Archive for the ‘Florida’ Category
Posted by Christopher Coen on June 10, 2011
The family of renowned Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died last year while on a hunger strike, are on their way to Miami for resettlement. The State Department has assigned them to the International Rescue Committee according to a BBC report.
The family of renowned Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died last year on hunger strike, have left their country for the US with his ashes.
Thirteen family members were due on a flight from Havana to Miami on Thursday, his mother said. Airport officials said they had arrived.
The family had earlier received visas allowing them to emigrate to the US.
Zapata was 42 when he died in February 2010 after an 85-day hunger strike demanding better prison conditions.
He was the first Cuban activist to starve himself to death in protest in nearly 40 years, and his death drew international condemnation…
…The International Rescue Committee in Miami, which assists refugees, said the family would be settled in four apartments and given food and clothing… Read more here
Checking our State Department monitoring reports page I see that the most recent monitoring of the Miami IRC office occurred in 2002. Yet, the Admissions Office claims to have given us every monitoring report from 1999 to 2008.
The 2002 report indicates that monitors found that the IRC was not visiting refugees at home within the first 30 days as required, and that refugee clients still did not have food stamps more than a month after being resettled. The office also had a very low 90-day employment rate for refugees – 39%.
Refugee home visits revealed that none of the 3 families visited had signed a lease with their landlord. Monitors found a refugee family of four crowded into a one-bedroom apartment. The mother and father slept in the kitchen on a small cot from the janitor’s closet in the hallway. It also appeared from case notes that the IRC did not visit the parents or younger son until just one-day before the older son’s arrival in the US. Another refugee family reported that they had been in the US for over a month yet still did not have food stamps. A third refugee family had only been in the US for four months, yet they received a notice that their food stamps would be cut off. IRC Miami staff seemed to be “unaware” of the family’s problems.
Posted in Cuban, IRC, Miami | Tagged: Cuban, human rights, International Rescue Committee, IRC, Miami, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, refugee, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, resettlement | 3 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on February 23, 2011
An article in the Palm Beach Post chronicles the state of refugee resettlement in Palm Beach County, Florida. A director at the Youth Co-op Inc. refugee resettlement agency claims that although the area has no low-income housing for people who are not yet legal residents, that the government has decided to place Iraqi refugees here as part of trying to disperse them around the country.
…With the U.S. troop reduction making life in Iraq more dangerous for people like Al-Fatlawy, the U.S. government is allowing those who supported its cause to migrate. And the South Florida branch of the nonprofit Youth Co-op Inc. has worked with the government and two international groups to bring the refugees to Florida.
One would think that Al-Fatlawy would feel safer here than in Iraq. But although no one is trying to kill him, he and some other Iraqis here say they feel anything but secure…
…”A lot of the time we wonder why they sent us here to Florida,” said Usama Redha, 37, a journalist who worked for U.S. publications and also said his life was threatened. “There are few jobs and there is no Iraqi community here. It has been very difficult for us. Maybe they should have sent us to a different place.”…
…”Things are tough right now even for native-born Americans,” said Sharol Lewin, refugee-programs director for Youth Co-op, which started decades ago as a youth organization but now works with political refugees of all ages. “But it isn’t any worse here than in other parts of the country.”
As for the lack of other Iraqis in Palm Beach County, she doesn’t disagree. The largest Iraqi communities in the U.S. are in Michigan, Chicago and the San Diego area, with Atlanta, Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth building sizable populations.
“But the government wants the Iraqis to settle in all different parts of the country just as immigrant groups in the past did,” Lewin said…
…Lewin said her organization can help with emergency food and clothing needs, but there is no low-cost housing for people who are not yet legal residents. The Iraqis were warned that they would have to take care of themselves, she said… Read more here
I guess I’m not necessarily buying that “the government” is to blame here – the government being the State Department’s Office of Admissions. Perhaps its true that the government agency wants to spread the refugees out, but its the resettlement agencies that decide where they want to resettle refugees in the U.S., along with a rational plan for that resettlement. The national refugee resettlement agencies have to make a proposal each year to the Office of Admissions. So why did the Youth Co-op, Inc. and its national affiliate, the USCRI, decide that Palm Beach County, with no low-income housing for residents who are not yet legal residents, was a rational resettlement site? Why did the Office of Admissions then okay that?
