Archive for the ‘Massachusetts’ Category
Posted by Christopher Coen on May 5, 2012
The mayor of Lynn, MA is putting out alerts about the fiscal pressure experienced by schools in her city, apparently due to refugee secondary migration. Secondary migration is refugees leaving the city they were initially settled in and, under their own volition, going elsewhere due to a whole number of reasons, e.g. to be near friends and relatives, to find a place that has more or higher paying jobs, to seek a less alien climate, to move to a place with a larger community of people from their ethnic group and/or group of national of origin, etc. The main problem here I think is that federal funds are insufficient to help schools impacted by refugee arrivals – the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s grant, known as the Refugee School Impact Program, doesn’t come close to meeting needs.
An article in The Daily News explains some basic details of the problem in Lynn, although it also shows that the mayor is taking a winding and confused course through government channels, even going to the UNHCR, and gets facts wrong about several of the federal agencies:
…[Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy's Chief of Staff, Jamie Cerulli] said after getting bounced from office to office she finally spoke to Barbara Day with the state department’s office of Refugee Resettlement Administration for Children and Families.
“She said for Fiscal Year 2011 they approved 25 refugees to come to the Lynn area,” Cerulli said. “She also said in 2012 it looks like there is approval for 28 … but that’s such a small number. If they’re not coming from there then where are they coming from?”
Cerulli said Day noted that if immigrants already have family in the area they are more likely to gravitate to the same area. Day was not available Thursday for comment and calls to the U.S. State Department of Health and Human Services were not immediately returned.
Cerulli said she plans to keep digging at the federal and state level to try and determine if Lynn has been officially deemed a haven city while also trying to determine exactly what drives immigrants to Lynn.
Kennedy has always emphasized her administration has gone the extra step to celebrate the ethnic diversity and welcome immigrants to the city and she said she would never deny a child or its family services… Read more here
Posted in Boston, capacity, children, funding, language, Office of Admissions, ORR, school for refugee children, schools, secondary migration, refugee, UN (United Nations) | Tagged: Barbara Day, Judith Flanagan Kennedy, Lynn MA, Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, Refugee School Impact Program, refugees, resettlement, schools, secondary migration | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 25, 2012
A New Hampshire man drove a 20-pound rock through the window of an Iraqi restaurant in downtown Lowell, Mass. owned and run by Iraqi refugees. The owner of the restaurant is an Iraqi refugee who was an influential Iraqi television journalist targeted abroad for violence for “telling the truth’’ about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. A veterans group joined by Lowell Mayor Patrick Murphy held a show of support in front of the restaurant as they took turns sitting down inside to eat meals. An article in the Lowell Sun covers the story:
LOWELL — An area veterans group pledged to fill every seat in Babylon, a downtown Iraqi restaurant where owners feared hatred drove a man to throw a 20-pound rock through a window last Wednesday.
Instead, those veterans filled every seat twice.
Lowell police said they identified the man who threw the stone, and that he confessed…
…The suspect, a New Hampshire man who will not be identified until he is arraigned, will be summonsed…
…to court to face a charge of breaking glass in a building, a misdemeanor.
Patrick Scanlon, a Vietnam veteran and coordinator of Veterans for Peace who organized the show of support, voiced skepticism that hate wasn’t involved, but said it was nonetheless important to show support for the family that had been hit hard by fear.
Scanlon was joined at 25 Merrimack St. by veterans of the Iraq war, such as former Army Sgt. Rachel McNeill, of Allston, who served from 2002 to 2010 and spent a year in Iraq serving on a gun truck that escorted convoys, and Chris Borden, of Chelmsford, who continues to serve in the Army Reserves after deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan…
…The veterans, joined by the likes of Lowell Mayor Patrick Murphy, held flags and signs in front of the restaurant as they took turns sitting down inside to eat meals.
Owner Leyla Al-Zubaydi and her father Ahmed Al-Zubaidi said their family was terrified the vandalism was fueled by hate… Read more here
A Boston Globe article gives details about the Iraqi refugees who own the restaurant:
LOWELL – Coming home from work one night, Ahmad Al Zubaidi was attacked by seven men in dark clothing. They savagely beat the influential Iraqi television journalist and left him for dead on the streets of Uzbekistan.
