicago, children, failure to enroll refugee children in school, Heartland Alliance, RefugeeONE (formerly, Interfaith Refugee & Immigration Ministries), RefugeeONE (formerly, Interfaith Refugee & Immigration Ministries), school for refugee children | Tagged: children, heartland alliance, immigrants, Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries, parents, preschool, refugees, resettlement, school | 2 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 3, 2013
It seems as though there is still a problem in the United Kingdom with overzealous social workers. This blog reported on a case in 2010 of a UK couple who fled the country after claiming to have been falsely accused by social workers of child abuse. Now, another family has written to us to report a similar case. They too have fled the country, claiming persecution by heavy-handed social workers. This two families are apparently just a few examples of what is happening. Read the letter below:
Hi there,
I am an unusual and unrecognized form of refugee and I have nowhere to turn. I have dual nationality: British and U.S. but am currently on the run, living in a country where my husband cannot find a job or speak the language. We have a one year old baby and a 16 year old son. 6 weeks ago we were living happily in the UK with few cares, decorating our home where we had been settled six years and looking forward to our son getting his A-Levels early. We had fought for a good home and schooling and lifestyle for ourselves and our children and were just beginning to reap the rewards. Then 4 weeks ago we took our baby to the accident & emergency department of the local hospital. There was nothing wrong with him. We took him because we had been staying in temporary accommodation for 2 days while our floors were replaced and sprayed underneath to kill woodworm and we discovered the company doing the work had not adhered to the safety regulations and also because the apartment we were staying in had a warning sign on the boiler. So when our baby was a little sleepier than usual at 10am we decided to take him to get checked out at the hospital to be on the safe side just in case he had inhaled some Permethrine insecticide or carbon monoxide.
The doctor at the hospital checked the hospital database and got us confused with the previous occupants of our address. He referred us to the Social Services after failing to believe that we had no medical conditions and no other children. All our baby’s tests came back clear and he was right as rain within 2 hours and playing football with the paediatrician. He was sent straight home.
The social services recognized the doctor’s errors and acknowledged them but decided to assess us anyway. The social worker then became very heavy handed and started threatening to remove our children. He started reporting lies to our health visitor who came to see us and told us that she had put him straight. We were told by our health visitors that we had nothing to worry about and that they would speak strongly in our favour. However the social worker became vindictive and continued to be dishonest. At this point we phoned a couple of ‘Justice for Families’ helplines we found on the Internet. They told us that there is a big industry in the UK. Every child who is successfully adopted brings up to £500,000 in to the County Council and the councils are under pressure of high targets and cash incentives. They are targeting children who do not have special needs and are photogenic and especially babies, unborn babies and children of European refugees and immigrants as they are easiest to forcibly adopt, easiest to take and easiest to make the adoption last/work (= more money). They forcibly took and adopted 1500 children last year (compared to the U.S’s 90). We were warned by Members of parliament and all sorts of intelligent people that this industry has become massive and a lot of people are fleeing the UK. European countries are up in arms protesting about all the children that have been unfairly snatched from their own nationals in the UK and are putting on television programs called things like ‘Briton’s Lost Children’ and top UK newspapers are writing articles with such titles as ‘Refugees Flee the Tyranny of UK Social Workers’.
We decided to leave before we could even begin to be assessed by social workers. We did this so that we would have the strongest leg to stand on, be well within our rights and they would not be able to seize our children abroad. on the day the social worker was due to visit us and start his assessment and receive our signatures allowing him to access info on us we fled before meeting him.
We are now in a country where we were advised (by the networks who help families to flee) to come. However, because of the nature of my husbands line of work he cannot find work here as there is not much industry and he needs the native language for a job. We don’t know where to turn. We have discovered that the SS in the UK have been assessing us in our absence despite us telling them we were no longer resident in the UK and ‘are now living with family abroad in a country our children are both nationals of’. (Yet we don’t dare do this lest they find us). We need to be able to go to a country where that we can find jobs and a school for our teenager. However we are scared to leave the country or go to any country for fear of them seeking us.
Please advise us. I believe we are fleeing persecution but do not know where to turn for help and advice. I tried emailing a solicitor in the UK and he said he could only help me if we return. I cannot afford a private solicitor. (We had to sell all our belongings and car, and put our beloved animals in shelters and flee the country within days.) We have some money but not much.
C.
Posted in child protective services | Tagged: protective services, refugees, resettlement, Social Services, social workers, UK, United Kingdom | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 1, 2013
Last year the Republican led State of Georgia asked the federal government to cut the number of refugees resettling to the state by 50 percent. In response the U.S. State Department reduced the numbers by 20 to 25 percent. The number of refugees was from roughly 4,000 per year to about 2,500. In response, Georgia’s IRC office’s Executive Director J.D. McCrary points out that 80 percent of refugees resettled in the state are economic self-sufficient after six months, the highest in the country. The Republican-led state government, however, claims that refugees put a burden on local and state services. An article at CBS Atlanta has more:
ATLANTA (CBS ATLANTA) – The state wants fewer refugees to resettle in Georgia. Georgia has one of the highest numbers of refugee populations in the country. These are people who have fled their home country for fear of persecution. Last year the state asked the federal government to allow half the number, saying refugees put a burden on local and state services…
…”Refugees are enormously successful and are a cultural, social economic boom to the state, IRC Executive Director J.D. McCrary said.
McCrary said refugees in Georgia have an 80 percent self-suffiency rate after six months, the highest in the country.
“That means from the day a refugee lands at the airport, they actually have a job, they are paying their own way, they’re paying taxes, they’re paying their own rent, they’re giving back to the community,” McCrary said.
Last year, the state requested 50 percent fewer new arrivals. McCrary said the state department decided on a reduction of 20 to 25 percent. The number of refugees went from roughly 4,000 per year to about 2,500.
“Fifty-percent. That’s an enormous request and in fact it’s an unreasonable request. We’re really not sure what the Governor’s or the states reservations are over the arrival of new refugees,” McCrary said… Read more here
Posted in Georgia, IRC, Office of Admissions, right-wing, State Department | Tagged: cut, georgia, IRC, J.D. McCrary, reduction, refugees, Republican party, Republicans, resettlement, State Department | Leave a Comment »
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