Posted in Florida, Iraqi, Palm Beach County, State Department, USCRI, Youth Co-op, Inc. | Tagged: Iraqi refugees, LAKE WORTH, low-income housing, Palm Beach County, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, State Department, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI, West Palm Beach | 2 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 19, 2010
Isaac Siliman
A 33-year-old man got life and a 24-year-old woman got 25 years in the September 2009 murder of a 37-year-old Sudanese refugee named Isaac Siliman at the Lighthouse Bay apartment complex in Jacksonville, the site of three 2009 homicides. The twoadmitted pepper-spraying, tasering, and beating Siliman on the head with a hammer, then stealing his car, computer, credit card, and other items. Siliman became a U.S. citizen just two months before his murder and was working at Swisher International cigar company, sometimes double shift, to save up money to bring his wife Mary Laku and their daughters, Youbilla and Manuella, to Jacksonville from Uganda. He was also supporting his father in Sudan. A Florida Times-Union article tells more:
They’d met several years ago, their relationship spinning into a cycle of violence and financial desperation that eventually left a Sudanese refugee — a man who trusted them despite his turbulent upbringing — beaten and dead in Jacksonville.
When they were arrested in September 2009, Ashley Nichole Jerrell pleaded with Merlin Williams Jr. to confess alongside her.
They never meant to kill Isaac Siliman, she said, but they did. They were in it together.
Siliman, 37, became a U.S. citizen several months before the attack. He was working at Swisher International as he tried to save up enough money to relocate his wife and children from the violent, politically unstable African nation.
On Thursday, more than a year after the couple had beaten Siliman to death with a hammer in a robbery gone bad, Jerrell shook. She cried. She apologized. She bawled while hugging her father in Circuit Judge Charles Arnold’s courtroom.
She’d just watched as deputies led Williams, 33, away to begin serving a life sentence. A jury already had advised against the death penalty, a decision Arnold theorized came somewhat ironically from the conscience as the jurors learned through Jerrell’s testimony that she’d be shown mercy for her cooperation….
…Jerrell and Williams made off with Siliman’s credit cards, computer and black Nissan Xterra after attacking him with the hammer, a stun gun and pepper spray. They were preparing to burn the Nissan when the police caught them…
…Initially, Siliman was not suspicious of the couple when they showed up at his apartment because he’d hired Williams to work on his computer. Shortly before they attacked him, he shared cigarettes with them on his back patio and showed them his family photo album. Read more here
Posted in Jacksonville, safety, South Sudanese | Tagged: crime, Isaac Siliman, Jacksonville, Lighthouse Bay apartment complex, refugees, resettlement, sudanese | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on October 13, 2010
Terry Rusch, the Director of the Office of Admissions, PRM at the State Department is retiring. In her farewell address she tells us that staff at the PRM like to “party hard”. Of course, I never really doubted that during the past nine years of monitoring their office.
Refugees kept encountering the same disgraceful problems – whether it was resettlement to dangerous inner-city neighborhoods or having resettlement agency case workers who would not return calls or help refugees look for jobs – and always the Office of Admissions failed to address the issues. They usually just simply refused to respond to refugees’ complaints that we forwarded to them. The group that Rusch is retiring from is a tight inner circle of close associates that lives large, parties hard, and is absolutely heady about the magnificence of their humanitarian work.
According to Rusch:
The Bureau has always been home to intelligent, committed and hardworking people. It is a model of how the Department’s Civil and Foreign Service personnel can bring their various skills and expertise to the table to work on issues together – whether we are in crisis management or day-to-day operations mode. But those who work hard should party hard and PRM’s reputation for the latter is well-deserved. I’ll miss participating in our various theatrical productions in which we’ve spoofed everyone and everything refugee world-related, always with the goal of ensuring that no one was allowed to take themselves too seriously around here….
…And now, a big part of the reason I am so comfortable with the move into retirement is that the program is in great shape and staffed with excellent officers led by a skilled and experienced leadership team of Larry, Kelly, Barbara and Amy…
…As in politics, all resettlement is local. Neither the federal government nor national voluntary agency headquarters resettle refugees. Communities do. Cities and towns across the country are on the front lines of refugee reception and integration – day-in, day-out, year-in, year-out. They are the ones who welcome the newcomer and give them the chance for a new life. They need to be listened to and deserve our respect and gratitude… Read more here
This last paragraph is a kicker because volunteers in our group have spent years helping refugees at the local level, during which time we have tried to open a dialogue with Terry Rusch to show her what was really happening locally, instead of the usual filtered picture she received via her refugee resettlement contractors. Rusch showed no sign of listening at all. In multiple dozens of letters we documented the failure of resettlement agencies to give the most minimal of refugee services which they were contractually obligated to, yet the Office of Admissions under Rusch ignored almost every one of these letters.