Targeted for “telling the truth’’ about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the Iraq native spent a month in a hospital recovering. The message was unmistakable: Leave or be killed.
Eight years later, half a world away, the 57-year-old recounts the tale in the colorful confines of Babylon Restaurant, his six-month-old establishment in downtown Lowell… Read more here
Posted in hate crimes, International Institute of Lowell, Iraqi, Lowell | Tagged: hate crime, Iraqi, Lowell, refugees, resettlement, veterans | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on August 18, 2011
While the State Department and their private resettlement agency partners continue to resettle refugees to large urban environments – many in dangerous neighborhoods with expensive, roachy apartments and poor schools – refugees continue to out-migrate. Lynn, Massachusetts and Chicago’s north and northwest suburbs are two areas seeing fairly heavy secondary migration (Lynn is also a primary refugee resettlement site). NPR’s WBUR has the details about Lynn.
LYNN, Mass. — With ts cheaper rentals and abundance of public housing, the city of Lynn has become a magnet for families displaced by an ailing economy. This includes a growing number of immigrants — many of whom are refugees seeking a better life…
…the population has grown by almost a third. The city has become a popular destination because of its access to public assistance programs and to public housing.
Lynn is also one of the few cities in Massachusetts where the United Nations High Commission for Refugees relocates people from all over the world. Families who have endured war and famine come from countries as far away as Sudan, Bhutan and Iraq… Read more here
Chicago Public Media WBEZ explains the situation in the Chicago area. Although Chicago’s suburbs are home to established Iraqi populations, resettlement agencies like Heartland Alliance and RefugeeONE continue to resettle Iraqis into the intercity away from their already established relatives:
The Uptown neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side is an established hub for refugee resettlement. There are many agencies there, and refugees opt to live nearby. But recently more refugees bypass Chicago altogether and head to the north and northwest suburbs instead. Those communities are discovering these new populations in their schools, and suburban educators are having to adjust to meet the unique needs of their newest arrivals…
…WANGERIN: We were seeing fewer and fewer Iraqis actually come to our office and avail of our services.
Greg Wangerin is with RefugeeONE, in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. He started to notice the difference in 2007, when the number of Iraqi refugees spiked. Now, Iraqis are the largest group of refugees coming to the Chicago area.
WANGERIN: We began to examine why, and we noticed that this was the circumstance, again because they were coming to reunite with relatives up in that area.
Chicago’s suburbs are home to established Iraqi populations. They came as a result of the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s, and Operation Desert Storm in the 90s. Wangerin says there are other reasons Iraqi refugees are heading to suburbs… Read more here
Posted in Boston, Chicago, dangerous neighborhoods, Heartland Alliance, Iraqi, RefugeeONE (formerly, Interfaith Refugee & Immigration Ministries), RefugeeONE (formerly, Interfaith Refugee & Immigration Ministries), school for refugee children, schools, secondary migration, refugee, State Department | Tagged: Chicago, Greg Wangerin, heartland alliance, Iraqis, Lynn, Massachusetts, RefugeeOne, refugees, resettlement, State Department, Uptown | 5 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on August 12, 2011
The Boston Globe reports that Richard Chacón, director of the state’s Office for Refugees and Immigrants is resigning from his $113,300-a-year job for a fund-raising position at MIT – a position that is no doubt even more lucrative. Note that Mr. Chacón worked as the Globe’s ombudsman at the time in 2005 when the paper made an unusual set of retractions on a story it did on the IRC’s neglect of refugees they resettled to the Boston area.
Richard Chacón, director of the state’s Office for Refugees and Immigrants, has resigned for a fund-raising position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the governor’s office announced today.
The governor’s office is identifying candidates to fill Chacón’s $113,300-a-year job, said Alex Goldstein, spokesman for Governor Deval Patrick.
Chacón, who left Friday, will join MIT in mid-August as the senior associate director for campaign planning, a university spokeswoman said.
Chacón served for nearly four years as director of the Office for Refugees and Immigrants…
Chacón had previously served as Patrick’s director of policy. He was also a veteran journalist at The Boston Globe from 1994 to 2006, holding a variety of positions from ombudsman to Latin America bureau chief. Read more here
Posted in Boston, IRC, revolving door | Tagged: Massachusetts, Office for Refugees and Immigrants, refugees, resettlement, Richard Chacón | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on March 21, 2011
I’ve noticed a lot of news stories this winter about refugees displaced from their apartment buildings or rented homes due to fires, most recently in Worcester, MA, as detailed in an article in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. The article doesn’t indicate how the fire started, other than that it started near a refugee family’s apartment, but it seems that sometimes these fires begin in aging wiring systems, in old or poorly maintained water heaters and other systems, sometimes other residents start fires, and sometimes refugees start fires while cooking or using space heaters.
