Archive for the ‘Indiana’ Category
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 14, 2011
On Saturday, two teens from Burma/Myanmar were hit by a car in south Indianapolis, according to an article at WISH TV. A person commenting on the article claims that it was in the vicinity of the Greentree apartment complex. A city councilman points out the problem of refugees coming from places with few automobiles, yet another person commenting claims that an elderly woman was killed near the same place two years ago while trying to cross the road.
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – On Saturday, two teens were hit by a car just north of Stop 11 and Madison Avenue on the city’s south side.
The accident happened around 6:15 p.m. in an area with no lights and no cross walks.
Both teens are recovering, 17-year-old Ramilant Hang is at home, 18-year-old Van Bawi Sang is still at Wishard Hospital. Van was upgraded from critical to serious condition after surgery Saturday evening for head injuries.
The two teens and their families are Burmese refugees…
…City-County Councilman Jack Sandlin said the Department of Public Works should now look at this area as a high priority…
…”It sounds pretty basic to us, but when you come from an area that doesn’t really have a lot of automobiles, it’s a huge difference,” Sandlin said. Read more here
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, Catholic Charities Indianapolis, Indianapolis, safety, teenagers | Tagged: Buma, Burmese, crossing road, crosswalks, hit by car, Indianapolis, Myanmar, refugees, resettlement | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on October 4, 2011
After community gardens were recently plundered in New York City, thieves in Indianapolis have also made their mark, equipped with shovels and plastic bags and brazenly entering gardens in broad daylight to carry away produce. This is the second year in a row that one community garden has been ripped-off in the city. An article in The Star gives us the details:
After a summer of battling bugs, pulling weeds and digging dirt in the stifling hot weather, gardeners of the Grassroots Community Farm were nearly in tears over the latest insult.
They struggled several times last week for answers to an unexpected problem at their three-acre plot near 38th Street and Lafayette Road.
Who would steal their hard-won tomatoes right off the vine? Who cut the collard greens and swiped their sweet potatoes?
Apparently, the gardeners decided, it wasn’t deer from nearby Eagle Creek Park. Rather, it was the work of vegetable thieves who came equipped with shovels and plastic bags.
Their plot isn’t the only community garden in the city to suffer thefts and vandalism this summer.
The Grassroots gardeners are all immigrants or refugees…
…Indianapolis is not alone with stories of garden thievery. The New York Times reported recently that veggie thefts this summer that have disheartened gardeners in New York’s network of more than 700 community plots…
…”Thefts and vandalism are huge,” declared Kay Crimm of Grow Me gardens.
Last year, her group had a three-acre site near 46th Street and Arlington Avenue. It was plundered so badly that the gardeners left the site and moved to a plot at 46th Street and Post Road, she said, but it has “been ripped up, too.”
The garden coordinators said veggie thieves are brazen, making their raids both at night and in broad daylight.
Beltran-Figueroa said “private property” signs did not stop the thefts on at least two days in the past week… Read more here
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, community gardens, Indianapolis, NYC | Tagged: Burmese, community garden, Grassroots Community Farm, Grow Me gardens, Indianapolis, refugees, resettlement, theft, vandalism | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on August 5, 2011
The number of refugees living in the Fort Wayne, Indiana area appears closer to 3,800 than the 5,000 to 6,000 people that Catholic Charities estimated in the recent past. An article in The Journal Gazette breaks the numbers down.
Allen County’s Burmese population includes about 3,800 people, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.
That’s a simple sentence with the potential to cap several years of uncertainty for local refugee advocates and social service agencies, who have estimated the total to be thousands higher. Reaction to the figure was mixed amid those who work with the area’s Burmese refugee community.
Catholic Charities of the Fort Wayne–South Bend Diocese can say in no uncertain terms that it resettled the vast majority of Burmese refugees brought to northeast Indiana since 1991. That influx, overseen by the U.S. Department of State, brought 2,602 Burmese refugees to Allen County over those two decades, said Nyein Chan, Catholic Charities refugee coordinator.
More than 70 percent of those refugees were sent to Fort Wayne in the latter half of the last decade, beginning in 2006. And that’s where the uncertainty about the size of the local population began.
With that influx came another wave of immigration not directed by a government agency.
