Friends of Refugees

A U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program Watchdog Group

Archive for the ‘San Diego’ Category

Clues don’t necessarily point to hate crime in killing of Iraqi refugee

Posted by Christopher Coen on April 6, 2012

Although police have not finished an investigation of the killing of an Iraqi woman in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon on March 21, new clues seem to point away from the suggestion by a threatening note left at the crime scene that this was a hate crime. Shaima Alawadi, a 32-year-old mother of five, resettled to the US in the 1990′s. An article at Reuters points to new clues linked to the crime:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Court papers filed by police in the beating death of an Iraqi-American woman near San Diego cite her divorce plans and daughter’s apparent suicide attempt last year, but do not point to further evidence that the murder was a hate crime.

Shaima Alawadi, a 32-year-old mother of five, was found bludgeoned in her rented home in a refugee community of the San Diego suburb of El Cajon on March 21 and died of her injuries several days later, after doctors removed her from life support.

A threatening note found at the scene has given rise to suggestions that Alawadi may have been targeted because of her ethnicity, though police have cautioned against drawing that conclusion during the investigation.

According to a search warrant affidavit filed last week and obtained by Reuters on Thursday, a relative of Alawadi told detectives the victim had “been planning on divorcing her husband and moving to the state of Texas.” The documents show that divorce papers were found in her car.

The whereabouts of the victim’s husband, Kassim Alhimidi, at the time of the incident, also had not been confirmed, police said in the court papers… Read more here

Posted in hate crimes, Iraqi, Islamic, San Diego | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Interpretation problems in medical care can mean loss of eye sight or a mistaken abortion referral

Posted by Christopher Coen on December 6, 2011

In a post last January I wrote about the experience I had taking a refugee to the doctor for a muscle tissue biopsy. He spoke Sudanese Arabic but the medical staff connected him via speaker phone to a Kurdish Arabic interpreter. As a result of this insufficient interpretation he endured excruciating while not being able to communicate that they had given him insufficient local anesthesia. As a result he was too traumatized to go back for cancer tumor treatment. An article in the The San Diego Union-Tribune explains that these mishaps with refugees have included a mistaken abortion referral for a refugee woman, and a refugee man’s close call loss of his sight in one eye:

…David Sein-Lwin, chairman of the newcomers assistance committee at the Oakland Burmese Mission Baptist Church [said], “In my experience, health is one of the biggest issues [for refugees] because of language limitations. The Karenni have even less interpreters. I have helped several times with social services, and it’s pretty tough to do that [interpretation] to Karenni. It takes two [interpreters], it takes more time, and it can be frustrating.”

In these scenarios, one interpreter translates from Karenni to Burmese, and the second from Burmese to English.

[There are] health consequences for refugees who have limited or no access to translation services. Lia Tluang, for example, arrived in Oakland at age 16 with an eye injury that he’d sustained while working in Malaysia. Although he needed surgery to save the sight in his left eye, his Medi-Cal benefits were terminated after eight months. Tluang, who is of the Chin ethnic minority group, initially didn’t have the language skills to reapply on his own. He was able to get an operation at age 18, after he figured out how to sign up for Medi-Cal, but now, the vision in his left eye is limited to a distance of 1 foot.

Because of translation problems with a Burmese interpreter, a pregnant Karen woman living in Oakland who wanted to keep her baby was mistakenly referred for an abortion. A translator and doctor at Asian Health Services was able to intervene before the woman went in for the procedure.

“Our system is so fragmented, and it’s difficult to access care if you are English-speaking and insured,” Jeung said. “So if you are low-income, non-insured and non-English-speaking, this system makes no sense to you, especially if insurance didn’t exist where you came from. They need help in making appointments. If we refer them elsewhere, interpretation in a specialty setting is a challenge, and even physically getting to the clinic and affording bus fare – these are all the barriers that my patients encounter along the way.”

In Oakland, the burden of translation falls on a handful of people like Kwee Say, an interpreter at Asian Health Services who…is seemingly always on call….She is also literally putting out fires – once, a family called her when their apartment was burning down because they didn’t know who else to contact… Read more here

Posted in Karenni, language, medical care, Oakland, San Diego | 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 »

A one-woman resettlement agency

Posted by Christopher Coen on September 14, 2011

An unnamed resettlement agency in San Diego doesn’t seem to meet even the minimum requirements of its government refugee resettlement contracts. An article in the Los Angeles Times mentions the IRC, but does not identify it as the agency in question. Luckily Owliya Dima, an Ethiopian woman who arrived in the US 30 years ago as a refugee, tries her best to fill in for the negligent resettlement agency. What she finds, however, is that what kills refugees the most when they come here isn’t the lack of tangibles, its the loneliness. Perhaps this explains the number of suicides in newly resettled refugees, and the importance of connecting refugees to their cohorts.

