Archive for the ‘former Soviet republics’ Category
Posted by Christopher Coen on December 1, 2011
The Morrison-Lautenberg Amendment of 1989 and the issue of whether Congress should renew it is up before us again (the last temporary extension of the measure expired on May 31, 2011). San Antonio’s Express-News reports that US Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee with oversight over immigration policy, is holding up the renewal of the Morrison-Lautenberg Amendment:
In 1989, Congress passed legislation authored by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., codifying the U.S. interest in assisting [people to] escape persecution...
…Congress has routinely renewed the refugee measure for 22 years. This year, as in the past, Lautenberg attached the legislation as an amendment to the foreign operations budget. But Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee with oversight over immigration policy, has stopped the Lautenberg Amendment dead in its tracks.
Smith raises two categories of objections. The first have to do with fairness. Smith contends that the 2,000 or so refugees who enter the United States annually under the Lautenberg Amendment receive preferential treatment in comparison with the other 73,000 refugees the United States takes in.
But that’s precisely the point of the amendment — to recognize special situations of persecution and open a relief valve to help avert a humanitarian catastrophe.
Smith’s second area of concern is that the amendment has never been subjected to oversight. Is the refugee program being run wisely and efficiently? Are people entering the United States under false pretenses?
Oversight hearings are entirely appropriate. We are confident that after hearing the facts about the refugee program, Smith will agree that the Lautenberg Amendment is a judicious and compassionate policy for legal immigration... Read more here
To understand this amendment we must first understand the meaning of the word “refugee” as defined by the Immigration and Nationality Act – the basic body of immigration law:
Refugee – any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. here
The Morrison-Lautenberg Amendment then added more language in trying to help people experiencing persecution within their country of nationality, and in circumstances that are not easy to prove. A member of a category group:
“…may establish a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion…by asserting a credible basis for concern about the possibility of such persecution.”
The category groups were Jews and certain Christians from the former Soviet Union (FSA), as well as certain refugees in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. A 2003 update to the law made the category also available to refugees from Iran – mostly Christians, but also Jews, Bahais, Zoroastrians and other persecuted minorities. Presently the US allows in only about two thousand people annually this category.
The problem with the Morrison-Lautenberg Amendment was that powerful US political groups, e.g. Jews and evangelical Christians, abused it to help people they favored emigrate to the US. It allowed people to enter the US as political refugees from the FSA even after glasnost (openness) and perestroĭka (restructuring) often made moot any claim to persecution. Preferential treatment was indeed given to these people, which left some people with a bad feeling about the amendment. The Morrison-Lautenberg Amendment, however, remains the only option for legitimately persecuted groups who stay trapped inside their countries of nationality in circumstances of persecution not easy to prove. I would agree that Congress needs to inspect the oversight of the refugee program to check the many shortcomings that we explore on this blog, but not in the context of the Morrison-Lautenberg Amendment. I also question why the category is only open to persecuted groups from a select handful of countries.
Posted in Bahá'i, Cambodian, evangelical, former Soviet republics, HIAS, Iranian, Jewish, Laos, legislation, Morrison-Lautenberg Amendment, Vietnamese | Tagged: evangelicals, Iran, jews, Lamar Smith, Lautenberg Amendment, Morrison-Lautenberg Amendment, oversight, persecution, refugees, resettlement | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on June 14, 2011
I submitted a question for George Rupp, president and CEO of the IRC, for his interview today by the PRM’s Assistant Secretary Eric Schwartz.
“Why does the IRC partner with local churches in their attempts to convert Bhutanese refugees to Christianity, for example, IRC’s partnership with The Word at Southern Hills church in Abilene, Texas?”
Unfortunately this comment seems to have magically disappeared from the list of submitted questions (funny how that works). Yet, I base the question on a news article from Abilene that I linked to in January. Personally I think that these refugees’ Hindu and Buddhist beliefs are serving them just fine and I don’t understand why our government and its contractors, therefore we as a society, are partnering to give these new Americans a new religion, which they haven’t requested.
So then I submitted another question, which this time they actually posted:
“A 2007 State Department PRM monitoring report for the IRC office in Baltimore indicates that the IRC and another resettlement contractor frequently placed refugees into an East Baltimore apartment complex that had evidence of questionable maintenance and security standards (housing that is safe, sanitary, and in good repair is supposedly a State Department refugee contract requirement). Monitors also noted that the IRC had failed to give a three-member Meskhetian Turk refugee family a crib and other supplies for their infant son. I note, again, that these items are listed as “minimum” required items in the State Department contracts. Why does the IRC fail to meet so-called “minimum requirements” of their obligations to refugees in the public/private partnership?”
The State Department did not select this question for use in the interview — of course — yet this question was also based on a document – one of the State Department’s own monitoring reports – so it’s not like I just make this stuff up. Again the State Department doesn’t want to discuss the issue.
I think there’s an obvious problem here when our government feels free to filter out substantive questions that it may not feel comfortable with, or which may not convey the message it wishes to control, but isn’t the supposed intent of our constitutional democracy to allow public input? I think we need to be concerned when a part of our US Department of State feels free to disregard that fundamental principle.