Drawn by the booming community, the opportunity to reunite with friends and relatives and a relatively healthy local economy, Fort Wayne saw a large number of “secondary migrants” – refugees who came to Fort Wayne after being placed elsewhere in the U.S. by the State Department, Chan said.
Chan was part of Fort Wayne’s Complete Count Committee, a volunteer team appointed by elected officials to ensure undercounted populations were reached for the census.
The committee put forth a mighty effort, he said. That, combined with his agency’s careful study of the issue, have him convinced the census numbers are accurate.
“It pretty much makes sense to me,” he said. “We worked so hard to count the people in Allen County.”
Catholic Charities offers some services to refugees who come to Fort Wayne from other cities, such as job development services, Chan said. The people who use those services are tracked by the agency, and through that method, Catholic Charities estimates the secondary migrant community at 2,000, he said.
The recession caused the secondary migration to slow down and some refugee families to leave. So while Catholic Charities in the recent past has estimated the Burmese community in Fort Wayne between 5,000 to 6,000 people, Chan said he believes the census total is a more accurate current count… Read more here
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, secondary migration, refugee, State Department, US census | Tagged: Allen County, Burma, Burmese, catholic charities, census, Chin, Complete Count Committee, fort wayne, Karen, karenni, Mon, Myanmar, refugees, resettlement, secondary migrants | 1 Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 28, 2011
According to an article in the Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette refugees sometimes have little use for the basic and essential items given to them by refugee resettlement agencies, and required by State Department refugee contracts. Strangely, useless items are said to include such things as cooking utensils and beds.
…Fort Wayne very likely has one of the largest populations of Burmese living outside Myanmar. There is no precise count, but the estimate is more than 6,000. An average of 125 Burmese were sent by the federal government to settle in Fort Wayne each year between 1993 and 2006. In 2007 that number increased to 700 and to 800 in 2008. But those numbers don’t include what is referred to as secondary migration, the many people who were initially settled elsewhere but who moved to Fort Wayne to be closer to family, friends and the city’s growing Burmese community.
When refugees are sent to Fort Wayne, they are given a small sum of money to buy essentials. The refugees are told they need to use the money to buy cooking utensils and beds, for example. But sometimes the items they are supposed to buy are of little use to Burmese… Read more here
I guess I’m not understanding how simple cooking utensils and beds could be of little use to any refugee no matter what their ethnicity is. In fact, looking through the State Department’s Operational Guidance contract document listing of basic necessities that resettlement agencies must give to refugees I can’t find any useless items, e.g. towels, can openers, an alarm clock, etc.
We’ve actually been lobbying the State Department for years, to no avail, to add a few basic essentials to the list, e.g. dictionaries, umbrellas, curtains, hangers, phones and phone service, stamps & envelopes, etc.
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, Fort Wayne, Operational Guidance, State Department | Tagged: Burmese refugees, ft wayne, Operational Guidance, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, State Department | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on December 21, 2010
In the black and white thinking of refugee officials even a rat biting a baby can’t be as bad as the circumstances from which refugees have escaped. Would you rather have the refugee family die back in a refugee camp? An article in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette tells how a rat bit a Burmese refugee baby in an apartment. If only the refugees had complained about the rats, but its an acclimation problem you see. But isn’t that why we have refugee resettlement agencies to help refugees with these tasks?
…A report that a toddler had been bitten by a mouse or rat would cause most Americans fear and outrage.
When Dr. Charles Coats – who treated 19-month-old Sage Dar for the bite – learned what had caused it, he was incensed.
“You just don’t hear about rats or mice in the United States attacking babies,” Coats said. “You should never have to worry about your baby being bitten in your own home.”…
…Be Ki, Sage Dar’s mother, lives in Autumn Woods Apartments on the city’s far southeast side with her three children, while her husband works in Illinois. She speaks no English.
