Archive for the ‘Episcopal’ Category
Posted by Christopher Coen on March 10, 2011
Greg Wangerin, Executive Director of RefugeeONE (fka IRIM)
The Gapers Block -- a Chicago-centric web publication – has an article reporting about refugee clients of the refugee resettlement agency RefugeeONE (formerly known as Interfaith Refugee and
Immigration Ministries, and InterChurch Refugee and Immigration Ministries), an affiliate of CWS, EMM and LIRS. An audio interview details the abuses the couple suffered in Sierra Leone. When the US government resettled them to Chicago the woman shoveled snow into garbage bags and put them into the dumpster because she didn’t know what else to do with it. An elderly Somali man arrived and told her, “just push it to the side.”
But what about this resettlement agency? It turns out that they recently rebranded themselves as RefugeeONE, after long being known as Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries (IRIM). Why the name change? Sometimes I worry that these agencies think they can rid themselves of past errors and weaknesses (wrongdoings?) by essentially becoming a completely different agency, in the public’s mind at least, via a name change.
So what is in the agency’s past? It turns out we have an old State Department monitoring report of IRIM, when the agency was under the directorship of someone named May Campbell. This is the most recent available inspection report (which tells me that they are just about ready for another once-in-ten-years inspection, or the Admissions Office has been illegally holding back reports from our FOIA’s. It’s either one or the other.)
Let’s see — 1) Placed a refugee in an apartment with a leaking bathroom ceiling and a broken door lock, and another in an apartment with a “water problem” (normal for Chicago low-income apartments after all), 2) left a refugee family, including an elderly woman, to sleep on the floor of their apartment for almost five months (until the day before the pre-announced monitoring visit – funny how that works). It turned out that the eleventh-hour delivery of beds (two single beds for four people) was the only home visit the case worker did (supposed to be done within 30 days, not at 4.5 months), 3) apparently didn’t bother to give another refugee family any chairs or couch, lamp, or a bed for their one-year-old child — just a dresser, three tables, and a double-bed (???), 4) no table or lamp for another family. [Check out so-called "minimum-requirements" in Operational Guidance to see why this is cheating the refugees and the taxpayers], 5) staff were not meeting with refugee families to make sure that they were giving them basic services and meeting their essential needs.
The refugee family that was sleeping on the floor of their apartment also reported that their employer was taking advantage of them by requiring them to make up bathroom break times at the end of the day. Apparently IRIM (now RefugeeONE) did nothing to help these refugees with this blatantly unfair treatment. No doubt the excuse would be that the agency ”didn’t know about it” (yet aren’t these contractors paid to know what’s happening to their refugee clients? If the only people watching over these refugees in their first several months don’t know what’s going on then who would? No one.) Apparently the refugee clients also reported that the agency had not told them what to do — via required community/cultural orientation – in the event that they experienced unfair, exploitive or illegal labor practices. By the way when I made a trip back to Chicago in 2001 some Lost Boys of Sudan” refugee clients of the Heartland Alliance agency told me that coworkers at an O’hare airport baggage handling company where they worked where screaming at them and physically threatening them. They said they told their Heartland Alliance case workers but nothing happened. Things just seem to keep happening when government monitors are away — for 10 years at a time.
On a last note, in 2009 journalists at the Chicago Tribune quote RefugeeONE’s current director, Greg Wangerin, saying,”I’m ashamed. I feel like I’m selling a lie”, in reference to all the problems in refugee resettlement during the recession. Here’s my question: Do these private refugee resettlement agencies ever look to themselves when pointing the finger of responsibility?