When the Lost Boys of Sudan refugees in Chicago complained of violent street attacks, Rusch’s office dismissed their complaints as mere “perceptions” of neighborhood safety. Rusch sent colleague Kelly Gauger to Chicago, who personally rejected our imploring that the Lost Boys said they had been repeatedly attacked. Nothing was done. A group of the Sudanese refugees were then attacked by a gang in their neighborhood the next month, with three of them receiving serious knife wounds.
When we warned Rusch’s Office of Admissions over the course of several years about refugees in Fargo whose resettlement agency did not give them winter coats, who gave the refugees broken furniture, forced them into foster care, and didn’t help them look for work, the Office of Admissions responding by waiting a few years to send monitors to inspect, and then marveling at the resettlement agency’s use of three-ring binders.
When we warned Rusch and her helpers about refugees outside Tampa who slept on the floor for months because their resettlement agency failed to give them any furniture and referred the refugees to jobs that involved 2-3 hour bike commutes in each direction to Pinellas County, there was no response for a year. What the Office of Admissions did with the complaint remains a secret mystery – a way in which they like to run the operation – but not only did things not change outside Tampa, they got worse. The next year the resettlement agency loaned out refugees as free labor, making them sign sheets of paper that were folded over so that the refugees could not see what they were signing. Rusch’s office did finally cut off the resettlement agency’s refugee resettlement contract but only after refugees were harmed for two more years.
I hope Ms. Rusch enjoys her retirement and her government pension, but refugees have had their lives permanently damaged by the sort of refugee resettlement services her office has managed over the years. Let’s hope that future leadership will have less interest in incessant Bureau staff meetings and office theatrical productions and more interest in responsible refugee resettlement, real listening, respect and gratitude of local communities, as well as the value of government transparency.
Posted in Chicago, neglect, North Dakota, openess and transparency in government, PRM, State Department, Sudanese, Tampa | Tagged: chicago refugees, fargo refugees, Kelly Gauger, Lost Boys of Sudan, Office of Admissions, Population Refugees and Migration, PRM, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, State Department, tampa refugees, Terry Rusch | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on May 21, 2010
Florida’s Supreme Court may soon be deciding on whether the state has violated its constitutional ban on state money going to “any church, sect, or religious denomination, or in aid of any sectarian institution” (here). The “no-aid” provision, a so-called Blaine amendment, banning this practice has been in the Florida Constitution since 1885, although Florida has applied it loosely. Florida is among 39 states with this type of provision.
A century-old provision of the Florida Constitution may soon be dusted off for the first time before the state Supreme Court, with the fate of millions of dollars in state funding to religious organizations hanging in the balance.
The state’s First District Court of Appeal is asking justices to decide whether Florida has violated its constitutional ban on state money going to “any church, sect, or religious denomination, or in aid of any sectarian institution.”
The provision has been in the Florida Constitution since 1885, approved during an era of sweeping, anti-Catholic fervor. Florida is among 39 states with some version of a “no-aid” provision, a so-called Blaine amendment, named for the 19th Century Maine senator who promoted such prohibitions inspired by fear of a rising immigrant population.
While Florida embraced the ban a century ago, most experts say it has been applied loosely.
Millions of state dollars are budgeted each year for programs serving foster children, inmates, and low-income and elderly Floridians that are provided by religious-affiliated organizations.
Some fear the high court could put the brakes to that.
“Everybody is waiting and watching this case,” said Sheila Hopkins, an associate director with the Florida Catholic Conference. “Our charities have never believed in giving people a loaf of bread and then making everybody pray. We do social work.
“But a lot in the future may depend on how the court looks at this. It’d be devastating if these services were lost,” she added.
But would these services be “lost”, as she claims, or would they just instead be contracted to groups that do not use these government funds for religious purposes? She claims they only do “social work” and that they don’t proselytize, but proselytizing is just one way in which these groups can use public money for religious purposes.
What about Catholic Charities in Houston neglecting Iraqi refugees who are gay, while giving full services to so-called “families” (heterosexual refugees) here? What about World Relief using government refugee program dollars to pray at staff meeting, and then using that as an excuse to discriminate in hiring Arabic interpreters who are Muslim (here)? How about Catholic Charities of Washington DC discriminating in hiring based on religious belief (here)? None of that is proselytizing per se, but it sure does force all of us to pay for other’s people’s religious beliefs and practices. No thank you.
I think this case is interesting though because it demonstrates how government institutions simply ignore constitutional provisions and laws as they wish. The U.S. refugee program could not run, as it now does, with the regular neglect and abuse of refugees, if the refugee resettlement agencies and their government oversight friends actually abided by constitutions, rules, laws, guidelines, and regulations. The current system we have in place is essentially and old boy network program in which cronies inside and outside of government work together to fulfill their own interests while ignoring the interests of the public and the refugees. Laws and requirements are simply shunted aside at will when they interfere with these people’s interests.