Owliya Dima scanned the bare apartment, noting the only new items the family owned: six white pillows stacked on two box springs that were missing their mattresses.

In the living room were three mismatched sofas donated by a church. One of the few items in the kitchen was an old skillet that the refugee family had brought from Iraq. The father, Hussam Zabiba, held up a handful of miniature shampoo and soap bottles for Dima to see. “Hotel,” he explained.

Dima, an Ethiopian Muslim who had been a refugee herself nearly three decades ago, moved through the two-bedroom Anaheim apartment with an Arabic interpreter, compiling a list of needed items. “Iron? And vacuum cleaner?” she said, making a note to herself about what to look for when she scoured garage sales the next weekend.

Years of war and famine in the Middle East and Africa have brought waves of Muslim refugees to the United States. The newcomers have often found themselves in communities that are ill-prepared and, at times, unwilling to help.

And so, much of the task of caring for newcomers has fallen to volunteers like Dima. She is a one-woman resettlement agency…

…“Why I want to connect people, it’s not to fill stomachs, it’s to fill the emotional need,” Dima said. “What kills people when they come here isn’t the lack of tangibles, it’s loneliness.”… Read more here

Posted in IRC, Iraqi, Islamic, beds, household items, missing or broken, furnishings, lack of, Ethiopian, San Diego | Tagged: , , , , , | 8 Comments »

Refugees in San Diego denied refugee cash assistance

Posted by Christopher Coen on April 20, 2011

San Diego county welfare workers have been improperly denying Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA) to qualifying refugees since late 2009, according to an article in Voice of San Diego. The county welfare office claims that the California state government did not tell them until last month that these refugees are eligible for RCA (instead of regular welfare via the state’s CalWORKs program).

It was in late 2009 that the county should have begun dispensing RCA itself. Before that, the four local refugee resettlement federal contractors had distributed the funds to refugees, yet according to the article in late 2009 the federal government (ORR?) decided that San Diego county welfare workers should instead, distribute it — the way its done in every other California county.

County social workers have instead inexplicably been signing refugees up for CalWORKs — federal welfare that the US Dept. of HHS channels to the state of California — even though these particular refugees were not eligible for it (due to the State’s Department’s initial resettlement grant — which was doubled in 2010. Thus, having an income during their first month too high to qualify for CalWORKs). At the beginning of this month, however, the San Diego county welfare office stopped doing this, but did not refer the refugees to RCA instead, because it has taken 30 days to train county workers to carry out the change.

…the county has been routinely denying refugee applications for welfare and not enrolling those families in the alternative program, called Refugee Cash Assistance, which provides the same cash payments as CalWORKs but is funded from a special pot of state money for refugees. Since the start of this year, resettlement workers say, the mistake has affected dozens of refugee families’ applications, leaving some of the county’s poorest and most vulnerable without the cash aid they’re entitled
to receive…

…County officials acknowledge the mistake and say they’re working to fix it. But they don’t yet know how many refugees were improperly denied…

…The larger federal resettlement grant might not have been a problem…somewhere else. In California counties other than San Diego, welfare workers are trained to automatically refer refugees to the alternative cash aid program if their initial
resettlement grant makes them ineligible for welfare…

…But until recently, that wasn’t an issue in San Diego County, which has handled refugee assistance differently because its refugee community is so large. San Diego has four federally contracted resettlement
agencies that help newly arrived refugees adjust during their first months in the United States. Until late 2009, those agencies, not the county, were in charge of administering cash assistance to new refugee families for their first eight months.

The federal government funneled assistance money directly to the resettlement agencies with the hope that the agencies would be better equipped than the county to help refugees, who often have no English skills or experience navigating red tape.

But in late 2009, that money mostly stopped flowing to the local agencies. The federal government wanted refugee families to apply for welfare directly to San Diego County, just like in every other California county.

It’s still unclear why, but for most of 2010, the county approved refugee welfare applications, even for families with the larger resettlement payments that should have made them ineligible. Then this year, workers started counting the resettlement payment as income and just started denying applications…

…Kim Forrester, assistant deputy director of the county’s Health and Human Services Agency, which administers the CalWORKs and food stamps program, said it wasn’t until last month that state officials told the county it should be enrolling families ineligible for CalWORKs in the special program for refugees.

“We’re going to have it fully implemented within 30 days,” Forrester said. She said her department would identify any families that were inappropriately denied and issue their payments retroactively.

