Friends of Refugees

A U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program Watchdog Group

Archive for the ‘revolving door’ Category

Senate confirms new Assistant Secretary of State of Population, Refugees and Migration Anne C. Richard

Posted by Christopher Coen on April 5, 2012

On March 29 the US Senate confirmed the former IRC Vice President Anne C. Richard as the new Assistant Secretary of State of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM). She will now be in charge of overseeing the State Department’s contracts with refugee resettlement contractors — for instance, the IRC. A notice at Human Rights First confirms the nomination:

On March 29, Anne C. Richard was confirmed by voice vote by the U.S. Senate to serve as the Assistant Secretary of State of Populations, Refugees and Migration (PRM)…Ms. Richards was nominated by President Obama on November 4, 2011 and approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 6 weeks ago.

Ms. Richard has served as the Vice President of Government Relations and Advocacy for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) since 2004, and previously served as Director of the Office of Resources, Plans and Policy at the Department of State… Read more here

Posted in IRC, revolving door, Ann Richard | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Only 55% of Idaho’s Employable Refugees Found Work In 2009

Posted by Christopher Coen on January 27, 2012

Many refugee resettlement agencies nationwide have resorted to assisting in sending refugees off to distant locations, including to other states, to find employment with meatpacking companies, dairies, etc. The employment rate for Idaho’s employable refugees dropped to only 55 percent in 2009. Jan Reeves, who heads the Idaho Office for Refugees, says his office looked farther afield to find jobs for refugees. (Of course finding far-flung jobs, such as at a dairy in Boardman, Ore., do not come without risks. A refugee died in an auto-accident trying to drive to Boardman in 2010.) As a result, apparently, the employment rate has moved back up to more than 70 percent. An article in Idaho’s State Impact has more:

In the last few years, more than four thousand refugees have found their way to Idaho.  They’ve come from Africa, and from East and South Asia. Most came to Boise.  For years, the city’s strong economy, good quality affordable housing and supportive community created an especially favorable environment for refugee resettlement.  Now, the recession has shifted that picture.

Most days, Nowela Virginie and her two young daughters are here, in her small apartment just off a busy thoroughfare on the outskirts of Boise.

Virginie is 23, and she arrived in Boise three years ago. She was born in Rwanda, but spent sixteen years of her life in a refugee camp in Tanzania…

…“You know, new country is supposed to be hard,” she says. “New language, everything is new…if you don’t speak any English, is so hard – really hard.”…

…Marcia Munden is a social worker with Catholic Charities of Idaho. She says Virginie is one of many refugees living in Boise who have found themselves stuck. “Three years ago we were just seeing a few extreme cases of refugees that had consistent difficulty with integration,” she says. “And then it really happened very suddenly where there were 50, 60, 100 families really struggling.”…

…The recession has complicated the hard task of refugee resettlement nationwide. But the shift is especially stark in Boise…

…Now, Boise is one of the places where the IRC has reduced the number of refugees it aims to resettle each year, cutting back by about a third. In addition, they and other local agencies that help refugees find work have adopted new strategies. Jan Reeves heads the Idaho Office for Refugees.  “We’ve looked at other ways of opening doors that we’ve never had to look at before,” he says. 

For example, Reeves says, they’ve looked farther afield, finding jobs for a number of refugees at a dairy in Boardman, Ore. The efforts appear to be paying off. Before the recession, in 2005, 95 percent of the office’s employable caseload found work. That dropped to 55 percent in 2009. It has since gone back up to more than 70 percent… Read more here

By the way, Jan Reeves is another person that came into government via the revolving door. Previously, he was the Director of the Mountain States Refugee Resettlement Program, and then Director of that agency’s Refugee Center.

Posted in IRC, Rwandan, Idaho, meatpacking industry, employment/jobs for refugees, safety, economic self-sufficiency, revolving door | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Massachusetts Director of state immigration office revolves back out the door

Posted by Christopher Coen on August 12, 2011

The Boston Globe reports that Richard Chacón, director of the state’s Office for Refugees and Immigrants is resigning from his $113,300-a-year job for a fund-raising position at MIT – a position that is no doubt even more lucrative. Note that Mr. Chacón worked as the Globe’s ombudsman at the time in 2005 when the paper made an unusual set of retractions on a story it did on the IRC’s neglect of refugees they resettled to the Boston area.