Posted in Abilene, Assistant Secretary of the PRM, Baltimore, Buddhist, children, Christian, churches, Eric P. Schwartz (former Asst Sec.), furnishings, lack of, Hindu, household items, missing or broken, housing, substandard, Meskhetian Turks (Ahiska
Turk), neglect, Nepali Bhutanese, openess and transparency in government, PRM, public/private partnership, State Department | Tagged: Abilene, Assistant Secretary of Population Refugees and Migration, Baltimore, Buddhist, censorship, Christian, constitution democracy, Conversations with America, conversion, Eric Schwartz, George Rupp, Hindu, International Rescue Committee, IRC, Meskhetian Turk, monitoring report, Population Refugees and Migration, PRM, public/private partnership, refugee, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, resettlement, State Department, The Word at Southern Hills | 4 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on September 10, 2010
The issue of lack of interpreters for refugees during medical appointments is the focus of an article in the Anchorage Press. The piece focuses on the case of a Sudanese single refugee mother who was coughing up blood, but who a medical clinic misdiagnosed as having “touch of pneumonia” while refusing any suggestion that she needed an interpreter. Doctors later correctly diagnosed her with a heart tumor and ovarian cancer, and operated on her twice – again with no interpretation provided. Medical personnel strapped her down, and then played western music and danced in a failed attempt to calm her as she panicked while not knowing what was happening.
According to the article there are now thousands of refugees residing in Anchorage, many of them given medical treatment at clinics and doctors offices without the use of interpreters.
…there are about 1,000 Southern Sudanese refugees, between 5,000 and 6,000 Hmong refugees, about 100-plus Somali refugees, maybe 50 Iraqi refugees, 100 Bhutanese refugees and about 500 former Soviet Union refugees. There are also various asylees from Gambia and South America, entrants from Cuba and refugees from African countries such as Togo and Congo…
…Many Alaska physicians are breaking the law—specifically, “Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires that any health care provider who receives federal funds, including funding from Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program or Medicare, to take reasonable steps to ensure meaningful access to its health services,” says Doreena Wong, a health policy expert and lawyer at the National Health Law Program, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C.
“It is horrifying to watch a human being treated this way. If you look at it from the doctor’s office, they don’t want to get known for this,” says Karen Ferguson, the director of the Refugee Assistance & Immigration Services (RAIS) program in Anchorage. She has a packet of information and a stocked reserve of horrific stories—cases of doctors’ seemingly malicious abuse of refugees in ill health….here
As in other parts of the refugee resettlement program, providers here are ignoring laws and regulations at will. I should note that when people do report the problems, the government oversight agencies do little to correct them. It’s as if the U.S. refugee resettlement program is still stuck in the wild west phase of its development, with government bureaucrats who can not be shaken out of their comfort zones.
…Medicaid in Alaska reimburses physicians for medical services but not for interpreters. It’s simple. An interpreter can cost between $40 to $120 per hour. If you are being paid $150 for a visit, it doesn’t make sense to pay $100 for an interpreter.
Curiously, the Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center in Fairview provides interpreters for any and every client who needs it. According to Joan Fisher, its director, they accommodate “over 21 different languages.” How? It turns out that with the special designation as a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), Fisher can bill the federal government for interpretation services. It’s no secret formula. Find the money and find interpreters. Alaska physicians are not malicious; they’re practical.
Thus one encounters the common “friends and family” solution—the free solution—a pernicious panacea, where the responsibility for finding an interpreter is passed on to the patient, who is recommended to enlist the help of a multilingual friend or family member. Of the nine providers interviewed for this article, eight said that they depend on friends and family for their patients with limited English.
Think about this: If you are a mother, and you have a son who is moderately bilingual, would you want him to interpret for you at your next appointment at the OB/GYN? If you are a father, and you have a daughter who is bilingual, would you want your daughter to interpret at your next prostate exam? Would you want your friend or family member to be the first to know that you have cancer?
In the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Department of Justice writes, “It is inappropriate to ask family members or other companions to interpret for a person who is deaf or hard of hearing. Family members may be unable to interpret accurately in the emotional situation that often exists in a medical emergency.” Are the Sudanese refugee and the deaf individual different in this respect?
If something goes wrong and the physician used a family member deemed inappropriate (such as a minor) as an interpreter, the provider is liable. The Health Law Program studied a cohort of malpractice cases and found that nearly three percent of all cases arose from such problems, costing doctors millions…
…Doreena Wong from the Health Law Program comments that “larger providers save money with interpreters.” For this reason, hospitals generally have systematic methods for interpretation needs. The problem is with small to medium private practices.
“The solution is simple,” says Barbara Richards, the regional director of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. If Alaska requests it, the federal government will provide the majority of the funding necessary to reimburse Alaska physicians for interpreters. Thirteen states have already implemented similar programs, including Washington, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Maine and Utah…
…The process to solve [this problem] is easy. Either the Alaska Legislature or the state director of Health & Human Services would need to recommend that interpretation services be included in the state Medicaid budget. Because law requires it, the federal government would immediately approve the expense. The state would cover a minority of the cost. Doctors would then be able to bill for interpreters.