Posted in Baptist, beds, Chicago, Christian, community/cultural orientation, CWS, employment abuses, Episcopal, faith-based, furnishings, lack of, home visits, housing, housing, substandard, Lutheran, Operational Guidance, RefugeeONE (formerly, Interfaith Refugee & Immigration Ministries), RefugeeONE (formerly, Interfaith Refugee & Immigration Ministries), RefugeeONE (formerly, Interfaith Refugee & Immigration Ministries), Sierra Leonean, State Department | Tagged: Chicago, Church World Service, Church World Services, CWS, EMM, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Greg Wangerin, heartland alliance, human rights, Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries, IRSA, LIRS, Lutheran immigration and refugee services, Lutheran Immigration and Refugees Service, May Campbell, refugee neglect, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, RefugeeOne, refugees, resettlement, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on 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 Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services, Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services, Christian, CWS, EMM, employment/jobs for refugees, Episcopal, faith-based, food, former Yugoslav republics, housing, Knoxsville, Liberian, Meskhetian Turks (Ahiska
Turk), State Department, Sudanese, Tennessee | Tagged: Bridge Refugee Services, Knoxsville, refugee caseworkers, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, State Department | 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 July 28, 2010
A sudden increase in refugee resettlement in Wilmington, North Carolina is taxing local medical providers. The Wilmington affiliate of Episcopal Migration Ministries, Interfaith Refugee Ministry, based in New Bern, just began resettling refugees to Wilmington earlier this year.
A program to relocate political refugees in Wilmington has expanded faster than initially expected since it started earlier this year, leaving some medical providers pushed to fulfill the required health screenings.
As of mid-July, 43 refugees had moved to Wilmington since the beginning of the year. Resettlement officials expect that number to grow in the coming years.
The New Hanover County Health Department is in charge of the refugees’ initial health screenings soon after they arrive.
Betty Jo Bennett, a personal health nurse supervisor at the health department, described the services as an unfunded mandate, though she added the health department was fine with doing the tests.
“It’s growing faster than we anticipated,” she said during a presentation on refugee health to the county health board this month.
The health department so far has shifted job responsibilities to handle the screenings. But if the number of refugees double as expected next year, the health department will have to hire another full-time position, officials said.
Because the health department is responsible for public health, they are required to handle the communicable disease screenings and prevention.
Two licensed practical nurses and an administrative support staffer handle the screenings. The refugees undergo lab work and testing for tuberculosis or other communicable diseases and receive immunizations if necessary.
“Some come without an immunization record,” Bennett said. “We’re just doing infectious disease control like we always do.”
Many of the individuals who have come to Wilmington this year are ethnic Karen who fled from Myanmar, said Jamie Mills, director of the Interfaith Refugee Ministry Wilmington group that opened offices in January at St. James Episcopal Church on Third Street. here
Although New Hanover County Health Department is screening the refugees for communicable diseases, as required of all health departments, they decided that they could not do physical exams for refugees. As a result, Interfaith Refugee Ministry must find medical providers to do the exams – medical providers who also accept Medicaid.
As part of the refugee resettlement program, those coming into the country are eligible for Medicaid for up to eight months.
The refugees also are required to undergo physical exams as part of their entrance process. The health department has the option to conduct those physicals, as is done at New Bern’s health department, but New Hanover health officials decided they could not take on the extra work since they do not handle primary care.
Mills said that when he got to Wilmington, he received a page of area primary care doctors’ offices that stated they accepted Medicaid.
When he started making appointments for the refugees’ physical exams, he ran into the same problem other Medicaid recipients face.
“Only three accepted new patients,” Mills said. “At this point, we’re managing.”
My question about this, therefore, is why the State Department, EMM, and Interfaith Refugee Ministry are resettling refugees faster than initially expected? Regulations mandate that the state refugee coordinator hold quarterly meetings with state and local officials, resettlement agencies and other service providers. Were these meetings ever held? Was any plan set up for how refugees would receive both health screenings (for communicable diseases) as well as physical exams? It seems a bit late in the process to suddenly find out that the public health office won’t do the physical exams, and that there are only three medical providers who both accept Medicaid and are able to accept new patients.
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, EMM, Episcopal, faith-based, health, Interfaith Refugee Ministry, Karen, North Carolina, State Department, Wilmington | Tagged: Burma/Myanmar, EMM, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Health Department, Interfaith Refugee Ministry, Karen, Medicaid, Myanmar, New Hanover County, North Carolina, physical exams, refugee health screenings, refugee resettlement, refugees, resettlement, State Department, Wilmington | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 25, 2010
An article in the Syracuse Post-Standard details a refugee success story — a Bosnian man who is now a police officer and home owner. Apparently refugee resettlement agencies resettled more than 3,000 Bosnians in the Syracuse area and another 6,000 in nearby Utica.
