Friends of Refugees

A U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program Watchdog Group

Archive for the ‘Sacramento’ Category

FBI ‘community outreach’ to foster trust and generate goodwill?

Posted by Christopher Coen on March 29, 2012

Documents uncovered by The Associated Press revealed that the New York Police Department conducted an extensive surveillance campaign of the Muslim population in the northeast. Now it turns out that the FBI in San Francisco used a public relations program announced as “mosque outreach” to collect information on the religious views and practices of Muslims in Northern California. The claimed intention of the FBI outreach programs was to foster trust between law enforcers and members of the Muslim community so they could work together to fight crime and avert terrorism. We learn now, however, that the FBI was operating the community outreach in Northern California as part of a secret and systematic intelligence gathering program, and conducted without any apparent evidence of wrongdoing. The legacy of this deception will, no doubt, be to undermine trust for genuine outreach programs. An article at Msnbc.com has the story:

The FBI in San Francisco used a public relations program billed as “mosque outreach” to collect information on the religious views and practices of Muslims in Northern California and then shared the intelligence with other government agencies, according to FBI documents obtained by civil rights groups.

The heavily redacted documents, released after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, raise “grave constitutional concerns,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the National Security Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“In San Francisco, we have found that community outreach was being run out of the FBI’s intelligence division and was part of a secret and systematic intelligence gathering program,” conducted without any apparent evidence of wrongdoing,” said Shamsi. “The bureau’s documentation of religious leaders’ and congregants’ beliefs and practices violates the Privacy Act, which Congress passed to protect Americans’ First Amendment rights.”…

…The documents indicate that FBI was keeping records of conversations and activities within mosques and other Muslim organizations from 2004 through 2008, information that was provided by employees engaged in the outreach programs.

The announced intention of the FBI outreach programs is to foster trust between law enforcers and members of the Muslim community so they can work together to fight crime and avert terrorism…

…documents still under analysis by the ACLU indicate FBI San Francisco continued to mingle outreach and intelligence gathering through 2011, according to Shimsa.

The documents undermine trust for genuine outreach programs, said Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that makes policy recommendations to lawmakers and leaders.

“I think the recent documents further underscore how well-intentioned community leaders who talk with the FBI are instead the targets of this broad, intelligence-gathering effort,” she said. “It’s easy to see then how that community leader who had a conversation with an FBI agent finds himself being harassed when traveling or crossing borders.”

“These documents are illustrating the actual experiences of American Muslims that we have been hearing for a number of years now,” she added…

…Rules governing FBI surveillance were relaxed in 2008 to give more leeway to FBI “assessments” — a stage of surveillance that takes place before the opening of a formal investigation. These more lenient standards, critics say, allow information gathering on individuals without probable cause.

Rights groups are asking the Department of Justice to restore stricter rules on surveillance and to prohibit racial and religious profiling in all cases.

“What we need is for the FBI to go back to the standards set after the Hoover-era abuses.… guidelines put in place that required the FBI to engage in surveillance only if there’s evidence of wrongdoing,” said Khera of Muslim Advocates. Read more here

Posted in California, FBI, Islamic, NYC, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, Santa Rosa, security/terrorism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

ORR claims not to know about California budget cuts, with refugees unable to take English classes

Posted by Christopher Coen on November 2, 2011

The wait for refugees in San Diego needing to take english as a
second language (ESL) classes has increased by nearly 14-times. The head of the US Department of HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (that would be Eskinder Negash) claims he “was caught off guard by the size of the problem”, and did not offer any immediate solutions. Yet, the California state government has been in deep financial troubles for two years now. An article in Fronteras has more:

SAN DIEGO — On a recent Friday morning, students of Iraqi descent practiced phrases they might need for a job interview in the language lab at Cuyamaca College…

…English as a Second Language, or ESL, courses, are in high demand at Cuyamaca, which is located in San Diego’s East County.

“We had enough students on the wait list to double the program,” said Alicia Muñoz, Cuyamaca’s ESL coordinator. In fact, over the past two years, the wait list for ESL classes has increased by nearly 14-times.

Most of the demand comes from recently arrived Iraqi refugees. More than 13,000 Iraqis have relocated to San Diego County since 2005, making it one of the largest refugee communities in the country…

…But budget cuts – affecting community colleges across the state – have forced schools to cancel classes in many subjects, including ESL. At the same time, the demand for these classes has skyrocketed. And it’s not just community colleges that are feeling the strain.

County Supervisor Dianne Jacob has gotten an earful of concerns from elementary schools, hospitals and other public institutions in her district. They all say that they don’t have the funds to address refugee needs, especially on shrinking budgets.

“There have not been adequate resources available to serve this population,” Jacob said.

