Archive for the ‘ECDC’ Category
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 10, 2012
In addition to the two recent murders of South Sudanese refugees in Denver, the director of ECDC African Community Center says that there have been many incidents of the refugees being attacked, hassled and threatened in the city. A young South Sudanese man was shot in the neck and paralyzed from the waist down when two men robbed him as he returned to his Denver apartment one afternoon last June. Another South Sudanese refugee reports having been laughed at, called ugly and told to go back to where he came from. A teenage girl once threatened to hit him with a rock, he said, and he believes that the Sudanese have been victims due to their darker color (most Sudanese have skin that is darker than that of the average African-American). An article in the Denver Post gives other details of abusive treatment and crimes against local South Sudanese residents:
Jimma Reat’s murder last week in Denver was one more blow to a war-scarred community of Sudanese refugees still struggling to come to grips with the unsolved shooting death of Reat’s uncle four months ago.
The immigrants from the African country are frequently victims, said Project Education Sudan director Carol Rinehart.
“There are a lot of incidents with Sudanese being attacked, hassled and threatened,” Rinehart said. “They have been through a lot of trauma, and to have this happen to them, it just creates more anxiety.”…
…”This is a community that knows death. That doesn’t make it any easier,” said Jennifer Gueddiche, director of the ECDC African Community Center…
…David Deng, who came to the United States in 2001, was shot in the neck and paralyzed from the waist down when two men robbed him as he returned to his Denver apartment one afternoon last June. When a friend called and told him of Reat’s death, the news hit him hard.
“That is scaring me,” said Deng, 30. “We don’t know why there are a lot of bad things happening.”
His sentiment is widely shared within the tight-knit community of refugees that numbers about 6,000, Gueddiche said…
…”This is huge. They’re just absolutely devastated,” she said. “Imagine coming to a place where you are supposed to be safe. … This is the second random act of violence on this community.”
The recent burst of violence began Dec. 26, when Reat’s uncle, Youn Malual, was shot and killed in the parking lot of his Arapahoe County apartment building.
A father of five, he was returning from his job as a bus mechanic when he was attacked. He had no enemies, said Dengpathot, who thinks Malual’s death was the result of someone’s road rage.
His killer hasn’t been caught. Denver police also are still seeking those involved in Reat’s death. The longer the killers stay free, the more likely they — or someone else — will hurt another person, said Reat’s uncle, Thomas Puot…
…Authorities in Denver and Arapahoe County have said they have no reason to think the shootings of Mulual and Reat are related.
“At this point, we don’t have any indication of a connection, but it is something we will keep open,” said Denver police Capt. Ron Saunier, head of the Crimes Against Persons Bureau. “I don’t want to rule it out.”
The investigation into Malual’s death is active, and investigators are working on “significant” leads, said Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson.
Saunier said there is no indication that Reat’s death is gang-related.
The assailants, who appeared to be Latino, screamed racial epithets during the attack, said Reat’s brother, Ran James Pal, 25, who was driving that night.
That racial slurs would be part of the assault doesn’t surprise Isaac Bher, 32, who immigrated in 2001 and is now a U.S. citizen. Most Sudanese have skin that is darker than that of the average African-American.
“I know we have been victims by our darker color,” Bher said. “Even the African-Americans are not very happy with us.”
He said he has been laughed at, called ugly and told to go back to where [he] came from. A teenage girl once threatened to hit him with a rock, he said… Read more here
Posted in African Community Center (Denver), dangerous neighborhoods, Denver, police, safety, South Sudanese | Tagged: African Community Center, attacks, Denver, racial prejudice, refugees, resettlement, shootings, sudanese | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 9, 2012
A 24-year-old Sudanese refugee in Denver was shot to death while riding in his brother’s car after a police dispatcher instructed his brother to go back to the scene where someone had threatened them with a gun. The dispatcher also failed to send a police officer to the scene for about four minutes after the brother reported that men had threatened them with a gun. The original incident started at a traffic light as the young Sudanese men were driving when a Jeep rolled up beside them and men inside started to call them names using the N-word. The men got out of a Jeep (a stolen vehicle) and threw beer bottles, breaking the car’s rear window. Last December an uncle of the young man killed was also shot to death behind his home after returning home from work in the early morning hours, in a crime that is still unsolved. An article in the Denver Post documents what happened during the latest incident:
A Denver 911 operator was mistaken when he told a motorist to return to the area where he and his companions had been threatened in a road-rage incident — moments before a fatal shooting, the head of the city’s emergency phone system acknowledged Monday.
