Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 13, 2012
A leading refugee rights attorney in Israel writes in a new report that the goal of the country’s asylum system is to reject as many requests as possible. Only eight people were approved for refugee status in Israel last year, out of thousands who applied. The asylum process is marked by long, exhausting interrogations, finding contradictions at any cost, investigations with foregone conclusions and contradictory responses. The system it set up to systemically reject as many applications as possible, and has no interest or intention to determine who is a refugee and who isn’t, or to offer any protection to any of those requesting asylum. An article at Haaretz has the story:
Out of the thousands of requests for refugee status submitted in Israel last year, a total of eight were approved, says a new report by a leading refugee rights attorney.
Long, exhausting interrogations, finding contradictions at any cost, investigations with foregone conclusions and contradictory responses – all these make up the system for granting refugee status in Israel, wrote attorney Yonatan Berman of the Hotline for Migrant Workers.
Hotline Executive Director Reut Michaeli said: “The report presents a depressing picture of the asylum system in Israel, a system established by the Interior Ministry with the goal of rejecting asylum requests by refugees in a systematic manner. The Interior Ministry and the system it set up have no interest or intention to determine who is a refugee and who isn’t, or to provide any protection to any of those requesting [asylum].
“The goal of the system, and those heading it,” Michaeli continued, “is to reject as many requests as possible. These actions lead to the … immoral deportation of refugees to places where their lives are in danger, in opposition to Israel’s international commitments and despite the personal history of the people and society in Israel.”… Read more here
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: asylum, israel, refugees, resettlement | Leave a Comment »
Posted by nancylee1 on October 8, 2011
Whether coming from extreme poverty or a professional career that allowed them to live comfortably, most refugees here find themselves with a menial job that pays next to nothing. Just as airport travelers have little choice other than to pay the expensive concession stand prices throughout O’Hare and Midway airports – operated by retailers with lucrative city contracts – so do refugees have little choice but to accept the low paying airport jobs. As someone who worked for an airline for 16 years I can also attest to the fact that working in an airport is stressful no matter what job you do. Chicago is not cheap, and refugees working the airport jobs also have long, expensive commutes, while struggling to pay high rents.
Although Chicago city contractors have long had to pay living wages, a legal loophole allowed airport concessionaires to avoid the requirement. The retailers, however, may finally have to pay their employees a “living wage” of $11.18-an-hour if Chicago aldermen pass a new ordinance, according to article at Progress Illinois:
As the City of Chicago prepares to let out a wave of contracts for food and retail shops at O’Hare and Midway airports, new legislation seeks to ensure that concession workers at both facilities — the folks who pour the coffee, ring up book sales, fry hamburgers, and the like — are not unceremoniously dumped as the process moves forward.
The “Stable Jobs Stable Airports Ordinance” (PDF), in fact, would remake labor relations for concession employees should it it make it through the council thicket and find the signature of the current or next mayor of Chicago. It also stands out as one of the most significant expansions of the Chicago’s living wage rules since those stipulations were added to city code in the late 1990s…
…O’Hare and Midway concessions are lucrative, as anyone who has purchased a meal or a magazine while waiting for a flight out of Chicago knows well. In a request-for-proposals (PDF) for 22 specialty retail and services concessions at O’Hare, for example, the Department of Aviation reports that total sales for the 63 food, specialty concessions, news and gift stores, and duty free shops in the airport’s terminal one totaled $82.8 million in 2009. O’Hare has three terminals, of course, with 160 outlets in all, this RFP says. A “concession open house” for food and beverage slots at O’Hare and Midway, scheduled for tomorrow, will kick off a different bidding process.
Ald. Ricardo Munoz (22nd Ward), one of the chief sponsors of the new ordinance, pointed out this morning that the concessions operators have a “captive audience” as fliers wait to board and often get multi-year contracts to run their outlets. Such business conditions mean concessionaires should be able to pay its employees a living wage, even if that means a price increase for some items… Read more here
Let’s hope that the ordinance passes so these workers and their children are not victims of a society that cares little for the 99%, while enriching the 1% who control most of the money.