When I read the article I noticed that the resettlement agency, Interfaith Works, a CWS and EMM affiliate, placed the refugees at the notorious Vincent Apartments on Smith Lane.
…The former InterReligious Council refugee program, which is now the Center for New Americans Refugee Resettlement Program at Interfaith Works, helped set up his family, and many other Bosnian families, at the Vincent Apartments on Smith Lane in Syracuse…here
According to media accounts Vincent Apartments is one of the properties owned by Longley-Jones Management Corp. at which the company illegally removed asbestos, exposing workers and residents to the cancer-causing particles.
A Syracuse company admitted Tuesday that its workers illegally ripped asbestos out of 98 apartment buildings across Onondaga County, potentially exposing residents to the cancer-causing material for up to 15 years.
Longley-Jones Management Corp. of Syracuse, Central New York’s largest manager of commercial and residential real estate, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to eight felony charges and agreed to pay $4 million in fines.
About $3 million will pay for the cleanup of remaining asbestos, which in some cases was left exposed inside apartments and communal laundry rooms, prosecutors said.
The case involves some of the Syracuse area’s most prominent apartment complexes, including several historic buildings. The largest apartment buildings are the Skyline Apartments, at James and Lodi streets in Syracuse, the Vincent Apartments near Syracuse University and Springfield Garden apartments near Le Moyne College in DeWitt.
…Federal investigators are trying to notify former and current residents of the affected apartments. But prosecutors said they likely will never know the names of all the residents exposed.
“We can’t identify, let alone notify, all of the people, ” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Benedict, who prosecuted the case.
“We’re having a dickens of a time tracking down some of the people who lived in these buildings, ” Benedict said. “Over 15 years, we don’t know who has been in and out of the buildings.” here
Refugees who lived in the following apartments should pay particular notice, although basement and laundry areas were also effected.
Vincent Apartments, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111 Rony Lane, and 101-111 Smith Lane, Syracuse
Here are some reviews by former Vincent Apartments tenants:
- Really poor services
Rated 1.0 out of 5.0 By gao – Oct 23, 2009
The management is a mess and the maintenance is horrible. I signed up automatic payment but I still got charged late fee because they messed up my credit card information. Generally need to wait for days before they come to repair things, even for emergencies. A big chunk of ceiling material just fell off in the bathroom and water from upstairs drips down. I called them yesterday morning and nobody shows up yet. here
- Reviewed by: Anonymous
Review Date: 7/26/2009
Rented: From 2008 To 2009
This place is filthy, loud, and dangerous. I lived with a roommate, our apt. was burglarized, my license plates stolen off my car, and other tenants cars were broken into as well. Things that maintenance promised to repair never were, snow and ice not cleared during winter and hallways are disgusting. here
A 2006 State Department monitoring report for the former InterReligious Council, now Interfaith Works, noted the following about an apartment visited by monitors:
…[in a situation involving] a Liberian single mother, monitors observed broken glass, trash and graffiti around the building and in the corridors. The hallways were dirty, an upper floor window was open without screens, the entrance buzzer did not work, and a metal stairway banister was broken. Another resident in the complex indicated to monitors that the complex was substandard and dangerous. Monitors were told that there had been a fire on the first floor and gunfire heard on several occasions. Although the refugee’s apartment was clean and reasonably comfortable, the toilet was not working and the bathroom sink was clogged. The family was missing one bed frame, which the mother described as having been given but not replaced when the original mattress and frame had been discarded for having bedbugs…here
Posted in beds, Christian, CWS, EMM, Episcopal, faith-based, former Yugoslav republics, furnishings, lack of, housing, housing, substandard, Interfaith Works, Interfaith Works, New York, safety, State Department, Syracuse | Tagged: asbestos, Bosnian, Center for New Americans Refugee Resettlement Program, Church World Service, CWS, EMM, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Interfaith Works, InterReligious Council, Longley-Jones Management Corp, refugees, resettlement, State Department, syracuse, Vincent Apartments | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 15, 2010
Sudanese refugees accuse Phoenix police officers of brutalizing them at an Episcopal church in Phoenix. The refugee men were sitting in a car in front of the church waiting for a reverend to unlock the doors for a prayer service when the officers accosted them, aggressively pushed and shoved them outside the vehicle, and dragged one man around, bashing his face into the ground. The other man is a Sudanese leader from Tucson. The city has now agreed to pay the men $150,000 to settle the case.