It’s also not clear why it took the county a year to realize it should have been enrolling them in the alternative refugee program. But when the denials finally started early this year, resettlement agencies didn’t know what to do…

…Until the county fixes the problem and trains workers to enroll refugees in Refugee Cash Assistance, more families could be denied… Read more here

The article illistrates the issue via an Alliance for African Assistance Iraqi refugee woman client and her two children, whom the Alliance simply handed over the grant money to ($1100 x three people = $3300). The family bought beds, a new extra income their first month if the Alliance had done its job and bought these items for the family instead?

By the way, it was in early 2010 that we received word from SIV immigrants in Sacramento that they could not get the eight months of federal medical coverage that they qualified for. It that case, Thuan
Nguyen, the California state refugee coordinator, also claimed that it was a training issue at the local welfare office. An Iraqi SIV sat without coverage for months, and endured extremely painful passage of kidney stones.

**UPDATE** April 25, 2011

Posted in Alliance for African Assistance (San Diego), California, Catholic Charities of San Diego, health, HHS, Iraqi, IRC, Jewish Family Service of San Diego, language, ORR, RCA (Refugee Cash Assistance), RMA (Refugee Medical Assistance), San Diego, SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) immigrants, State Department | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Deaf Burmese Refugee in San Diego Left Alone With No Referral to Deaf Social Services

Posted by Christopher Coen on October 11, 2010

What’s it like for deaf refugees once they arrive in the U.S.? The Voice of San Diego has an article about a 24-year-old deaf Burmese refugee named Har Sin who arrived in San Diego in 2008. His resettlement agency (Alliance for African Assistance) never even bothered to help him sign up for programs that could have helped, like disability insurance or deaf social services.

He grew up in Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma, where an oppressive military regime and feuding ethnic groups forced millions to flee to neighboring countries. Har Sin’s family was poor, and he never went to school. He never learned to read. He never learned to write or to speak.

Beyond a few rudimentary hand gestures — eat, drink, walk, go — he never learned to formally communicate.

[He] was boxed in and brushed off by people who assumed his disability made him forever dependent. All fostered by their belief that the deaf child, then teen, then adult, could never stand on his own, hold down a job or find a girlfriend. He didn’t share that belief — look at his eager eyes — but it defined him anyway….

…His mother, who had coddled him, died when he was a child. His sister took responsibility for his upbringing. When men with guns showed up at their rural home and forced them out in the late 1990s, they had no choice. They fled to neighboring Thailand, where they lived for nine years in a teeming refugee camp on the Burmese border.

While children around him went to school, Har Sin stayed home. There was no school for the deaf in Burma or the camp. No one to teach the deaf child.

Har Sin never saw sign language. He never knew there was a way for someone like him to communicate with the world around him. He never imagined he could convey those complex emotions that are only hinted at in his expressive eyes — about how he felt, what he feared, what his dreams were — to anyone but himself.

He assumed he was alone.

In the summer of 2008, the family of eight Burmese refugees arrived in San Diego, their new home.

Har Sin was 22. He moved into a threadbare City Heights apartment with his sister, her husband, Mat Sa Pi, and their five children. Paint was peeling from the wooden front door. The family of eight slept on four mattresses in two small, dimly lit bedrooms...

…When he first arrived, Har Sin, like all refugees, was eligible for eight months of federal aid. Each month, he got a check in the mail, a temporary source of income to help him get through the difficult transition all refugees face integrating into a society they do not know.

The adjustment was a challenge for his family. It was all but impossible for Har Sin...

A year after arriving, his cash aid had run out. His formal connection to the resettlement agency had been cut. But he hadn’t signed up for programs that could’ve helped, like disability insurance or deaf social services.

Resettlement agencies aren’t required to sign clients up for those programs, and overburdened caseworkers often can’t provide more than the basic services the agencies are required to by law…

Once hopeful he might hear, by the summer of 2009, Har Sin was still silently idling within the walls of Apartment 7.

He had fallen through the cracks, alone in his quiet…Read more here 

I would have to disagree when the reporter says that an overburdened caseworker “can’t provide” more than basic services. How much effort or time would it have taken to refer this refugee to deaf social services? As far as resettlement agencies not being required to do this, if we have to require these “partners” to do even the most basic thing that a refugee needs then why do we keep them on? Why not just hire a real contractor, instead of exalted “partners” (with rights), and list every obvious thing they need to do, and then nudge out the contractors that don’t full-fill their contracts? We’d probably have much happier refugees, and we’d get better services for our tax dollars.