Posted in Chicago, economic self-sufficiency, employment abuses, employment/jobs for refugees, Illinois, Refugees in US, Uncategorized | Tagged: aiport jobs, Chicago city contractors, living wage, low wages, minimum wage, refugee labor | Leave a Comment »
Posted by nancylee1 on August 13, 2011
I often wonder why there is almost no outcry against the wars…no call to end these horrific ventures made by the United States and its allies that have shattered and ended the lives of millions and destroyed their future. As a result of all the atrocities against humans and their environments, can someone tell me who wars enrich? Who is safer? Who is better off financially? Spiritually? Mentally? If nothing positive has come of all the years of violence, why continue?
Millions upon millions of people are refugees because of these endless wars. They have lost everything from family members to homes to occupations to health. Organizations in the U.S. and other countries that receive government funding help refugees to start over from losses sustained from the devastation of wars they had no part in starting.
These organizations, founded on being caretakers, extol the good they do serving refugees. They speak from a high moral ground and urge us to respect and admire them for their unselfish work. They point out to us how much society expects them to do, and with very little funding. They are quick to do studies about how necessary preservation of their budgets is in these times of economic downturn.
Yet where are their voices when it comes to asking for the cause of all this suffering to end?
Where are their voices telling of all the physical and mental illness refugees are subject to because of the wars? Why is there no mention that the wars need to end so that the money that pours into continuing them is instead used to build societies that care for and employ people? Is it spiritually correct to mop up a small part of the mess and not try to stop it at its root cause?
Wars are business and refugee rescue is business too. If it weren’t, there would be a vast outcry beyond the red portions on the spreadsheet and how it is not adding up.
To illustrate how these wars and their effects are nothing but business, please watch this interview with Richard Wolff on Democracy Now.
To read about how adversely the war in Iraq affected its people, please read this article by Murtaza Hussain.
I hope that as people become more educated about how much harm the wars really cause more voices will join each other in the streets to call for an end to these wars. Without greater awareness the wars will go on uninhibited.
Posted in faith-based, funding, health, immigration assistance, immigration services, mental health, NGO's (Non-governmental organizations), openess and transparency in government, Refugees in US, religion, Uncategorized | Tagged: Democracy Now, Iraq, Murtaza Hussain, refugees, resettlement, Richard Wolff, war | Leave a Comment »
Posted by nancylee1 on May 19, 2011
Stop and think for a moment about how many things in life you are given a manual or handbook on.
A new car…a new appliance…a rental agreement…a mortgage…a school…a contract of any kind…a new job…medical insurance, results and permissions…voter information…when you think about it, for almost anything that is important, you are given written information that allows you to make informed decisions and allows you to have something to refer back to.
In most cases of immigration however, this is not true. Although agencies are paid by the government to care for immigrants and refugees, explanatory written information is very often not provided. Rather, people unfamiliar with even the most basic functioning of this country are given oral seminars while they are in a state of fear and extreme fatigue, not to mention often ill. They are expected to take in cursory information that is foreign to them and hold onto it in their minds. Things that are given to them in writing are often not explained and their signature is required, but they are not even given a copy of what they have signed.
Sound like a losing proposition?
It is.
By doing this, agencies are setting people up for failure and increasing their fear. In addition, for someone who does not speak English or does not have a computer, it is comparable to being thrown to the wolves. In a country where unemployment is around 30% for refugees and living expenses are sky high, being thrown to wolves might seem like a relief compared with trying to cope in a strange new country filled with problems.
It is time to demand that agencies correct this and immigrants and refugees are given an area and language specific handbook or manual, stating the information they need to survive. What the agency has spent on them, the specifics of the program they came into the country on, their insurance benefits, hospital information, school information, local agency information, federal government programs information, lease information, utility information, all the knowledge the caseworkers are expected to know, should be presented in written form to people upon arrival.
Too many have been thrown to the wolves and are destitute because of it. This is unnecessary and inhumane and certainly not in keeping with the sentiment expressed in the website of the agencies.