…She said that as the complex’s clientele became largely Burmese three years ago, it has been an educational experience for everyone. Recent immigrants have had to learn how to make their way in a bewildering new society, and management has had to learn about which issues it needs to watch because of tenants’ lack of familiarity. For example, plumbing that you cannot pour cooking grease into…
…“You don’t want to take their culture away from (immigrants), but we do try to help acclimate them,” she said. “There’s a lot behind the scenes we try to do. We’re like social workers and landlords here.”…
…Washington said it’s important to remember that issues that arise are not a “Burmese problem,” but simply an acclimation problem. Anyone would have difficulty fitting in to a new culture, and everyone involved needs to learn as they go. Read more here
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, children, cultural adjustment, Fort Wayne, housing, housing, substandard, rats and roaches, safety | Tagged: Burmese refugees, fort wayne, rat bites baby, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on October 22, 2010
World Relief announced that they are pulling out of Fort Wayne two years after opening an office in the city. World Relief claimed they opened the office to relieve strain from the other refugee resettlement agency in the city, Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne-South Bend, but it became clear that World Relief arrived in town to resettle more refugees and not to help care for those who were already there. When the State Department tried to restrict resettlement to the city in response to a large influx of Burmese refugee secondary migrants that the city and county have had trouble absorbing, World Relief attempted to convince the State Department to reverse course, and thereby make the crises even worse. When they were unsuccessful at that they decided to abandon ship altogether. An article in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette gives more details:
FORT WAYNE – One of Fort Wayne’s two refugee placement offices will close, a consequence of the federal government’s limitations on the number of refugees sent to the city.
World Relief, a faith-based international humanitarian aid organization, opened an office at Simpson United Methodist Church on South Harrison Street less than two years ago in anticipation of an increased flow of refugees.
The U.S. State Department resettled about 800 Burmese refugees in the Fort Wayne area the year before the office opened. Refugees have been fleeing persecution in Myanmar, as Burma is called by the ruling military government, for years.
The high number being sent here had social services agencies seeking help, and World Relief said it hoped to ease some of the strain on Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne-South Bend, the sole agency tasked with placing refugees in the area.
But the State Department has since severely restricted the number of refugees who can be sent to the Fort Wayne area, and World Relief’s local office has welcomed only about half the number of refugees for which it was approved.
Calls to World Relief’s headquarters in Baltimore and Midwest office in Illinois were not returned Thursday. Dan Kosten, World Relief vice president of U.S. Programs, said in a statement the organization has tried to have the restrictions loosened.
Without more refugees, keeping the office open isn’t viable, he said.
Officials at the non-profit’s headquarters told Jeff Keplar, executive director of the Fort Wayne office, on Oct. 15 that his office would close...
…After World Relief Fort Wayne opened, the State Department limited refugee placement in the city to those who have parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren or siblings already living in the city.
Fort Wayne and Detroit were the only two cities to have such restrictions. In June, at the request of placement agencies, the State Department modified Detroit’s restriction to allow the placement of any refugees in the Detroit metro region who have ties there.
“This change should have the positive effect of strengthening family reunification and lessening secondary migration from other placement sites to the Detroit area,” a statement from the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration said.
Secondary migration occurs when refugees are resettled in one city and leave for another. That has contributed to a Burmese refugee population in Fort Wayne that has been estimated to be the country’s largest.
Keplar thinks the restriction did not lessen the influx of refugees; instead, it might have contributed to secondary migration of refugees who arrived in the city without the support system of a resettlement agency… Read more here
So what we have here is private refugee groups whose goal is not to help the local community and the refugees already resettled, or refugees who have migrated to town from other areas, but to bring in more refugees. Fort Wayne has been in dire need of private groups with private funding to help with refugee secondary migrants, but World Relief has made it clear that they only do business when they can tap government funding, i.e. bring in more refugees for resettlement and collect government resettlement funds. This is what the private resettlement agencies sell as the “private sector contribution” — in which resettlement “charities” no longer just contribute private resources, but only get and stay involved if they can feed off of public funding. It’s almost hard to imagine a worse arrangement for the U.S. refugee resettlement program.
It’s also hard to imagine what would have happened if World Relief had suceeded in pressuring the State Department to discontinue the reduction in flow of refugees to this already overburdened community. Its clear, however, that World Relief has no interest in responsible refugee resettlement. I believe that their involvement in the refugee resettlement is detrimental to the program.