Some parishioners saw the men being handcuffed by police. They wondered why one man was face-down on the street outside their church, blood dripping from his face.
The incident outside St. Paul the Apostle Sudanese Episcopal Church, in which Phoenix police officers were accused of falsely arresting and abusing two Sudanese refugees, led to a recent $150,000 settlement to avoid a lawsuit.
…[Aluk Bak Deng, 38, of Tucson, and Angok Atem, 28] who received the settlement were planning on attending a prayer service inside the church that day in July 2009 joining other refugees to discuss an international court’s ruling on a regional dispute in their war-torn homeland.
St. Paul the Apostle, which is part of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, caters to Sudanese refugees.
An internal police investigation cleared Officers Jason Hammernick and Corey Shibata of any wrongdoing. City officials said similar settlements are approved to avoid the added expense of defending officers in court. The notice of claim from the incident outlined how the officers “conspired to falsify” details of the case to justify their probable cause for booking the men on suspicion of resisting arrest and to “avoid being held accountable for their wrongful conduct.
“Hammernick and Shibata told supervisors that they targeted the men as part of a routine traffic stop after running a license plate on a rented Nissan Xterra revealing that the vehicle had been used in a drug case months earlier.
Arok said the incident “looked like a humiliation,” and that many parishioners believed that the escalation from the traffic stop resulted from racial profiling. He said the men were wearing ties and looked like church members, not anyone connected with illegal drug activity.
“We are not denying there are drugs in the area, but this was in front of the church,” Arok said.
[The two Sudanese men] claimed they were aggressively pushed and shoved outside the vehicle, though the officers said the men refused to comply with commands, which led to the physical escalation. here
An article from July 8th gives more information.
One of the men, Aluk Bak Deng, is the president of the Arizona chapter of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, a democratic organization in the war-ravaged African nation.
Bak Deng, 38, had traveled to the church from his home in Tucson to speak at a prayer service at St. Peter and Paul Church near Seventh Avenue and Buckeye Road.
…The men say they were aggressively pushed and shoved outside the vehicle; the officers reported that Bak Deng and Angok Atem, 28, refused to comply with commands, which led to the physical escalation.
The Rev. Anderia Arok, pastor at St. Peter and Paul Church, said he and other congregants saw one of the officers “dragging” Atem and “hitting his face on the ground” in the scuffle.
“It looked like a humiliation,” Arok said. “(The police) did not give us an explanation when we asked what was the matter. . . here
Of course, internal police investigations clearing officers means relatively little. Are we supposed to expect that the police can police themselves? The only thing that would be meaningful would be the conclusion drawn from an investigation by a neutral third-party.
Secondly, the City officials’ statement that they approve similar settlements simply to avoid the added cost of defending officers in court insults our intelligence. Cities never settle police brutality cases if they think they have a good chance of prevailing, and the plaintiffs have the burden of proof. Big cities like Phoenix have full-time attorneys who they have to pay whether they go to trial or sit in the office, and have no hesitation to go to trial when they think they can win.
Posted in abuse, Arizona, dangerous neighborhoods, Episcopal, Phoenix, police, South Sudanese | Tagged: Aluk Bak Deng, Bak Deng, church, Phoenix, police brutality, refugees, resettlement, SPLA, St. Peter and Paul Church, Sudan People's Liberation Movement, sudanese | Leave a Comment »
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