Jimma Reat, a 24-year-old Sudanese refugee, died in the incident.
Reat and three companions had safely returned to his Wheat Ridge apartment and called 911 to report the altercation early Sunday when the 911 operator instructed them to drive back to Denver and wait for a police officer.
While they waited, a Jeep that had been involved in the earlier incident appeared and someone opened fire, killing Reat…
…failed to dispatch a police officer for about four minutes after one of Reat’s brothers told him that a carload of men, one of them flourishing a gun, threatened them…
…Reat’s brother, Gatwec Dengpathot, said the group had returned to the parking lot at Reat’s apartment in Wheat Ridge after the altercation, during which someone threatened them with a gun…
…One of Reat’s brothers, who was driving the Dodge Charger, was on a cellphone talking to the operator.
“He told the dispatcher that it isn’t safe there,” Dengpathot said. “We don’t want to go there, that is where the problem happened, they were threatening us with a gun.”
But after a few moments, “they finally submitted to the (operator’s) authority” and returned to West 29th Avenue, just east of Sheridan Boulevard, within Denver’s border, Dengpathot said…
…The original incident started at a traffic light as the group was driving north on Sheridan, at West 10th, when the Jeep rolled up beside the Charger, and the men inside started to call them “names using the N-word,” Dengpathot said.
The men, he said, got out of the Jeep and threw beer bottles, breaking the Charger’s rear window… Read more here
Posted in African Community Center (Denver), dangerous neighborhoods, Denver, police, safety, South Sudanese | Tagged: Denver, dispatcher, killing, resettlement, rfugees, shooting, sudanese | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 12, 2011
The slowdown in refugee arrivals since October 2010 has led to a situation where resettlement agencies are now refocusing efforts on doing needed employment coaching for refugees already here. Did the doubling of the State Department’s per capita grant funding to resettlement contractors last year do the same? Let’s hope so. The federal government increased the funding with no strings attached, which was not necessarily good for the refugees — especially due to the problems at Houston’s four resettlement agencies: The Alliance For Multicultural Community Services, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Houston, Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, and YMCA International Services.
Yani Rose Keo, interim executive director of Houston’s Alliance claims that her agency is now spending more time with refugees, according to an article in the Houston Chronicle.
The number of refugees resettling in the U.S. and Houston has dropped considerably this year because of new security measures, according to the U.S. State Department.
Nationwide, refugee arrivals have declined more than 30 percent, from nearly 54,000 in the first nine months of fiscal year 2010 to about 37,000 during the same period this year.
“We are committed to conducting the most rigorous screening in order to ensure that those being admitted through the refugee program are not seeking to harm the United States,” according to a statement from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Government officials attribute the slowdown to a new “pre-departure” check that went into effect in late 2010. The additional screening is intended to identify information that might have come to light since initial biographical and biometric checks were conducted...
Fewer arrivals means less funding for YMCA International and four other local refugee resettlement agencies, which receive per-capita grants from the State Department to help refugees transition into their new lives in the U.S.
The grants total about $1,800 per refugee, with $1,100 slated for direct assistance, and the balance paying for administrative costs, such as case managers...
The Alliance For Multicultural Community Services laid off four employees, but hired one back last month, as arrivals began to pick up again, said Yani Rose Keo, interim executive director.
“Normally we are super busy June, July, August, September,” Keo said.