The supervisor recently hosted a meeting of refugee resettlement officials and service providers to discuss the problem…

…After the meeting, the head of the federal office of refugee resettlement admitted he was caught off guard by the size of the problem. He didn’t offer any immediate solutions, but conversations between Jacob’s office and service providers are ongoing… Read more here

A year-and-a-half ago we wrote to the ORR about a refugee who was unable to use medical health care in Sacramento – that too, explained a California state official, was related to budget problems. If the ORR had investigated the case – or even talked to anyone in California – wouldn’t they have discovered the budget problems by now, and the effects on refugees? How do they manage to be completely out of touch with the problems that refugees in San Diego (the largest resettlement site in the US) are experiencing?

Another issue we put in a complaint to the ORR about is the issue of discrimination in hiring by faith-based refugee resettlement agencies (World Relief and Catholic Charities). World Relief claimed they could not hire a Muslim former refugee in Washington state because “he might not feel comfortable while they prayed at staff meetings.” Yet, federal regulations prohibit worship on the public dime. The ORR claimed it was investigating, yet has stonewalled since we placed the complaint in April 2010. We wrote once again in April 2011 to find out what progress they were making, Mr. Negash’s Deputy Director, Ken Tota, did not even bother to respond.

Posted in Chaldean, discrimination in hiring, ESL & ELL, evangelical, funding, Iraqi, language, ORR, Sacramento, San Diego, World Relief | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Those pesky Iraqi refugees, willing to speak truth to power

Posted by Christopher Coen on June 26, 2010

The refugee resettlement public and private partners have set upon a new idea  – Iraqi refugees are difficult, troublesome, and hard to please.  This point of view of course stems from just one vantage point, that of refugee resettlement agency workers and officials, and government “partners” disinterested in taking an oversight viewpoint, having accepted this defamation whole and unquestioned.

According to an anonymous, unnamed government official in an article at Governmentexecutive.com, Iraqi refugees “have had a particularly difficult time adjusting to their new circumstances”  here.

As Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and State department officials begin consultations to make recommendations for the number of refugees allowed into the United States in 2011, the nation’s high unemployment is creating challenges for them.

“This is a new experience for the refugee admissions program,” said a State Department official with longtime experience in refugee and asylum programs. “Incoming refugees are facing a much harder time in achieving self sufficiency, which is the goal.”

…Program officials have begun providing information to would-be refugees before they enter the application process. “We want people to be aware — before they become committed to the U.S. as a resettlement country — of the current [unemployment] situation,” so they can pursue alternative countries for resettlement if they want, the State official said.

…A key problem for program officials is refugees often have inflated expectations of what life in the United States will be like.

“It’s hard to counter a lifetime of expectation,” said a senior official with the DHS’ Citizenship and Immigration Services bureau. Both DHS and State officials spoke on the condition they would not be named, during a briefing for reporters on the refugee and asylum programs.

…Iraqis, several thousand of whom have been resettled in the United States because their support for U.S. operations in Iraq placed them in danger, have had a particularly difficult time adjusting to their new circumstances, the State official said. The Iraqis, who are largely middle class, “are very surprised at the standard of living that the refugee resettlement program presents to someone,” she said.

(Notice that government officials no longer comment on the record. What sort of accountability, with openness and transparency — ordered for the federal agencies by President Obama – is offered by officials that always speak anonymously?)

Yet, are Iraqi refugees, particularly the SIV’s referred to in the article (“resettled in the United States because their support for U.S. operations in Iraq placed them in danger”) really so difficult, and have so-called unrealistic expectations? In fact, it seems as if these refugees are merely frustrated by the lack of assistance and extremely low-quality services offered to them by private agencies receiving public money to help refugees.

For example, in Sacramento refugee agencies took two SIV refugee men to fake interviews that not only wasted their time but did nothing to increase their chances to find any job, let alone the civil engineering jobs for which they were qualified (here). But the difference in this case was that these men dared to speak up about what the agencies did to them — they dared to speak truth to power. This troublesome tendency has also been found in other refugees labeled “difficult”, such as the Lost Boys of Sudan. Bear in mind that south Sudanese Dinka culture treasures freedom of speech as much as American culture does.

According to a reporter who recently wrote a series of articles about a resettlement agency that was severely neglecting its refugee clients, one of the first things an official offered to her as an excuse was that the Iraqi refugees are difficult. The statement astounded her because it was a refugee of a different nationality who was in crisis and left on his own that had started the inquiry. She thought to herself, “why were they trying to blame Iraqi refugees?” It was completely out of place.

Refugees who are troublesome are refugees who know too little and need too much help, or they are too educated and/or too outspoken. Resettlement agencies don’t like either group.

Posted in California, Dept of Homeland Security, employment/jobs for refugees, HHS, Iraqi, Obama administration, openess and transparency in government, Sacramento, SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) immigrants, State Department, USCIS | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

What its like to be an Iraqi SIV immigrant in Sacramento

Posted by Christopher Coen on March 27, 2010

Recently we received complaints from two Iraqi SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) immigrants in Sacramento, California about the resettlement services they received. Both of them registered with the State Department’s refugee admissions program and both received services via the ORR’s refugee services. One of the men was working as an interpreter/translator for U.S. armed forces in Iraq when terrorists killed his brother with a silent pistol four kilometers from the U.S. Army base he was working at, and with everything indicating that he would be the next victim. The other man worked for U.S.-led contractors. Both were civil engineers in Iraq.