Richard Chacón, director of the state’s Office for Refugees and Immigrants, has resigned for a fund-raising position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the governor’s office announced today.

The governor’s office is identifying candidates to fill Chacón’s $113,300-a-year job, said Alex Goldstein, spokesman for Governor Deval Patrick.

Chacón, who left Friday, will join MIT in mid-August as the senior associate director for campaign planning, a university spokeswoman said.

Chacón served for nearly four years as director of the Office for Refugees and Immigrants…

Chacón had previously served as Patrick’s director of policy. He was also a veteran journalist at The Boston Globe from 1994 to 2006, holding a variety of positions from ombudsman to Latin America bureau chief. Read more here

Posted in Boston, IRC, revolving door | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

U.S. Customs and Border Protection – getting paid overtime not to work

Posted by Christopher Coen on July 29, 2011

In this week of federal debt trauma in walks an employee of U.S. Customs and Border Protection to tell us how federal employees at his agency get overtime pay in exchange for not working. But of course all of us who care about refugees and immigrants, for the human beings they are, already know this about government agency workers, as well as their friends in private industry at the resettlement agencies. Many of them do whatever they want to do, and they suffer no consequences whatsoever. That is why we so desperately need passage of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. Read more in Joe Davidson’s Washington Post column.

During a period when some in Congress and their related policy wonks think federal employees are overpaid, here comes Christian Sanchez, a Border Patrol agent who says he was punished for refusing overtime pay.

His bosses suggested that he get psychological help.

Instead, Sanchez has become a whistleblower, and on Friday he plans to tell gathering on Capitol Hill that he was retaliated against because he would not take overtime for doing no work.

Sanchez is an example of what the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower advocacy organization, calls “pocketbook whistleblowers.” They allegedly have suffered retaliation for actions that could save the government money.

This emphasis on guarding Uncle Sam’s pocketbook allows whistleblower advocates to broaden the appeal of legislation designed to expand legal protections for employees who disclose government waste, fraud and abuse. Supporting whistleblowers becomes more than helping individual employees who have been mistreated by the system — it becomes into an act of fiscal responsibility.

That approach could increase chances for the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. It’s come close to passage during the many years it has lingered in Congress, but proponents have not been able to push it across the finish line.

In a letter last month to President Obama and Congress, a group of federal whistleblowers urged them to approve the legislation, telling them that “you have allowed potentially billions of tax dollars to be wasted because all federal workers know they cannot speak up without engaging in professional suicide.”

Sanchez is speaking up, and he has paid a price.

There is little work to do at the Port Angeles, Wash., station, where he is assigned, he said. He calls it a “black hole” where agents have “no purpose, no mission.”

“The worst fraud on taxpayers is that we are getting paid overtime not to work,” Sanchez said in a prepared statement. When he first started working at the station, “I noticed it was common practice for everyone to get paid overtime not to work… Read more here

Our own experience with Customs and Border Protection also demonstrated how completely corrupt and debased that federal agency is. Before either the Left or the Right try to spin this case for their own interests, I’d like to remind everyone that for decades both the Democrats and the Republicans have repeatedly contributed to corruption by installing their own cronies in the federal agencies and courts, while turning a blind eye to the damage these people have done to the people and the nation.

I nominate Christian Sanchez as hero of the month. It helps to restore my faith in humanity when I see that our country still has people like this among our ranks.

Posted in Congress, funding, Government Accountability Project, immigration services, Obama administration, openess and transparency in government, police, revolving door, U.S. Customs & Border Protection, Washington | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The ORR’s 2012 Matching Grant Program

Posted by Christopher Coen on June 18, 2011

The ORR recently put out a message about the 2012 Matching Grant Program to refugee resettlement agencies. For the Matching Grant Program the ORR awards $2 in public funds for every $1 raised by the private resettlement contractor, up to a maximum of $2,200 in federal funds per capita (that is, per persons in the program, although not proportioned equally to all refugee clients).