For 18 Iraqi refugees who recently arrived in Worcester, fleeing a home, sadly, is a familiar experience.
Last month, a fire in a three-decker at 20 Charlton St. forced all 18 refugees to once again leave their homes and search for a new place to live. But compared to kidnappings, murders and bombings they have experienced in their homeland, an apartment fire is a small setback… Read more here
These stories are a continuing reminder to resettlement agencies about the importance of doing home safety orientation for refugees, and I don’t think a quick 5-10 minute orientation for refugees upon arrival, when they are weary and bleary-eyed from long overseas flights, is enough. We all learn through repetition. Plus, many refugee clients are not familiar with our technologies and mechanisms and need reminders. This is what a Nashville, TN district fire chief had to say to the Tennessean about a recent fire:
…This winter has seen its share of fires caused by space heaters and electrical problems, said District Fire Chief Manuel Fonseca. He said apartment complex fires had hit immigrants.Fonseca, who is in charge of community risk reduction, goes to apartment complexes to talk about safety. He said many of the newcomers, refugees, are not accustomed to some of the everyday electrical appliances that may cause a fire.“Some of these refugees have never been exposed to blow dryers, stoves, things we take for granted,” Fonseca said. “Some don’t know how to operate these things. We teach them to understand what they need to do.”… Read more here
Finally, there is the issue of housing that refugees can afford — which can mean older buildings, not the best construction, and slumlords. There is often a good reason that an apartment complex has a lot of vacancies – seemingly perfect for a new batch of refugee arrivals. They don’t keep up their buildings and nobody wants to live there. Resettlement agencies really need to do some screenings of these landlords and property management companies. The same type of screening and research that they would do for any housing they were considering living in.
Posted in apartment house fires, housing, Iraqi, Massachusetts, Worcester | Tagged: apartment house fires, Iraqi refugees, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, Worcester | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on March 8, 2011
The last time this blog commented on refugees in Boston, a year ago, the issue was the exceedingly high rents, which the refugees said that they could not afford. Nothing seems to have changed. Refugees are again reporting, this time to Boston’s WCVB ABC TV NewsCenter 5, about being resettled to a city that they cannot afford to live in. Why then does the U.S. government and its refugee resettlement agency private contractors continue to place refugees there? The reason given is that “refugees find more affordable housing elsewhere in [Massachusetts].” Shouldn’t these refugees therefore first be placed elsewhere in the state too?
…Ahmed Almusarawy and his 4-year-old daughter head to a Chelsea relief agency for clothes and English classes. He’s trying to rebuild a life for his wife and four children after being shot while working as a state department driver in Iraq.
With the help of a translator, Almusarawy describes his injuries.
“Twelve bullets in his stomach and his leg,” she said.
Almusarawy has struggled since he arrived here nearly a year ago, and can no longer afford his $1,100 Chelsea rent.
“They told us ‘you will have a house, a job,’” said Almusarawy.
Other Iraqi refugees tell similar stories. The government subsidies don’t cover high rent on Boston area homes, which they are placed in by resettlement agencies. Jobs are hard to find…
…Hameed Nasif, who brought his five children here in September. Through a translator, he talked about promises by the U.S.
“To help you and assist you to find a job, to learn you the language, to assist you with anything,” said Nasif.
With no job, Nasif can no longer afford their $1,600 a month Everett apartment.
Nasif’s family as well as Almusarawy’s are both due in court Thursday facing eviction hearings.
“It’s scary. They are scared for the future,” said Nasif.
“There is no answer. No answer. You must do something for these families.” said Albadri.