By the way, here is a report on some of World Relief’s funny numbers from a 2005 audit by the State Department’s Office of Inspector General. (Part 1 and Part 2)
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, capacity, evangelical, faith-based, Fort Wayne, moratorium / restriction, public/private partnership, refugee magnet city, secondary migration, refugee, State Department, World Relief | Tagged: Burmese refugees, Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Dan Kosten, refugee, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, secondary migrants, secondary migration, Simpson United Methodist Church, State Department, World Relief | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on September 23, 2010
A Fort Wayne Baptist minister is criticizing refugee resettlement efforts in that city, according to a piece at Indiana’s NewsCenter. He says that refugees have been left on their own without sufficient cultural education by the Catholic Charities refugee resettlement agency.
An African American minister says Fort Wayne needs to do a better job teaching the growing Burmese population how to live in our culture.
Reverend Michael Latham is singling out a local charity that helps Burmese refugees settle here.
Part of Reverend Latham’s message—don’t blame the Burmese people, blame the fact they aren’t getting proper training on the way we live in this country.
Latham says he learned of problems with Burmese residents at the Autumn Woods Apartment complex off South Anthony Boulevard…
..Latham, former president of Fort Wayne’s NAACP chapter, says he visited the complex to see conditions firsthand.
He says when he witnessed a Burmese woman eating food off the ground near a trash bin, he decided to organize a public meeting seeking solutions.
He thinks Catholic Charities should be doing more cultural training with the refugees on the American lifestyle.
Kathleen Smith/Autumn Woods Tenant: ” We go on walks and we see kids going to the bathroom outside, because they don’t know better.”
Reverend Michael Latham/Renaissance Baptist Church: ” I would like for Catholic Charities to know, to bring the number of people that they brought into our community and have dropped them off, to me, is a sad indictment on even the Catholic Church.” here
But Debra Schmidt at Catholic Charities says that her agency didn’t bring most of the Burmese refugees to Fort Wayne; that the refugees are secondary migrants from other states. Anyway, it’s hard to find the refugees and help them, and plus, she doesn’t know which states the Burmese refugees came from. And besides, she doesn’t know what they need.
Debra Schmidt/Catholic Charities: ” The majority of the families that are living in those complexes are what we call secondary migrations, and those are people who are refugees who have been re-settled into other states and cities in this country, and have moved to Fort Wayne, so the difficulty in working with the population now is, where do they come from and what are their needs?”
Schmidt says for every Burmese refugee intentionally settled in Fort Wayne, there are close to three more who chose to live in Fort Wayne as secondary migrants.
Schmidt says it’s extremely difficult to track or assimilate that population.
These weak excuses are tiresome. What do they mean that most of the refugees are from other states but they don’t know where the refugees came from? Does it matter which states? Why? Why is it so hard for Catholic Charities to find these refugees when residents don’t seem to have any problem noticing the refugees and their obvious adjustment problems? It’s not as though these refugees spread themselves out across the nation. They are clumped-together in a city long known as a Burmese refugee magnet city.
Voice of America has an article about what other agencies are doing to aid these secondary refugees. Maybe Catholic Charities could learn something from them.
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, Catholic, Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne, cultural adjustment, faith-based, Fort Wayne, refugee magnet city, secondary migration, refugee | 2 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 24, 2010
Indiana US Senator Richard Lugar, Ranking Member on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has released a report on the nation’s refugee resettlement program. While repeating the mantra that the solution to all problems is for the federal government to spend more for the program (therefore, tax and spend), the report also takes critical swipes at the private resettlement agencies.
According to the report refugee resettlement agencies have failed local communities in key areas:
- Local governments rarely have an official role in influencing how many refugees are resettled by local voluntary agencies and often are not even informed in advance that new residents will be arriving. The process should require local resettlement agencies to formally consult with state and local officials/service providers regarding the proposed number and backgrounds of refugees to be resettled in the area. The refugee coordinators in each state and PRM representatives should verify that the consultations took place and that the views of the officials/service providers are accurately characterized.
I wonder if Senator Lugar and his staff are aware that state refugee coordinators are already required, via ORR regulations, to convene quarterly meetings each year whereby representatives of local resettlement agencies, local community service agencies, and other agencies that serve refugees meet with representatives of State and local governments to plan and coordinate the proper placement of refugees in advance of the refugees’ arrival.