Dear colleagues,

The Office of Refugee Resettlement is very pleased to announce the publication of the 2012 Matching Grant Program funding opportunity announcement.

The Voluntary Agencies Matching Grant Program is an alternative to public cash assistance designed to enable refugees, asylees, and other ORR eligible populations to become self-sufficient through employment within 120 to 180 days from date of arrival into the United States (U.S.) and/or date of eligibility for ORR services… Services provided under this cooperative agreement
include, but are not limited to, comprehensive case management, employment services, maintenance assistance, cash allowance, and administration.

…Participating agencies agree to match the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) grant with cash and in-kind contributions of goods and services from the community. Currently, ORR awards $2 for every $1 raised by the agency up to a maximum of $2,200 in federal funds per client. At least 20 percent of the non-federal share (the grantee’s match) must be met with cash or cash equivalent; the balance may be cash, in-kind services, or donated goods. Note that while Federal and match funds are calculated and awarded on a per capita or enrolled client basis, the actual spending of such funds is not per capita based. This is to allow Matching Grant Program service providers flexibility in providing individually tailored services (higher or lower than the per capita rate) necessary for the client to achieve self-sufficiency… [emphasis added]

Program related questions should be directed to Tom Giossi in the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Thank
you,

ORR

(An online version is found on the ORR website.)

So, it looks like resettlement agencies are able to direct money to
individual refugee clients depending upon the individuals’ needs. The policy does therefore, however place a large amount of power over individual refugees in the hands of these small religious and/or non-profit private groups. This freedom can also be misused to reward some refugee clients and punish others, especially those that speak-up. It would be naive to think this cannot and does not happen. Refugee clients are often fearful of retaliation from authority figures – and they commonly misperceive these small, private government contractors as “authorities” – due to the negative and traumatic circumstances from which they have fled  For that same reason, however, many refugee clients have learned the necessity of being courageous and speaking up for themselves when they see abuses.

My concern is the power this Matching Grant Program policy gives those agencies that have, or newly develop, a propensity to punish refugee clients who speak out. (I’ve seen it happen – this is not hypothetical.) To counter that negative and unintended consequence what we need here, at the very least, is unbiased and independent oversight – and that’s not what we have with the current cozy partnership between government oversight agencies and the private agencies they oversee. Not only is “partnership” the official policy, but most of the government monitors are former resettlement agency employees who went in search of government jobs – jobs that may be more demanding/ stimulating, but that also have much better benefits.

Therefore, who protects refugees from the real and possible abuses? Essentially no one, so far, except the outspoken and courageous community members and leaders we periodically see. I don’t think that’s enough though, and it certainly can never substitute for effective oversight.

Posted in employment services, employment/jobs for refugees, Matching Grant program, ORR, public/private partnership, retaliation, revolving door | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

How much funding do resettlement agencies contribute to the refugee program?

Posted by Christopher Coen on February 26, 2011

Lavia Limon, President and chief executive of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (and former director of the ORR, see revolving door category), claims in a Washington Post Op-ed that the refugee program should not lose any funding in the current proposed budget cuts because:

“The budget cuts proposed in the House would essentially shut down the U.S. Refugee Program…” Read more here

But wouldn’t that only be true if the government was paying almost all the costs of refugee resettlement? We know that the refugee program is supposedly a “public-private partnership” with the private resettlement agencies supposedly contributing “significant” financial resources to the program. But do they?

A Jefferson City KBIA article claims that the federal government provides the Refugee and Immigration Services of the Diocese of Jefferson City with “45 to 50 percent of its budget”. That may or may not be true since the Diocese of Jefferson City, as a religious organization, does not have to release its financial figures via an IRS 990 form. If we take them for their word it means that even if the federal government cut refugee program funding by 100 percent (which is not being proposed, instead only a 10% cut is being proposed) that the Diocese could still resettle 50-55 percent as many refugees as they are currently resettling, using their own resources.