I also note that “the family of eight slept on four mattresses in two small, dimly lit bedrooms”. Bed frames are a minimum-required item that resettlement agencies supposedly give to refugees. The family must also have enough beds for each family member, i.e. the Alliance for African Assistance should have given this family a minimum of seven beds. Dimly lit bedrooms? “One lamp per room, unless installed lighting is present” is the  so-called minimum standard. Of course, all the requirements in the world don’t matter when requirements aren’t enforced.

A 2008 State Department inspection report for the Alliance for African Assistance didn’t seem to tease out many of the problems, however a volunteer contacted us a couple of months ago to report poor treatment of refugee clients.

Posted in Alliance for African Assistance (San Diego), beds, Burma/Myanmar, deaf, Operational Guidance, San Diego, SSI | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

San Diego now the nation’s #1 refugee resettlement site

Posted by Christopher Coen on August 9, 2010

An article in Westlake Malibu Magazine and East County Magazine Refugee Resettlement: A Southern California Snapshot, written by a San Diego Red Cross employee, announces that San Diego is now the nation’s number 1 refugee resettlement site.

The author also claims that refugee arrivals in the United States accounted for less than 8% of all legal foreign migration to the United States in 2009, which was something I wasn’t aware of.

The article also contains an oft-repeated defamation of Iraqi refugees. According to the president of San Diego’s Refugee Forum, Iraqi refugees are troublesome due to their unrealistic expectations about standards of living.

As Ralph Achenbach, president of San Diego’s Refugee Forum points out “many of the [San Diego] refugees arriving are highly educated and skilled, with great potential to immediately contribute to their new communities.” Unfortunately, this can also be a double-edged sword as these refugees are accustomed to a higher standard of living in their home country and arrive in the United States’ harsh economic climate with unrealistic expectations. here

This belief about Iraqi refugees seems as if it is becoming deeply inculturated into the refugee resettlement community. It pops up all the time, even in inappropriate situations. In fact, most refugees with professional credentials and experience, including Iraqi refugees, simply want a chance to find a job in their areas of expertise, while most resettlement agencies are determined to make them take the shortest and easiest path to employment, which by the way also takes the least amount of work from resettlement workers. Resettlement agencies should be required to help refugees with professional credentials to write professional quality resumes, show them how to network for professional jobs, and refer them to organizations such as Upwardly Global, etc. Otherwise they are not only cheating the refugees, they are short-changing our society from benefiting from the refugees’ skills.

Another problem here that I’ve noted, illustrated by the San Diego Refugee Forum president’s defamation of Iraqi refugees with professional skills, is that the refugee resettlement program is insular, and they do not well tolerate different perspectives. Far from being true believers in diversity, most resettlement agencies are quick to criticize any dissenting, diverse viewpoints. In other words, diversity is good if it brings in more types of foreign culinary delights, music, and exotic looks and fashions, but diversity of viewpoints is something that will not be tolerated. Criticize the resettlement agencies and you will get a quick lesson in this.

The author also covers the issue of refugees being screened by US agencies for security threats.

If seeking resettlement in the United States, the Department of State takes on the case and will refer it to the Department of Homeland Security. Both agencies will then screen and interview the applicant to make sure that they pose no security threat.

But how can officials decide from interviews that refugees pose no security threat? Questioning them about their background. Looking for inconsistencies in their stories. Gut instinct. But let’s be clear, none of that is infallible. The system cannot stop all people with ill-intent, and determined to fool authorities by posing as refugees, from entering the US.

And then this blanket statement.

It is important to remember that refugees are not the ones partaking in the violence of their home country; they are the ones fleeing it.

Again, this is not entirely true. While most refugees resettled here are indeed fleeing from violence, there are some offenders among them. For example, an AP article just published details the case of Hutu Rwandan refugee Beatrice Munyenyezi, resettled in New Hampshire by Catholic Charities of Manchester in 1998. She now stands accused of genocidal crimes, including killing Tutsis, as well as participation in roadblocks and ID checks that resulted in untold other Tutsi rapes and killings.

Court papers give a graphic account of Munyeynezi allegedly striking a young Tutsi boy so hard in the head with a wooden club that he died instantly. here

Then of course we have the case last week of Somali immigrants in the US, refugees no doubt, that the federal government accuses of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization. In Rochester, Mn two Somali women were recently indited, along with five other Somali men in Minnesota (the case that now has 21 defendants from at least three different states — Minnesota, Alabama and California) here, here, here and here. By the way, U.S. Attorney for Minnesota B. Todd Jones said people from the local Somali community provided important tips in the investigations.