In addition, according to the State Department’s Cooperative Agreement contract with refugee resettlement agencies ”the number of refugees assigned to an approved applicant will be determined by the [State Department], in accordance with the needs of the Admissions Program, taking into account… placement recommendations of state and local officials…” (see V. Refugee Caseload Assisgnment).
So, Senator Lugar is suggesting creating more requirements when the federal government is not enforcing almost identical existing requirements. Existing regulations and contract requirements are ignored, so just add more?
- The administration should improve accountability by examining: A. Institutional processes and practices of voluntary agencies, including but not limited to factors that influence the scope of an agency’s annual refugee resettlement proposal submitted to PRM, organizational structure, and administrative overhead to ensure an adherence to best practices and a resettlement program that is sensitive to local community capacity. B. Oversight and accountability metrics used by PRM for monitoring voluntary agencies as well as mechanisms for assessing internal strengths and inefficiencies within PRM’s administrative processes, the nature of PRM’s consultations with local and state elected officials, and the factors influencing the annual cap of refugees admitted to the United States. C. Mechanisms used for assessing internal strengths and inefficiencies in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Department of Health and Human Services, the nature of ORR’s consultations with local and state elected officials, and the extent of ORR’s capacity to oversee voluntary agency grantees, address the unique needs of refugees, fact-find into community capacity shortfalls as well as monitor the impact of secondary migration—potentially through some type of targeted census. D. Metrics for evaluating refugee integration, including but not limited to qualitative and quantitative measurements of employment levels, language acquisition, community interaction, etc.
In terms of quantitative measurements of employment levels the federal government already records employment numbers at 90 and 180 days. Is Senator Lugar recommending that these be measured again at say, the one-year mark, two-year mark, or what? Or is Senator Lugar simply unaware that employment rates are already measured?
How would anyone measure “community interaction”? Plus, most American citizens wouldn’t even pass that measurement if you look at things like voting participation, participation in community groups, etc.
- The administration should require voluntary agencies to [promote community engagement by] submitting as part of their annual proposals a ‘‘community engagement strategy,’’ which delineates concrete plans for increasing public awareness of and interaction with refugees, in order to achieve greater community cohesion. …Providing opportunities for established residents and families to engage members of the refugee population will help to demystify preconceptions and make integration more achievable. Encouraging face-to-face interactions between individuals or small groups can also make inter-ethnic encounters less intimidating for all participants.
No argument there. The problem is that many of the resettlement agencies are incompetent at these type of tasks. I recently attended a court commission that was looking at how the courts deal with racial and ethnic minorities. Hardly any refugees or other minorities showed up to testify. A refugee resettlement agency director on the commission panel, a former refugee himself, said his outreach to the refugees did not even include outreach to the main places where they gather — churches and mosques.
And then there’s this tidbit about how refugee resettlement agencies in Clarkston, Georgia (an Atlanta suburb) reacted when called on to account to the public.
- Georgia Representative Karla Drenner, whose district includes Clarkston, convened a townhall meeting [this past year] where she publicly encouraged the voluntary agencies located within the city to improve communication with elected officials and to provide more warning regarding when refugees were due to arrive. The current mayor of Clarkston, Howard Tygrett, reported that all of the resettlement agencies subsequently relocated outside of the city limits in order to circumvent this appeal.
By the way, in the report Deborah McMahan, Health Commissioner of Fort Wayne-Allen County Department of Health, noted that prearrival health screenings for refugees no longer include HIV/AIDS testing. Prior knowledge of HIV status, she explained, would allow for better planning for the complicated care that refugees with such conditions require.
Posted in Atlanta, Burma/Myanmar, Fort Wayne, funding, Georgia, Indiana, late health screenings, local officials, failure to notify, ORR, PRM, reform, State Department | Tagged: Clarkston, fort wayne, Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, PRM, refugee resettlement, refugees, resettlement, Senator Richard Lugar, State Department | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 22, 2010
USCCB affiliate Catholic Charities Indianapolis is yet another resettlement agency that has been out of compliance with their State Department refugee services contract. In other words the public pays for them to give certain minimum services and material items to the refugees, via a government contract, and then they don’t abide by that contract. The consequences? None. The State Department’s Admissions Office merely noted some of their failures and asked them to do better. After all, they are not considered merely contractors, but exalted “partners” — with rights. Rights that apparently include violating basic terms of public contracts if they want to. Catholic Charities Indianapolis is one of the agencies that recently requested yet more government money for their refugee services, here.