The Massachusetts office for Refugees and Immigrants acknowledged there are challenges. But in a phone call to NewsCenter 5, Director Richard Chacon called
Massachusetts a “national model for other states.” He said
while housing is expensive in the Boston area, wages tend to be
higher, and that refugees often find more affordable housing
elsewhere in the state…
…The local resettlement agencies responsible for temporarily funding, then assisting the refugees once they arrive did not return calls from NewsCenter 5. Read more here
Posted in Boston, Catholic Charities of Greater Boston, International Institute of NE, Iraqi, Jewish Family & Children's Service (Boston), Massachusetts, Refugee and Immigrant Assistance Center (Boston) | Tagged: Boston, Catholic Charities of Greater Boston, Jewish Family & Children's Service, low-income housing, Massachusetts, Massachusetts office for Refugees and Immigrants, Refugee and Immigrant Assistance Center, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, RIAC | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on February 12, 2011
The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) has once again been caught short-changing refugees. It’s affiliate in Lowell, Massachusetts, the International Institute of Lowell, seems to have dropped off refugees in the middle of winter with no warm clotheing, and gave them rusted pots and pans, or none at all. An article in The Lowell Sun covers the topic.
…For more than 100 years, Lowell has been a gateway city. Every year about 250 refugees arrive in the Mill City through the International Institute of Lowell. Some have fled strife in Burma or Congo. Many have come from Cambodia. Lately, about 35 families are from Iraq…
…one thing the Iraqi refugees agree on is Mary Todd, a 74-year-old Lawrence resident and the community’s greatest advocate.
Todd, an organizer with Merrimack Valley People for Peace, threw together a welcome potluck dinner about two years ago, as soon as she heard seven Iraqi families had settled in Lowell.
Todd, a retired career counselor, wanted to help. She sat with one refugee at his home and revised his resume. That’s when she saw the family lacked curtains, cookingware or enough dishes, so she asked for donations. Soon local church groups, business owners and other volunteers wanted to help too…
…Refugees receive minimal supplies. A family of four may receive four forks and four plates. There are no rugs, no curtains, no toasters. Some families use rusted pots and pans. Some have none. Families can be dropped in Lowell in the middle of winter with no warm clothes… Read more here
Yet, the State Department contract documents that cover the minimum services and items that USCRI must give to refugees makes it clear that they must give refugees items that are clean and in good repair – sorry, no rust allowed (supposedly). USCRI must also give refugees seasonally-appropriate clothing for work, school and everyday use – again, supposedly.
Of course the State Department has a philosophy of “cooperation” with resettlement agency contractors, and so they don’t enforce these bare-bones, minimum requirements.
That wouldn’t be partner-like.
Posted in clothes, Cooperative Agreement, household items, missing or broken, International Institute of Lowell, Iraqi, Lowell, Massachusetts, Operational Guidance, State Department, USCRI | Tagged: International Institute of Lowell, Iraqi refugees, Lowell, Massachusetts, Operational Guidance, Rebecca Feldman, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, State Department, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI | 2 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 24, 2011
A clinic at the University of Boston is offering non-Western therapies to refugee torture survivors, according to an article in BU Today. Movement, acupuncture, cupping, and chanting are some of the alternative, or integrative, therapies offered by the Complementary and Alternative Medicine Refugee Health Clinic (CAM).
Tap tap. Acupuncturist Ellen Silver Highfield’s finger gently nudges the tiny needles out of their tubes and into the mocha skin of Maryan Abdi. Color-coded by size, the metal quills protrude from the 73-year-old Somali woman’s feet and legs as she reclines on the examination table, her ankle-length floral dress a splash of color in the sterile room at Boston Medical Center…
…The exam room is one of four at the one-year-old Complementary and Alternative Medicine Refugee Health Clinic (CAM), staffed by Highfield and Michael Grodin, a psychiatrist and a BU School of Public Health professor of health law, bioethics, and human rights. Every hospital harbors the suffering, but most CAM patients have lived through a particular hell: they are torture survivors, having endured personal abuse or watched loved ones suffer through it. Two-thirds of the patients—CAM has treated about 50—fled war-shredded sub-Saharan Africa, their psyches haunted by memories of family murdered or left behind.
“It’s not like a single trauma, like a hurricane,” says Grodin. “These people are trapped, imprisoned, and they can’t escape.”
Grodin began his career three decades ago working mainly with Holocaust victims. He wondered why some torture victims were more resilient than others. In 1998, he helped found with several BU faculty members the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights, based at BMC, and worked extensively with Tibetan Buddhist monks tortured by Chinese authorities.