In eight months in Sacramento neither one of them was able to find a job. One man has now been here over ten months and remains unemployed. The men say that their resettlement agency placed them in an apartment complex area contaminated with an industrial chemical, and with all sorts of tenants wearing ankle bracelets who had police checking up on them on a daily basis (refugee families there stayed no longer than a month before fleeing). They also say the refugee resettlement agency did not give them clothes, placed one of them in a dirty apartment that had not been cleaned after the previous tenant moved out, didn’t give one of the men any pocket-money or any kitchen supplies.

In addition, they claim that their refugee employment services agency asked them to sign a pile of papers that they would not let them take home and read first, and when one of the men hesitated, they threatened to not help him find a job if he didn’t sign the papers, sight unseen. He then reminded them that they hadn’t found him a job in 10 months so their threat didn’t have much weight, and he walked out. He no longer feels safe going back to such unscrupulous people, and now isn’t getting any employment services at all. The other guy took a quick scan through the papers he was asked to sign and noticed that they were full of blank spaces that could be filled-in later, as well as all sorts of lies about him refusing jobs — jobs he was never referred to! That’s your tax money at work.

After one of the men had been here three-month they took him to a job fair at a hotel. After five months the agency took him to a gas station. They made him wait outside while they let one of the agency employee’s relatives in for an interview first. He was then told, sorry, there would be no more interviews. Later he heard the relative got the job.

Then two months later the agency took him to a little food store stocking job with hours beginning at 6am (the first bus wouldn’t even get there until after 7:15am). What sense does it make to take an immigrant to such interviews? Does it help pad the case file and make it seem like they tried to help the SIV immigrants become employed?

So, are we getting our money’s worth for these employment services we are paying for? Does this really sound like the way to help professional SIV immigrants and refugees become economically self-sufficient? Government agencies are taking the VOLAG’s position that the solution to this type of thing is for the government to give the resettlement agencies more funds, so that they don’t have to concentrate on early employment. But do they HAVE to focus just on early employment without trying to help the refugees become economically self-sufficient?

Here is a statement from the March 2010 GAO report, Iraqi Refugees and Special Immigrant Visa Holders Face Challenges Resettling in the United States and Obtaining U.S. Government Employment (here), which tries to explain why so many resettlement agencies make so little effort to place professional Iraqi refugees and SIV immigrants in jobs that match their skill levels.

“According to an ORR official and resettlement agency officials, the U.S. resettlement program does not take into account refugees’ prior work experience and education in job placements. Rather, the focus of the program is on securing early employment for refugees.”

Yet, that isn’t really true. The federal regulations governing the refugee resettlement program focus both on early employment AND on achieving economic self-sufficiency. What sense would it make to try to place a highly skilled and experienced Iraqi civil engineer in a minimum wage job if there are civil engineering jobs that are going begging? Which position would offer a better chance for becoming self-sufficient, e.g. getting off of food stamps, section 8, etc.? Which type of job would allow the refugee or SIV immigrant to more quickly pay off their U.S. government-funded travel loan?

(See the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 45, Public Welfare, Chapter IV Office of Refugee Resettlement, Administration for Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Services, Part 400 Refugee Resettlement Program, Sub-part F_Requirements for Employability Services and Employment, Sec. 400.79 Development of an employability plan, here).

Also in the GAO report they write:

“We interviewed three Iraqi refugees about their experience searching for employment in the United States. Two had worked for the U.S. government in Iraq, and one was unable to find an entry-level position requiring no formal education. This individual estimated that he had applied for more than 30 low-skill jobs, such as for a busboy and cleaner, before his former U.S. supervisor in Iraq helped him find a job.”

That’s because competition for low-level, entry positions is often greater than that for high-skill positions that fewer people qualify for. I don’t think that the professionals in our government oversight agencies seem to get that. After all, how many of them have ever applied for no-skill or low-skill, entry-level jobs? If you have skills or experience then why would anyone pursue hard-to-get, low-wage jobs unless there were no available job positions in their profession?

It seems like we have a certain percentage of refugee resettlement agencies that are simply determined not to help refugee and SIV professionals find jobs that would allow for true economic self-sufficiency (I know there are some good agencies that do). Maybe they think it’s too much work or they don’t want to just Google the process and see how to do it. Certainly they face no government oversight pressure to get these people into the right jobs, jobs that not enough people in our society have the skills for.

As long as they can find them jobs flipping burgers (shouldn’t we leave those jobs to teenagers who need part-time jobs?) then they can claim they have fulfilled their contractual obligations for employment services. Is this a program we can be proud of?

Posted in California, CWS, employment services, HHS, Iraqi, Opening Doors, ORR, Sacramento, SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) immigrants, State Department | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

 
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