She said Alliance is using the unexpected down time to help refugees who are already here.
“We do a lot of employment coaching right now,” Keo said. “That’s what’s the key. When they get here, we spend more time, closer with them, coaching them.”… Read more here
Posted in Alliance for Multicultural Community Services, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, employment/jobs for refugees, funding, Houston, Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, Nepali Bhutanese, State Department, USCIS, YMCA International Services | Tagged: Alliance for Multicultural Community Services, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Houston, houston, human rights, Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, refugee, resettlement, security checks, security clearance, State Department, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS, Yani Rose Keo, YMCA International Services | 5 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on April 20, 2011
San Diego county welfare workers have been improperly denying Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA) to qualifying refugees since late 2009, according to an article in Voice of San Diego. The county welfare office claims that the California state government did not tell them until last month that these refugees are eligible for RCA (instead of regular welfare via the state’s CalWORKs program).
It was in late 2009 that the county should have begun dispensing RCA itself. Before that, the four local refugee resettlement federal contractors had distributed the funds to refugees, yet according to the article in late 2009 the federal government (ORR?) decided that San Diego county welfare workers should instead, distribute it — the way its done in every other California county.
County social workers have instead inexplicably been signing refugees up for CalWORKs — federal welfare that the US Dept. of HHS channels to the state of California — even though these particular refugees were not eligible for it (due to the State’s Department’s initial resettlement grant — which was doubled in 2010. Thus, having an income during their first month too high to qualify for CalWORKs). At the beginning of this month, however, the San Diego county welfare office stopped doing this, but did not refer the refugees to RCA instead, because it has taken 30 days to train county workers to carry out the change.
…the county has been routinely denying refugee applications for welfare and not enrolling those families in the alternative program, called Refugee Cash Assistance, which provides the same cash payments as CalWORKs but is funded from a special pot of state money for refugees. Since the start of this year, resettlement workers say, the mistake has affected dozens of refugee families’ applications, leaving some of the county’s poorest and most vulnerable without the cash aid they’re entitled
to receive…
…County officials acknowledge the mistake and say they’re working to fix it. But they don’t yet know how many refugees were improperly denied…
…The larger federal resettlement grant might not have been a problem…somewhere else. In California counties other than San Diego, welfare workers are trained to automatically refer refugees to the alternative cash aid program if their initial
resettlement grant makes them ineligible for welfare…
…But until recently, that wasn’t an issue in San Diego County, which has handled refugee assistance differently because its refugee community is so large. San Diego has four federally contracted resettlement
agencies that help newly arrived refugees adjust during their first months in the United States. Until late 2009, those agencies, not the county, were in charge of administering cash assistance to new refugee families for their first eight months.
The federal government funneled assistance money directly to the resettlement agencies with the hope that the agencies would be better equipped than the county to help refugees, who often have no English skills or experience navigating red tape.
But in late 2009, that money mostly stopped flowing to the local agencies. The federal government wanted refugee families to apply for welfare directly to San Diego County, just like in every other California county.
It’s still unclear why, but for most of 2010, the county approved refugee welfare applications, even for families with the larger resettlement payments that should have made them ineligible. Then this year, workers started counting the resettlement payment as income and just started denying applications…
…Kim Forrester, assistant deputy director of the county’s Health and Human Services Agency, which administers the CalWORKs and food stamps program, said it wasn’t until last month that state officials told the county it should be enrolling families ineligible for CalWORKs in the special program for refugees.
“We’re going to have it fully implemented within 30 days,” Forrester said. She said her department would identify any families that were inappropriately denied and issue their payments retroactively.
It’s also not clear why it took the county a year to realize it should have been enrolling them in the alternative refugee program. But when the denials finally started early this year, resettlement agencies didn’t know what to do…
…Until the county fixes the problem and trains workers to enroll refugees in Refugee Cash Assistance, more families could be denied… Read more here
The article illistrates the issue via an Alliance for African Assistance Iraqi refugee woman client and her two children, whom the Alliance simply handed over the grant money to ($1100 x three people = $3300). The family bought beds, a new extra income their first month if the Alliance had done its job and bought these items for the family instead?