Yet, is it really true that resettlement agencies pay for almost half the cost of refugee resettlement? Religious organizations, such as USCCB (the Diocese of Jefferson City’s national affiliate), CWS, EMM, and World Relief, do not disclose their financing. As for the resettlement agencies that are not technically churches and do disclose their finances, they are heavily reliant on government funding.

Last year when we sent our recommendations to President Obama’s National Security Council’s Refugee Reform Task Force we analyzed LIRS’ finances [look under D) The supposed real costs of R&P, including private costs, supplied by the resettlement agencies via the LIRS’ cost-analysis report do not add up.]

LIRS’ 2008 annual report shows that they received 92% of their funding from the U.S. government. When we looked at the 990 forms of the twelve LIRS affiliates that participated in the cost analysis study we noticed that three of these agencies depended on government contracts and grants for nearly 95% of their revenue – Lutheran Family Services in the Carolinas, Lutheran Services of Georgia, and Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees. Government funding accounted for 67%-81% of the funding for seven other affiliates that took part in the study. For two other affiliates there was insufficient data to draw any conclusion at all.

Posted in funding, LIRS, revolving door, USCRI | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Revolving door keeps twirling between government oversight & refugee resettlement agencies

Posted by Christopher Coen on January 30, 2011

The revolving door between government oversight and refugee resettlement agencies is alive and well. The Fargo Forum reports that Linda Schell, the former state refugee coordinator for the North Dakota, has now been hired by Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota (LSSND):

Linda Schell has been named assistant state refugee coordinator for New American Services, a program of Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, Fargo.

Schell has a master’s degree in social work from the University of Denver.

She was most recently the state refugee coordinator for the North Dakota Department of Human Services and has more than 30 years of experience in the public and nonprofit sectors. here

I met with Ms. Schell one time to discuss LSSND’s chronic neglect of their refugee clients, and Ms. Schell’s seemingly inability to curtail that neglect. Ms. Schell offered no feedback or solutions and instead spent the hour taking notes. When we later requested the notes via an Open Records request, to find out what was going since no one was telling us anything, Ms. Scheel’s state agency told us that the notes no longer existed. Why would someone takes detailed notes for an hour only to destroy them? Or were they destroyed after we requested them but before the state agency replied to us?

What can be said is that Ms. Schell spent years protecting LSSND and is now being amply rewarding for her loyalty with a private sector job with LSSND. And on and on it goes…

Posted in Lutheran Social Services of ND, neglect, North Dakota, revolving door | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Money Missing at Mutual Assistance Association in Lincoln, Neb.

Posted by Christopher Coen on November 1, 2010

A former executive director the Asian Community and Cultural Center in Lincoln, Neb., one of the ORR’s mutual assistance associations, used the agency’s funding to pay for auto repairs, eye doctor bills, a vacation, and improvements to a restaurant she co-owned with her husband. At least $16,000 is unaccounted for. The agency received $125,000 this year alone from the ORR for ethnic community self-help. An article in the Lincoln Journal Star gives additional details:

The former executive director of Lincoln’s Asian Community and Cultural Center may have engaged in financial improprieties that total $16,000, state Auditor Mike Foley said Monday.

Foley posted an audit report on his website alleging Modesta Putla used her position to manipulate the accounting process over a three-year period to give herself thousands of dollars in unauthorized raises and vacation pay, improper expense reimbursements and questionable payments to The Peacock Indian Cuisine restaurant owned by Putla and her husband, Samuel Rajkumar.

Other improper transactions Foley said auditors found included payments for auto repairs for Putla’s personal vehicle, eye doctor bills, personal Lincoln Electric System bills and window coverings for the restaurant, which recently closed…

…The Asian Community and Cultural Center, founded in 1994, is funded by private donations as well as grants from the city and Lancaster County and hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for refugee resettlement programs. According to its website, its mission is to “support and empower Asian people while sharing our cultures with the entire community through our programs and services.”…

…Foley said the improprieties went unnoticed by two certified public accounting firms involved with the Asian Center. One firm handled day-to-day accounting functions for the center, while the second did its annual financial audit.

According to Foley’s report, Putla had complete control over the center’s finances and was the sole contact with its accountants.