The most recent State Department monitoring report for this agency (April 2008) indicates that Catholic Charities Indianapolis failed to properly document services, failed to refer refugees to English classes, failed to give refugees community and cultural orientation, failed to give refugees required pocket-money, and failed to show proof that they gave refugees their share of State Department R&P (Resettlement & Placement) money, here. Refugee case files also contained names of unrelated people (privacy violation), and Catholic Charities Indianapolis did not have any structured training program for its employees, as required.
Catholic Charities Indianapolis for the most part resettles Burmese refugees who have ties to friends and family (often distant relatives) in Indiana. The resettlement program refers to these friends and family as “anchors”, and resettlement agencies often talk the anchors into giving the arriving refugees the minimum-required services and material items that the State Department requires via the refugee contracts. As of February 2008, however, USCCB (US Catholic Conference of Bishops)directed Catholic Charities Indianapolis to treat all their refugee clients as “free case” refugees (refugees with no established ties to someone in the US). In fiscal year 2007 Catholic Charities Indianapolis resettled 393 refugees.
State Department monitors visited four refugees families – a Somali family of eight, and three Burmese families, one with seven members, one with four, and one single man. It immediately became clear that Catholic Charities Indianapolis had not given the refugees even the minimum-required services, which are fairly minimal to start with.
None of the adults were enrolled in ESL (English as a Second Language). Two families said they did not get any community/cultural orientation. The Somali family said they had electric bills of between $500 and $700 per month and did not understand the reason for this (apparently Catholic Charities Indianapolis was not monitoring the family’s situation). One of the Burmese families said they did not have enough clothing for the husband for work, or for the children for school. Also, they were unable to close their sliding door completely and cold air was coming into the apartment (in April). The couple was also very concerned about having enough income to pay rent and utility bills.
The adults in the second Burmese refugee family that monitors visited said they were also concerned about paying the rent, and neither of them was working. The husband said that Catholic Charities Indianapolis did not do anything to help him find a job, and although he did not speak English, he said that no one from Catholic Charities Indianapolis told him where to take ESL classes. He said he didn’t even know how to take the bus.
The third Burmese refugee home visit was to the single man. Although he had arrived five month earlier he said that Catholic Charities Indianapolis did not give him any of his R&P money ($425 at that time) until the day before the State Department monitors visited! He said Catholic Charities Indianapolis didn’t even give him any pocket-money (the refugee contract supposedly requires this). He also said that they didn’t give him any orientation. He had no idea about 911 emergency procedures, and had no idea how to bring his wife and children to the US.
Of the 11 other case files that monitors inspected, four lacked refugee client signatures indicating receipt of R&P money (in other words there was no proof to show the refugees ever received the money at all). Seven files contained names and personal information of unrelated persons. Pocket money was not given to any of the refugees. In addition, case files often lacked signatures and dates, all contact with refugees was not recorded, and there was no distinction between money spent for the State Department R&P services and money spent for HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) refugee services. Therefore, there was no way to account for the R&P money.
Catholic Charities Indianapolis is one of the resettlement agencies that geared up for larger numbers of arriving refugees this year, here.
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, Catholic, clothes, community/cultural orientation, employment services, employment/jobs for refugees, ESL & ELL, faith-based, funding, immigration services, Indiana, Indianapolis, late health screenings, ORR, pocket-money, public/private partnership, R&P, reform, Somali, State Department, transportation, USCCB | Tagged: Burma/Myanmar, Catholic Charities Indianapolis, ESL, Indiana, Indianapolis, pocket-money, R&P, refugees, resettlement, Resettlement & Placement, Somali, State Department, us catholic conference of bishops, USCCB | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 19, 2010
The Indianapolis Star reports that refugees are not having an easy go of things in Indiana. Refugees, like US citizens, are having a hard time finding jobs, even with job training, and struggle to get by on limited government help. Local resettlement agencies are hoping that the Obama administration will come through with a lot of new government funding via the NSC’s “review” of the federal refugee program.