Finally, the author also claims that Catholic Charities, the largest refugee resettlement agency in San Diego, typically processes upwards of 1,200 refugees per annum. I was surprised when I read this as a State Department inspection report from 2006 indicated that in 2005 Catholic Charities resettled just 165 refugees, and only 42 refugees in the first four months of FY 2006. Why the huge increase, and how can an agency be expected to resettle such a huge surge of new refugees? It seems like a prescription for neglect.

According to that report the father in a Somali family resettled by Catholic Charities claimed that the agency did not give enough cash for the family to buy food, and did not give them any baby supplies for their child. In addition, Catholic Charities did not give any of the refugees lamps (a minimum-required item according to the Operational Guidance contract document) and did not give refugees’ relatives a chance to decline stepping in for Catholic Charities to supply basic services to refugee clients, if in fact the relatives were not able to do so.

Posted in California, Catholic, Catholic Charities of San Diego, Dept of Homeland Security, employment services, employment/jobs for refugees, faith-based, food, household items, missing or broken, Iraqi, Operational Guidance, Rwandan, San Diego, Somali, State Department | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

NSC’s ‘review’ of the resettlement program continues

Posted by Christopher Coen on June 23, 2010

The Los Angeles Times has an article on President Obama’s NSC review of the resettlement program, but it seems they got all their information from the resettlement agencies and their friends in the government here.

The IRC’s Bob Carey claims refugee women can’t feed their children! Apparently then resettlement agency workers, such as those at the IRC, aren’t helping them to apply for food stamps and WIC.

“The system is broken,” said Robert Carey, chairman of Refugee Council USA, an umbrella group of resettlement and advocacy groups. “There are women who can’t feed their children adequately and people who are really being brought into poverty. … There is a federal obligation in this to ensure that people brought in here are given the basic tools to rebuild their lives.”

Among other myths being spread by the resettlement contractors is that the system is broken because it’s a “one-size-fits-all-system.”

When the system was established by Congress in 1980, the U.S. was responding to an influx of refugees fleeing Southeast Asia, said Eskinder Negash, director of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. Today, the caseload is more diverse and a one-size-fits-all approach is no longer effective, he said. In fiscal year 2009, the U.S. accepted nearly 75,000 refugees from more than 70 countries, including many with special needs, such as single mothers and torture victims.

It’s funny because none of these insiders mention that $200 of the State Department per person grant (not per family) may be used by the resettlement contractors for special needs of any of the agency’s refugees that they choose.

They also don’t mention that the resettlement contractors are the ones who are supposed to write a personalized plan for each employable refugee specific to that refugee — special needs, obstacles to employment, etc. One size doesn’t fit all, and that’s where federal resettlement agency contractors are supposed to use their supposed expertise to help refugees. Instead they say the government should solve the problem. Then why do we need their great “private sector contribution”, which they so often tout?

It’s also ironic that former resettlement agency worker, and new ORR Director, Eskinder Negash (via the revolving door) complains about the difficulties of taking in so many diverse refugees. The resettlement agencies are the ones who constantly begged for new refugee groups to come in. If they really wanted to help more people wouldn’t they take more refugees from fewer groups, rather than some refugees from ever-increasing multiple groups? Where was the planning that should have been put in place before taking in groups for whom the resettlement agencies had few interpreters, e.g. the Burmese Karen, Karenni, and Chin? There was 20 years to plan while the refugees rotted in refugee camps in Thailand. Oops, let’s not talk about that.

Yet another complaint from resettlement agencies is that benefits for refugees vary by state. They fail to mention that cost-of-living varies by state as well.

The amount of public assistance refugees are offered varies among states and often doesn’t cover basic needs. In San Diego, a family of four typically receives about $828 a month compared with $335 a month in Phoenix, according to resettlement workers.

But if you read the State Department monitoring reports for, say Phoenix (see our tab above) you quickly learn that Phoenix was sold as a good resettlement site for refugees specifically because apartment rents are low (no mention of the lousy mass transit for low-income workers, with jobs on one side of the sprawled city, and affordable housing on the other, and the grueling heat (try 120 degrees fareinheit) refugees must stand in waiting for buses with multiple connections). So why shouldn’t refugees in expensive San Diego get more for rent than those in Phoenix? Am I being too logical?

I’m waiting for any reporter to really analyze the so-called NSC “review” of the refugee program to see if it is really anything other than a review of various ways to get more free public money to the government’s refugee agencies and their private partner friends.

In the meantime, our group continues to struggle to help refugees, while not taking even one government nickel.

Posted in Burma/Myanmar, funding, IRC, Karen, Karenni, NSC (National Security Council), Obama administration, ORR, Phoenix, R&P, reform, Refugees International, San Diego, State Department | Leave a Comment »

 
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