Posted in Catholic, Catholic Charities, Christian, discrimination in hiring, evangelical, faith-based, Florida, funding, neglect, religion, World Relief | Tagged: Blaine amendment, catholic charities, church, church and state, constitution, faith-based, Florida, Florida Catholic Conference, florida Supreme Court, no-aid, proselytize, public funding, refugee, refugees, religion, religious, sectarian, World Relief | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 28, 2010
Refugees with professional credentials continue to receive inappropriate employment services from many refugee resettlement agencies. Trained as doctors, engineers, and lawyers, most of these refugees are placed in no-skill or low-skill jobs – cleaning, assembly, landscaping labor, etc. — with almost no attempt made to place them in jobs where they could use their skills.
Iraqi SIV immigrants reported about these problems in Sacraemnto (here).
According to Michelle Karolak, director of the refugee resettlement program at Catholic Charities in Jacksonville, this isn’t her fault, it’s the refugees’ fault (here).
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“A lot of our other clients – although not all of them – are willing to take whatever is offered,” said Michelle Karolak, director of the refugee resettlement program for the local operations of Catholic Charities. “Iraqis, not so much.”
“We have no choice,” Karolak said. “We have to get them up and running as fast as we can.”
Yet, do they have to get them, “up and running as soon as possible”, only in low-skill jobs? There is no such requirement. The refugee program stresses the need for early self-sufficiency, but does not require resettlement agencies to place refugees in low-pay, low-skill jobs. In fact, jobs for which refugees can use their professional skills are much more likely to allow them to become self-sufficient. Also, what does she mean, “as fast as we can”? Refugees, almost as a rule, report that they sit for months at a time with no one helping them to find jobs.
According to refugees in Jacksonville they’ve had to find professional jobs on their own because local resettlement agencies won’t help them.
Majid Abdulmajeed…was hired as an adjunct professor of chemical engineering based on his experience in Iraq. But he only got the job after an acquaintance passed his resume to the school.
“The main employment agent didn’t suggest jobs like this,” he said.
Well, why not? Have resettlement agencies begun to believe their own PR that Iraqi refugees are just too difficult, and refugees must accept any job offered? According to the Matching Grant Program requirements (only 30% of refugees are enrolled in it, but the resettlement agencies are doing everything they can to get the government to expand the program) refugees must accept the first job offered, but even in that case that doesn’t mean that resettlement agencies have to refer the refugees to inappropriate jobs.
Many resettlement agencies seem to have an extraordinarily difficult time thinking outside of the box, and of course refugees continue to pay the price for that.
Posted in California, Catholic Charities, employment services, Florida, Iraqi, Jacksonville, Matching Grant program, neglect, professionals, SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) immigrants, USCCB, World Relief | Tagged: any job offered, catholic charities, employment, employment services, FL, Florida, Iraqi, Iraqis, Jacksonville, jobs, low-skill, Matching grant, Michelle Karolak, no-skill, professional, professionals, refugee, refugees, self-sufficiency, USCRI, World Relief | 1 Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on March 30, 2010
The Miami Herald is now reporting that the Vatican and the Archdiocese of Miami — for decades — were aware of the troubled past in Cuba of Rev. Ernesto Garcia-Rubio (here).
“The Archdiocese of Miami, along with top Vatican authorities, knew as far back as 1968 that the Rev. Ernesto Garcia-Rubio, a priest later defrocked amid child sex-abuse allegations, had a troubled past in Cuba before transferring to South Florida…”
The Miami Herald previously reported in a serious of stories that the Rev. Ernesto Garcia-Rubio had sexually abused a number of male teenage Nicaraguan and Salvadoran refugees.
“The complaints against Garcia-Rubio — first lodged at the Sweetwater church — eventually surfaced in The Herald story, which highlighted four sex-abuse allegations by teenage Nicaraguan and Salvadoran refugees from 1983 to 1988.”
I suppose that the USCCB, the Catholic Church and VOLAG, thinks that we aren’t going to hold them accountable for this because the crimes happened several decades ago. Nothing could be further from the truth. The accountability has simply been successfully DELAYED.
Posted in Archdiocese of Miami, Catholic, Florida, Nicaraguan, safety, Salvadoran, sexual abuse, USCCB | Tagged: accountability, Archdiocese of Miami, catholic, catholic church, child, children, crimes, Ernesto Garcia-Rubio, Florida, Miami, Nicaraguan, refugee, refugees, resettlement agency, Salvadoran, sex-abuse, sexual abuse, teenagers, tenage, US Conference of Catholic Bishops, USCCB, Vatican, volag | Leave a Comment »
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