By the way, it was in early 2010 that we received word from SIV immigrants in Sacramento that they could not get the eight months of federal medical coverage that they qualified for. It that case, Thuan
Nguyen, the California state refugee coordinator, also claimed that it was a training issue at the local welfare office. An Iraqi SIV sat without coverage for months, and endured extremely painful passage of kidney stones.
**UPDATE** April 25, 2011
Posted in Alliance for African Assistance (San Diego), California, Catholic Charities of San Diego, health, HHS, Iraqi, IRC, Jewish Family Service of San Diego, language, ORR, RCA (Refugee Cash Assistance), RMA (Refugee Medical Assistance), San Diego, SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) immigrants, State Department | Tagged: Alliance for African Assistance, California, CalWORKs, cash assistance, English, food stamps, Health and Human Services, Health and Human Services Agency, HHS, Iraqi refugee, IRC, Kim Forrester, Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, RCA, refugee, Refugee Medical Assistance, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, resettlement, San Diego, SIV, Thuan | 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 March 3, 2011
There is a new State Department monitoring report that we acquired via a FOIA that documents neglect of refugees. The State Department cited the Houston-based refugee resettlement agency, Alliance for Multicultural Community Services, an ECDC affiliate, for “partial-compliance” with their State Department refugee resettlement contract. Findings include:
- The Alliance had placed all three refugee families visited at home by monitors in housing with problems, including serious mold, roach infestation, and a serious plumbing problem that forced an Iraqi refugee family to move.
- A Burundian refugee woman did not know how to use either the stove or a thermostat in her apartment.
- The Burundian family’s second bedroom had no furniture, so the couple’s infant and 2-year-old toddler had to sleep in the parent’s room.
- The Burundian refugee family and a Burmese refugee family reported that the Alliance failed to give them required living-room furnishings, so the families had to garbage-pick sofas and chairs from dumpsters.
- The Alliance did not give refugees pocket-money, as required.
- The Burundian refugee family — with the infant and toddler — reported that the Alliance did not give them food or supplies for their infant upon their arrival as required, and that the Alliance did not use child safety seats when transporting the family to appointments.
- The Burmese refugee family reported that the Alliance did not have interpretation at the airport upon their arrival or during orientation. The Alliance finally hired someone who spoke their Karen dialect over four months after their arrival.
- Orientation to health care services in the area appeared to be incomplete, as both the Burundian and Burmese families expressed anxiety over their children’s medical needs and uncertainty about how to handle emergencies.
- The Burundian and Burmese families expressed anxiety over their prospects for self-sufficiency.
- The Alliance did not provide any structured training plan to new employees, as required.
- Refugee client case note logs contained minimal information, and often failed to record home visits. Monitors were often unable to verify that the Alliance provided refugee clients with the minimum-required services of the State Department refugee contracts (see contract documents – the Cooperative Agreement and Operational Guidance).
- Monitors noted Insect infestation in one or more refugee apartments.
- Monitors noted that the Alliance did not give some refugee(s) a ready-to eat meal upon arrival after long intercontinental flights, as required.
Then there are these comments about the Alliance from 2010. Note that three years after this State Department monitoring the Alliance is still putting refugees in substandard housing, etc.
So, in other words, the State Department noticed all these problems and three years later many of the problems have not ceased. What does that tell us about the effectiveness of the State Department monitoring trips? The State Department does not use any penalties for resettlement agencies’ they find in “non-compliance” or “partial-compliance” with the so-called minimum requirements of the State Department refugee contracts. Resettlement agencies don’t have to give back any of the government contract money they received for agreeing to provide minimum services and then not providing them.