“A willing heart, a helping hand, and a sense of serving the community with joy..” “…provide help and create hope for more than 9 million people of all faiths each year.” “… leveraging time, energy and resources to join the vulnerable in their time of need.”
Providing a useful tool in writing such as a handbook would go a long way to make these aspirations more attainable.
Please write to your government officials and demand immigrants and refugees be given what they need. Take ten minutes of your time to do this most important task.
Posted in cultural/community orientation, post arrival, economic self-sufficiency, immigration assistance, immigration services, insufficient assistance with daily tasks, language interpretation/translation, lack of, NGO's (Non-governmental organizations), R&P, Uncategorized | Tagged: agencies, handbook, human rights, immigrant, immigration, information in writing, refugee, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, resettlement, volag | 21 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 12, 2011
Last October a US Senator informed us that he had contacted the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the US Department of HHS about the missing Annual Reports to Congress that the Secretary of HHS is supposedly “mandated” by the Refugee Act of 1980 to send to Congress each year on the Refugee Resettlement Program. (I place mandated in quotation marks because it has some apparent alternate meaning inside the Beltway — something like, “If you are mandated to do something and don’t do it you will subject to possible arrest and prosecution, but if we are mandated to do it, we’ll do it when we feel like it, maybe even years later”).
Missing, the HHS Secretary never having sent to Congress as mandated, are reports for Fiscal Years 2008, 2009, and 2010 (2007 is the most recent report). The Senator said that ORR officials claimed (as of Oct. 2010) that the Fiscal Year 2008 report “should be released to the public within two months”. (Notice the use of “should be” in that sentence. Is that a qualification or does “should” now have some secret, alternative meaning as well?)
Of course two months went by, and guess what? No report. Then, two more months went by. Still, no report. No word back from the Senator, so we contacted him again in late February to inquire about the missing report. A month later the Senator’s office tells us that “the agency informed me that the report for Fiscal Year 2008 is currently in the clearance process and should be released to the public in the near future”, and “I have been informed ORR is still processing data for the Fiscal Year 2009 report and is unsure when it will be released.” (Clearance process? IThe 2008 report was due over THREE years ago! Plus, the Fiscal Year 2009 report to Congress was due a year ago this past January — back in January 2010. “Processing data”? “Unsure” when a report mandated by law to be sent to the Congress over a year ago will be released? Wow.)
Bear in mind that these agencies — supposedly servants of the US people — act as role models to their private “partner” agencies in the US refugee resettlement program. Seeing the ORR thumb its nose at the US Congress why would these contractors feel any need to abide by silly things such as written contracts (Cooperative Agreements) in which they supposedly promise to give refugees fairly minimal services in return for the taxpayers money?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Annual Reports to Congress, Health and Human Services, HHS, Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR | 1 Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 25, 2010
Hello, this is the Friends of Refugees (FORefugees) blog. We started our group in 2002 to monitor the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program. We assist individual refugees in the Upper Midwest while monitoring and investigating the refugee program across the nation. Our goal is to assist refugees and the American public by helping to ensure that the refugee resettlement program is run in a manner that is accountable
to all of them. Currently we have a system that is run secretively,
wherein the government oversight agencies and the private refugee resettlement agencies have a cozy relationship, thus preventing real oversight. We believe that this public program needs some sunlight, to ensure accountability and prevent abuses.
Our group supports the refugee resettlement program, believing it is a crucial leg of the efforts to help the most vulnerable refugees and refugee families around the world; those who are capable of becoming self-sufficient in the US.
Melissa Sogard and I, and others, will be updating this blog several times a week. We currently have investigations underway around the country as well as general information about refugee resettlement agencies that have not been providing their refugee clients with basic services, nor responding responsibly to community members‘ concerns.
We will also be posting U.S. government agency documents related to the refugee resettlement program, including U.S. State Department inspection reports of the refugee resettlement agencies — acquired through various FOIA’s.
Thanks for visiting us!
~Christopher Coen
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