Grodin started CAM as an outgrowth of his work at the Boston center because he believes that to best diagnose and treat patients from other countries, physicians must understand their religious and cultural background. The clinic, which sees patients for four hours every Friday morning, gets financial support from BU, the UN’s Voluntary Fund for Torture Survivors, and the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, as well as private donations from organizations like the Tides Foundation.
“A lot of my patients have ‘heartache,’” Grodin says. “They’re not talking about chest pain. They’re talking about homesickness—sadness. In many cultures, people don’t talk about mental health, depression. They manifest it as back pain or chronic body pain.”
He is convinced that psychotherapy—talk—often doesn’t help such survivors. Some don’t trust doctors, who were their tormentors back home. Others, he says, used disassociation to survive the physical agony of torture. “They were sitting in their mind” during the painful events, he says. “They were separate from their body. Grodin uses Chinese movement exercises to bring those people back into their bodies.
“Good chi flow,” he says while examining a Liberian patient. The woman has complained that her knees hurt, but when asked the cause, she says she doesn’t know. Grodin has some clues. He knows that the woman has been beaten, raped, and forced to walk on gravel on her knees, and he also knows that memory loss is a coping mechanism used by many survivors. He asks if her pain has improved from his treatments. “Little by little,” she tells him in accented English.
“OK, let’s get to work,” the doctor says, proceeding to array the areas around her knees and some other spots with acupuncture needles. He also proposes to cup her, referring to a traditional Chinese pain remedy that places upside down cups on afflicted parts of the body.
“I don’t want cups today,” she tells him.
“You’re the boss,” Grodin replies, inserting the green-tipped needles into her skin. The predominance of female patients is not coincidence. “Mainly we’ll see women,” says Grodin. “The men are arrested and tortured and often killed or imprisoned.”
Movement, acupuncture, cupping, chanting: alternative medicine to Westerners, these are conventional treatments to CAM patients. “We don’t see what we do as alternative,” says Grodin. “We see it as integrative. We work together with the primary care doc.” That, he says, is because much of Western medicine, such as pain-killing drugs, works quite well. Grodin says he uses the complementary medicine to decrease the dose of narcotics that patients need.
CAM is currently collecting data to measure the effectiveness of its treatments. Grodin’s Liberian patient and Abdi have both reported that their pain had at least somewhat diminished after their visits. Elsewhere, researchers are investigating why acupuncture works with some forms of pain and not others.
“I’m less concerned about the science than I am about people getting better,” Grodin says… Read more here
Although two patients report that their pain had somewhat diminished after their visits to the clinic, the therapies really should be compared to sugar pills to determine the effectiveness.
Posted in Boston, health, Liberian, mental health, ORR, Somali | Tagged: acupuncture, alternative medicine, alternative therapies, BMC, Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights, CAM. refugees, chanting, Complementary and Alternative Medicine Refugee Health Clinic, cupping, depression, Liberian refugees, mental health, Movement, ORR, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, resettlement, Somali refugees, Tibetan Buddhist monks, torture, University of Boston | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 25, 2010
According to an article in the Boston Globe Iraqi Mandaean refugees – Mandaeanism is an ancient religion – are desperate to find a country that will take them all in, however no one wants all of them. In addition, the U.S. has decided to resettle the Mandaean refugees around the country rather than allow them to live together in one area, as they have requested.
BOSTON—No single country wants to take all the Iraqi Mandaean refugees, and that’s putting the tiny population at risk, a United Nations refugee official said Thursday…
…Mandaeanism is a tiny, ancient religion that views John the Baptist as its great teacher. About 60,000 Mandaeans recently have fled Iraq and Iran because of persecution, many to Jordan and Syria.
Since 2007, more than 1,200 Iraqi Mandaean refugees have been resettled in the United States, according to the U.S. State Department. The groups are scattered mostly in Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas, Colorado and California. Populations also have been resettled in Europe and Australia.
Boston Mandaean doctor Wisam Breegi said Mandaeans need to be resettled together for support in one place, like Boston, or the population will disappear within two generations.
“This community has no country and is scattered all over the world,” Breegi said. “There needs to be an effort to try to keep Mandaeans together.”…Read more here
Posted in Boston, California, Colorado, Iraqi, Mandaean, Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas | Tagged: Boston, Iraq, Iraqi refugees, Lutheran Social Services in Worcester, Mandaean, Mandaean refugees, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, UN, United Nations, Vincent Cochetel | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 19, 2010
Once again refugees are complaining about services they received at a USCRI affiliate, in this case the International Institute of Boston (here).