Posted in Alliance for Multicultural Community Services, beds, Burma/Myanmar, Burundian, children, Cooperative Agreement, cultural/community orientation, post arrival, ECDC, food, furnishings, lack of, health, home visits, housing, housing, substandard, Houston, Iraqi, Karen, language, language interpretation/translation, lack of, meeting refugees at the airport, Operational Guidance, pocket-money, rats and roaches, State Department, Texas, transportation | Tagged: Alliance for Multicultural Community Services, Burmese refugees, Burundian refugees, ECDC, Ethiopian Community Development Council, houston, human rights, Iraqi refugees, Karen refugees, Kassahun Bisrat, refugee neglect, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, State Department | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on February 21, 2011
The Ethiopian Community Association of Chicago (ECAC) opened a beautiful, and quite expensive, new community center last year (this sat in my files and I just got to it). Efforts to raise $3 million for the project began in the middle of the recession in 2008, according to an article in the Ethiopian Review. Perkins and Will, the architects that designed the renovation, have information on what went into the project.
…we teamed with the ECAC to develop the organizational and design intent of the renovated facility. The design creates a facility that supports ECAC’s mission & highlights the presence of the ECAC to the broader community of Chicago through architecture, cultural & environmental branding and the interior design. The completed facility incorporates up-to-date systems including mechanical, plumbing and electrical; repairs to the exterior cladding; spacial organization; finishes & furnishings and new signage. here
Of course one wonders why they raised $3 million for this capital investment/improvements project when the agency fails to give minimum required items and services to their refugee clients, as we detailed last April.
A 2007 State Department inspection report also noted the following:
- The agency placed an Eritrean refugee family of four in a studio (one room plus bathroom) apartment, thus violating occupancy code, which only allows 3 people per room. The apartment also lacked a functional light/lamp in the main room. The family expressed uncertainty over utilities, lease, operation of the smoke detector, and their ability to pay rent and expenses.
- The agency had not made a home visit to an Iraqi refugee family of five that arrived five months ago, though the government contract requires at least one visit within 30 days of refugee clients’ arrival.
- The agency put a Pakistani refugee couple in a studio apartment furnished upon their arrival with a bed only. The main room had no lamp or light as required.
- In two cases, the case notes ended abruptly about seven weeks after the cases’ arrival.
Something tells me we need to start a new category entitled “Lavish New Offices While Refugees Go without.”
Posted in Chicago, clothes, Eritrean, Ethiopian Community Association of Chicago, furnishings, lack of, household items, missing or broken, Iraqi, lavish new offices, neglect, Pakistani | Tagged: ECAC, Eritrean refugee, Ethiopian Community Association of Chicago, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Iraqi refugees, Pakistani refugees, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement | 2 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on October 11, 2010
What’s it like for deaf refugees once they arrive in the U.S.? The Voice of San Diego has an article about a 24-year-old deaf Burmese refugee named Har Sin who arrived in San Diego in 2008. His resettlement agency (Alliance for African Assistance) never even bothered to help him sign up for programs that could have helped, like disability insurance or deaf social services.
He grew up in Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma, where an oppressive military regime and feuding ethnic groups forced millions to flee to neighboring countries. Har Sin’s family was poor, and he never went to school. He never learned to read. He never learned to write or to speak.
Beyond a few rudimentary hand gestures — eat, drink, walk, go — he never learned to formally communicate.
[He] was boxed in and brushed off by people who assumed his disability made him forever dependent. All fostered by their belief that the deaf child, then teen, then adult, could never stand on his own, hold down a job or find a girlfriend. He didn’t share that belief — look at his eager eyes — but it defined him anyway….
…His mother, who had coddled him, died when he was a child. His sister took responsibility for his upbringing. When men with guns showed up at their rural home and forced them out in the late 1990s, they had no choice. They fled to neighboring Thailand, where they lived for nine years in a teeming refugee camp on the Burmese border.
While children around him went to school, Har Sin stayed home. There was no school for the deaf in Burma or the camp. No one to teach the deaf child.