Foley wrote that he “believes strongly that additional monies are likely to be missing and other payment activities may be suspect or fraudulent.”

He has submitted the audit to the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office for further investigation. Read more here

Modesta Putla would certainly not be alone in her abuse and misappropriation of public funding at agencies claiming to assist refugees. Last year the CEO of Lutheran Family Services in the Carolinas (LFS), Suzanne Gibson-Wise, was reportedly using her agency’s funds for company paid vehicles, wireless internet in her home, countless Blackberries, a personal commode, and a new $4000 office conference table — because the one that was in the office wasn’t good enough. At the same time her agency was failing to give refugees minimum-required services and material items (here). A local journalist found two Iraqi refugee brothers scrounging furniture from a dumpster because LFS hadn’t given them any furniture, and they were wearing shorts and flip-flops in December because LFS hadn’t given them any clothes when they arrived in September. LFS and its national affiliate LIRS then announced that LFS would no longer be resettling refugees in Greensboro due to “financial reasons”, here In other words, they wanted the public to believe that refugee resettlement was not viable in Greensboro – even though other agencies have continued refugee resettlement in the city.

There was also the curious case of Myra M. Oliver, the late director of the International Institute of Connecticut, who paid herself $100,000 a year while her refugee clients lived in squalor in dilapidated apartments, here. She apparently kept taking a salary as she was dying of cancer and the agency was falling apart in ’07 and ’08.

Then, there is the Grand Dame of refugee resettlement corruption, Nikki Tesfai, the founder of LA’s African Community Resource Center, here. She was the darling of ORR’s then director Lavinia Limon (now head of USCRI) and even appeared on the Oprah show, while secretly skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars from refugee resettlement contracts.

Posted in funding, Lincoln, Mutual Assistance Associations (“MAAs”)/Ethnic Community-Based Organizations (“ECBOs”), ORR, revolving door | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Burundian Refugee Woman In Boise – Court Places Six Kids Into Adoption Proceedings

Posted by Christopher Coen on February 27, 2010

A Burundian refugee woman client of World Relief is the subject of a case in which a judge terminated her parental rights, and placed her six kids into adoption proceedings (here).

Members of a local World Relief-affiliated church, as well as its pastor, claim the woman’s home was not a safe place for her children. The Court, as well, would supposedly have had to see proof of serious abuse and/or neglect (Court records remain sealed). One claim was that she left the children home alone, but a World Relief-affiliated church previously moved her to a place outside Boise, where no one from her ethnic community lived. How would she have been able to, e.g. drag all six kids to the grocery store with her? (Did she leave them in the care of the oldest child? I’m speculating.) Yet, the refugee woman should have been able to show the Court some change or improvement — assisted by social services, classes in child care, mental health services, and/or other help. What happened?

Well, they placed this refugee woman in psycho-social rehabilitation sessions at Mountain States Group in Boise, which works with many refugees (via its EMM-affiliated Agency for New Americans), yet these sessions took place mostly without interpreters, through pantomime. (The woman speaks Kirundi, the national language of Burundi). Pantomime, obviously, would have been useless.

“….at least two federal civil-rights complaints [have been filed] against Idaho health providers for failure to provide adequate interpretation, which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is investigating….If those charges are substantiated, they could call into question the validity of her psychological diagnoses and land the case in federal court.Health and Welfare’s Bureau of Facility Standards has already agreed that Niyonzima received inadequate help from interpreters at St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center and the agency’s Medicaid certification bureau reported to McMillan that psycho-social rehabilitation sessions at Mountain States Group, which provides services to many refugees in Boise, were done in large part without interpreters, through pantomime. Staff at St. Al’s even remarked to the Health and Welfare reviewer that Niyonzima reported hallucinations–at the urging of her church friends–but when an interpreter was eventually called in, it turned out she was complaining of nightmares.

The psycho-social rehabilitation sessions may also have prevented her from visitation with her children while they remained in foster-care. Federal child welfare laws call for termination of parental rights if the children have remained in foster care for 15 out of any 22 consecutive months.