Many refugees are angry at resettlement agencies, such as the International Institute of Boston, that brought them here. They accuse the institute of placing them in apartments that are too expensive for their meager benefits, and then abandoning them.
Carolyn Benedict Drew, International Institute president, instead blames the refugees, saying they are rich and expect too much. Apparently Ms. Benedict Drew prefers that all refugees be poor, uneducated people with lower expectations of what her agency should do for them.
Carolyn Benedict Drew, International Institute president, said she agreed that the financial assistance was inadequate but also said many of the Iraqis came from well-to-do families and had higher expectations than refugees from poorer backgrounds.
“If somebody has been in a refugee camp all of their life, and has never really used a fork and spoon, that’s a very different expectation in coming to America than somebody in Iraq who was a physician and did very well,’’ Drew said.
But of course refugee resettlement agencies don’t get to pick who is a refugee. Refugees are people who are fleeing oppression, and some of them are educated and/or middle or upper social-economic people. They tend to ask more questions and are a bit less easy to intimidate, i.e. they’re “uppity”, in the minds of some of the resettlement agencies.
As usual Bob Carey, director of resettlement and migration policy at the International Rescue Committee (IRC), then tries to blame things on the government. He also feels he can speak for the refugees:
“They’ve been shocked at how little support they get.’’
Mr. Carey, do you ever tell your refugee clients that they should also be expecting support from your organization and not just the government? Do you ever tell them that you’re not adding much private funding? Instead, after successfully lobbying Congress to double the State Department contract money you now want to get even more goodies via your partner government agency, HHS’s ORR.
By now the private refugee resettlement “charities” have long since learned that they don’t have to offer much of anything on their own. Instead, they know they can just do a poor job and then effectively lobby the federal government to fill the “void”. For example, with the arrival of another refugee group that has many professionals, Iraqi refugees (like many of the former Yugoslav republics refugees before them), resettlement agencies are now spinning their lack of even minimum adequate help to these refugees as the fault of insufficient U.S. government funding.
Resettlement agencies are calling on federal and state governments to increase cash assistance and its duration. They also want professional re-certification programs that would enable refugee doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other professionals to work in the careers in which they were trained. Until these measures are taken, they say, the federal government should provide money for emergency housing.
If they really believe that the government should give funding for all needs then what exactly is the point of involving charitable groups in the refugee resettlement program? As supposed charities shouldn’t they be offering these services on their own? Anyone can help professional refugees to try to re-certify just by, at the very least, Googling how to do it and then making an effort.
Our group has even done this for Iraqi refugees who couldn’t get any help from their particular resettlement agencies. It really doesn’t need more funding, it just means that we use our time differently to help these refugees. Instead of spending a lot of time and effort directing them to a series of no-skill or low-skill jobs resettlement agencies could instead help the refugees to write a good resume, and then direct them to jobs related to their field and to places to get take classes to prepare for re-certification.
If they were thinking along these useful lines, instead of always just demanding more government funding, they would also direct professional refugees to resettlement sites where they could take higher level courses in their professional fields. For example, last year an Iraqi periodontist with a doctorate named Faiz Al Berqdar, 60, (he had an extensive collection of degrees, research articles and academic writings) was resettled to Salt Lake City by USCCB, and when he needed to go back to school to complete classes in areas where the U.S. considered his Iraqi education ”deficient” he learned that there was no dental college in Utah (here). He and his family then moved back to the Middle East where he immediately got an academic job in Syria. What sense does that make?
Posted in Boston, former Yugoslav republics, funding, government, HHS, International Institute of NE, Iraqi, IRC, Massachusetts, ORR, USCRI | Tagged: Bob Carey, Bosnia, Bosnian, Boston, Carolyn Benedict Drew, charities, charity, Congress, former Yugoslav republics, former Yugoslavia, government funding, HHS, International Institute of NE, International Rescue Committee, Iraqi, IRC, MA, Massachusetts, Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, private funding, professional, professionals, public funding, recertification, refugee, refugees, resettlement, State Department, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI | 1 Comment »
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