Doctors want access to interpreters. Refugees need it. The law requires it. All the state needs to do is suggest it. In one of the most culturally diverse states in the nation, it only makes sense.
Just so readers know, language interpretation by phone is available to any organization that needs it via a company called Language Line. It is available 24/7 by phone in 175 languages and costs $2.90 to $3.90 per minute, with a $100 monthly minimum.
Posted in abuse, Alaska, Cuban, former Soviet republics, health, HHS, Hmong, Iraqi, language, language interpretation/translation, lack of, Nepali Bhutanese, Refugee Assistance & Immigration Services (RAIS), Somali, Sudanese | Tagged: ADA, Alaska, Americans with Disabilities Act, Anchorage, Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center, Department of Health & Human Services, Federally Qualified Health Center, FQHC, health care provider, interpretation, Language Line, Medicaid, National Health Law Program, RAIS, Refugee Assistance & Immigration Services, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, Sudanese refugees, Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act | 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 12, 2010
According to the requirements of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, agencies receiving federal funds need to make sure that limited English clients have access to adequate qualified interpreters. As is seen with the refugee resettlement program, however, that is more of a friendly “partner-like” suggestion than a real requirement.
In Chattanooga, Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services (a Church World Service and EMM affiliate) apparently placed refugees in public housing and then let them fend for themselves. Only recently has Chattanooga Housing Authority gotten around to trying to accommodate non-English-speaking residents.
Chattanooga Housing Authority officials are establishing a list of CHA employees who are bilingual and will volunteer to assist non-English-speaking residents.
“We have an emerging Latino population and an emerging Burundian speaking population in Chattanooga, so we wanted to make sure that we could accommodate their needs,” said Betsy McCright, CHA’s executive director.
So far the authority has identified staff who speak Arabic, French, Hindi, Burundi, Russian, Spanish and Swahili.
Establishing a language access plan is part of an overall goal to better accommodate non-English-speaking residents, said Ms. McCright, who also speaks French.
CHA board members approved a policy to establish the so-called language bank at their monthly board meeting last week.
…Bridge Refugee Services, a resettlement organization in Chattanooga, said it has placed about 100 residents in public housing sites or in CHA’s Housing Choice Voucher Program since 2007. The residents are from the Ukraine, Burundi, Cuba, Liberia, Sudan and the Congo. here
But all of this comes a little late to help a non-English-speaking Burundian refugee woman who was raped in May 2009 at Chattanooga Housing Authority’s Boynton Terrace housing development, and couldn’t find anyone to whom she could explain what happened to her.
The policy comes a little more than one year after a Burundian woman was raped twice in her public housing apartment. The man arrested for the crime lived next door to her and wasn’t taken into custody until five days after he allegedly committed the act because there was no translator to interpret for the woman. It was CHA residents who started to demand then that more services be in place to assist the refugees.
The language bank is a good program, but it took the housing agency a long time to do it, said Joe Clark, president of Boynton Terrace Apartments.
“It was the language barrier that was the problem a year ago when the lady got raped,” he said. “The housing authority didn’t have anybody to interpret for her, nor did the police department.”
The language barrier may make non-English-speaking residents easy prey for criminals, said CHA board Chairman Eddie Holmes, but the language bank should help.
In adition, as of January 2010 Burundian refugees continued to be harassed in Chattanooga Housing Authority homes.
…Councilwoman Sally Robinson pointed to recent harassment of Burundi refugees living in Chattanooga Housing Authority homes.
…In May 2009, a Burundi refugee living at the Boynton Terrace housing development was raped, which sparked calls for increased support to the refugees, a particularly vulnerable population. here
So where was Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services when the rapes and the ongoing harassment was occurring? No staff member who could speak the Burundian refugees’ languages (Kirundi and Kiswahili)? Well, it’s not like they have much to worry about. The federal government oversight agencies don’t have any penalties for refugee services contractors who violate federal law, i.e.Title VI. According to the reining partner-like relationship philosophy espoused by the State Department, if, on one of their rare inspections of a resettlement agency, the State Department inspectors find that the agency does not have adequate staff whom are able to speak the refugees’ languages, they simple politely ask that the agency think about trying to hire someone who can interpret. That’s that. A woman was raped twice and unable to communicate what had happened to her? Oh well, that’s unfortunate.
An earlier posting on Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services is here.
Posted in Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services, Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services, Burundian, Chattanooga, Cuban, CWS, EMM, faith-based, former Soviet republics, language, language interpretation/translation, lack of, Liberian, public/private partnership, safety, sexual abuse, State Department, Sudanese, Tennessee | Tagged: Boynton Terrace, Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services, Burundian, Chattanooga, Church World Service, Civil Rights Act 1964, CWS, EMM, Episcopal Migration Ministries, refugees, resettlement, State Department, Tennessee, Title VI | Leave a Comment »
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