The U.S. government provides various forms of assistance to refugees — people who typically have escaped the ravages of war-torn nations where torture and political persecution are common — but it’s only available for up to eight months.
By then, it’s expected that refugees — even though many come with limited savings and often little or no English skills — will have found work and be self-sufficient.
…in this economy, many refugees…find it nearly impossible to get work, even with job training provided by the state.
Of the 1,862 refugees and political asylum grantees who resettled in Indiana in 2009, 49 percent became employed, with an average wage of less than $9 an hour.
That leaves many families relying heavily — or entirely — on short-term federal assistance.
…The Obama administration is conducting the first thorough review of the nation’s refugee resettlement system in three decades.
Major reforms are expected to be announced this summer and could include the extension of federal aid for eligible refugees past the current eight-month maximum.
Experts say the review is especially necessary now, given the struggling economy and shaky job market, and because it’s long overdue.
The current system remains virtually unchanged from when it was established by Congress in 1980, when the country was dealing with a wave of refugees from Southeast Asia. Now, the population is more diverse: Last year, nearly 75,000 refugees from more than 70 countries arrived in the United States.
“It’s a cookie-cutter approach to resettlement at this point,” said Carleen Miller, executive director of Exodus Refugee Immigration Inc., which, along with Catholic Charities Indianapolis, is one of two agencies that resettle newcomers in the Circle City.
“There’s not a lot of flexibility to really meet the unique needs of . . . the people that are coming,” Miller said. “It’s never been reviewed to see if it’s really meeting the needs of the current populations that are coming.”
…”The expectation of the United States government is that people are self-sufficient within six months, and that’s really difficult in this economy, plus it’s difficult for the groups that are coming right now.” here
I notice that all the “experts” this journalist refers to are contractors for the refugee program. Is it really any surprise they all want more free government money as the one and only solution to all the problems that plague the program? No one seems to think about how more public funds could drive out the few private funds remaining in the program.
Also, Miller’s statement that the US government expects that refugees be self-sufficient in six months is not correct. If Miller would check her State Department refugee contract she would see that they expect her organization to help 75% of refugees find jobs within six months – and the State Department has dropped that expectation entirely during this recession. Plus, why would the government offer eight months of Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA) if they expected everyone to have a job within six months?
The article also mentions medical issues for refugees.
Other issues compound the problem. Because refugees increasingly are coming from war-torn nations such as Iraq, more have such medical issues as shrapnel wounds and amputations.
Those medical issues are yet another difficult hurdle many refugees must overcome in their efforts to find employment and become self-sufficient — and it’s an issue that often requires time.
“I think there are going to be more medical cases,” Miller said, “so this review couldn’t have come at a better time.”
I don’t understand this claim that refugees are increasingly coming from war-torn nations. Haven’t refugees always come from war-torn nations? I know that many non-refugees from the FSR (former-Soviet republics) given refugee status probably didn’t have war injuries, but most refugees have always been fleeing wars, as well as fleeing oppressive regimes that did not offer medical care for their people and that employed torture on opponents.
How will the NSC review address this issue? The national volags are supposedly required to have a plan for placing refugees in their network in places where they can receive proper medical treatment, although somehow refugees keep being placed in cities that do not have torture treatment programs. All the requirements in the world don’t matter if they are not enforced. Also, we already have social security disability payments. Many Americans resent that refugees arrive here and begin to receive social security payments when they haven’t been adding to the social security pot. If disability payments aren’t good enough, what else are the resettlement agencies proposing here?
We won’t know the answer to that until the NSC releases the results of its review because all the meetings have been behind closed doors and only involved the refugee contractors and government agencies. The public was not invited to take part. I hope the refugees aren’t noticing how we practice democracy in this program.
Posted in Catholic, Catholic Charities Indianapolis, Christian, employment/jobs for refugees, Exodus Refugee Immigration, faith-based, funding, health, Indiana, Indianapolis, Iraqi, NSC (National Security Council), Obama administration, openess and transparency in government, Palestinian, reform, State Department | Tagged: Catholic Charities Indianapolis, Exodus Refugee Immigration, FSR, Indiana, National Security Council, NSC, Obama, RCA, Refugee Cash Assistance, refugees, resettlement, social security disability, State Department | Leave a Comment »
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
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