Kathy Tidwell, director at the Child Welfare Center at Boise State’s School of Social Work and founder of Tidwell Social Work Services, which works with Boise’s growing refugee community, said that federal child welfare laws provide strict time limits for terminating parental rights. If children are in foster care for 15 out of 22 months, the case goes to termination. “For many refugees who come here not speaking English, who come as women from countries where the expectations of women are very different, who have trauma histories … 15 months may not be enough time,” she said.

How would this refugee woman have been able to resolve the problems she was having in 22 months if she was receiving incompetent mental health care, and/or was misdiagnosed, and/or if she didn’t even need mental health care?

The question is, why wasn’t World Relief helping to make sure this woman was receiving responsible health care and mental health services? If they had simply monitored her case, they could have identified problems and contacted hospital and mental health services administrators to advocate for proper interpretation services. They also could have monitored the legal proceedings to make sure this refugee woman received competent legal representation. Why did it take someone from a non-World Relief-affiliated church, who met her randomly by just knocking on doors, to step in and help this woman?

The resettlement agencies who give the resettlement program a bad name always say that they are not responsible for refugees after their first 3 months, 4, months, 6 months, or 8 months (take your pick), but the reality is that the resettlement agencies are supposedly the local refugee experts, and after all, they are the ones who resettled her to the area claiming it was an appropriate resettlement site. They should catch these cases where circumstances leave their former refugee clients vulnerable.

The state refugee coordinator is also there to watch what is happening to refugees in the state (in this case Jan Reeves came in the revolving door via Mountain States Group, Inc.). State officials have the power to go into agencies and view their records to find out what is happening to refugees. They can also interview refugees with an interpreter if necessary to find out directly the problems the refugee is experiencing, and not just rely on occasionally looking at agencies’ records and only speaking to resettlement agency staff members.

This case reminds me of the Liberian teenager in Fargo who was meanly mislabeled as aggressive, crazy, and low-intelligence simply because no one bothered to find competent interpretation services for her (see our post here).

By the way, the Burundian refugee woman in Boise should not have lived with church members after initially arriving in Boise. The State Department’s Admissions Office has repeatedly warned World Relief affiliates (here, here and here) that this practice is prohibited. Of course the State Department’s warnings to resettlement agencies, and other slaps on the wrist, have long been ineffective. Most resettlement agencies just do as they wish as there are no real consequences to breaking contract requirements and regulations. Certainly there are no monetary consequences.

Finally, I would like to point out the accountability-shifting in this case that is so rampant in refugee resettlement. In this case the World Relief-affiliated church (a member of the church who was a World Relief volunteer brought the refugee to the church) that worked with this refugee woman claims that their church took no actions; that it was people in the church operating under their own volition.

At [Common Ground Covenant Church in Meridian] –a small evangelical church …several other families, including the pastor, Tom Bowen, began to assist Niyonzima as well….the pastor and three women from the church came to her house and asked her how they could help……..Pastor Bowen said..”[Niyonzima] had approached our church in helping with her kids, and then when she had asked us to no longer do that, we really weren’t involved,”…stressing that it was individuals from the church, not Common Ground, providing the assistance.

But is that really the case since even the church’s pastor was involved? A bigger problem is the resettlement agencies who always blame government oversight agencies. Then we have the State Department that won’t investigate these cases. They claim that we should report problem cases to the VOLAGS or to the state refugee coordinators. Yet, state refugee coordinators in turn tell us that they don’t have to answer to anyone but their governors, the federal oversight agencies, etc. Other state refugee coordinators tell us that we should not ask them to investigate problems, that instead we should ask the board of directors of refugee resettlement agencies to investigate.

So where does the buck ever stop? It seems like just a few people accept accountability in the refugee resettlement field. It is always the responsibility of someone else. This problem is the result of a culture of non-accountability, which I believe is systemic in refugee resettlement. It must change.

Posted in Agency for New Americans (in Mountain States Group, Inc., Boise), Boise, Burundian, child protective services, foster care, Idaho, language, language interpretation/translation, lack of, mental health, revolving door, World Relief | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

 
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