Har Sin never saw sign language. He never knew there was a way for someone like him to communicate with the world around him. He never imagined he could convey those complex emotions that are only hinted at in his expressive eyes — about how he felt, what he feared, what his dreams were — to anyone but himself.
He assumed he was alone.
In the summer of 2008, the family of eight Burmese refugees arrived in San Diego, their new home.
Har Sin was 22. He moved into a threadbare City Heights apartment with his sister, her husband, Mat Sa Pi, and their five children. Paint was peeling from the wooden front door. The family of eight slept on four mattresses in two small, dimly lit bedrooms...
…When he first arrived, Har Sin, like all refugees, was eligible for eight months of federal aid. Each month, he got a check in the mail, a temporary source of income to help him get through the difficult transition all refugees face integrating into a society they do not know.
The adjustment was a challenge for his family. It was all but impossible for Har Sin...
A year after arriving, his cash aid had run out. His formal connection to the resettlement agency had been cut. But he hadn’t signed up for programs that could’ve helped, like disability insurance or deaf social services.
Resettlement agencies aren’t required to sign clients up for those programs, and overburdened caseworkers often can’t provide more than the basic services the agencies are required to by law…
Once hopeful he might hear, by the summer of 2009, Har Sin was still silently idling within the walls of Apartment 7.
He had fallen through the cracks, alone in his quiet…Read more here
I would have to disagree when the reporter says that an overburdened caseworker “can’t provide” more than basic services. How much effort or time would it have taken to refer this refugee to deaf social services? As far as resettlement agencies not being required to do this, if we have to require these “partners” to do even the most basic thing that a refugee needs then why do we keep them on? Why not just hire a real contractor, instead of exalted “partners” (with rights), and list every obvious thing they need to do, and then nudge out the contractors that don’t full-fill their contracts? We’d probably have much happier refugees, and we’d get better services for our tax dollars.
I also note that “the family of eight slept on four mattresses in two small, dimly lit bedrooms”. Bed frames are a minimum-required item that resettlement agencies supposedly give to refugees. The family must also have enough beds for each family member, i.e. the Alliance for African Assistance should have given this family a minimum of seven beds. Dimly lit bedrooms? “One lamp per room, unless installed lighting is present” is the so-called minimum standard. Of course, all the requirements in the world don’t matter when requirements aren’t enforced.
A 2008 State Department inspection report for the Alliance for African Assistance didn’t seem to tease out many of the problems, however a volunteer contacted us a couple of months ago to report poor treatment of refugee clients.
Posted in Alliance for African Assistance (San Diego), beds, Burma/Myanmar, deaf, Operational Guidance, San Diego, SSI | Tagged: Alliance for African Assistance, Burmese refugees, deaf, deaf refugees, deaf social services, disability insurance, ECDC, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Myanmar, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, San Diego | 2 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on August 24, 2010
Ethiopian Community Development Council Inc.’s (ECDC’s) African Community Center in Las Vegas is at the center of a controversy involving two of their refugee clients who have been accused of sexual assault. The African Community Center is now altering its cultural orientation program in response to the allegations.
The recent arrests of two African refugees in the sexual assaults of young girls shocked the Las Vegas refugee community, especially after one man told officers he didn’t know the alleged abuse was wrong in the United States.
The arrests have prompted a Las Vegas refugee resettlement agency to expand an orientation program to reiterate that sexual assault isn’t allowed in the country…
…While sexual assault and child molestation are illegal in Africa, the center wants to reinforce the message among refugees: they must sign a document during the orientation program acknowledging such acts aren’t permitted in the United States. The program will place a greater focus on sexual assaults after the two recent arrests, he said. here
The African Community Center’s focus here seems to be more on protecting itself from liability, by having refugees sign documents acknowledging the illegality of sex crimes, then it does on protecting potential victims. Wouldn’t it be more useful, not to mention more ethical, to focus on the quality of the orientation and the results? Will the orientations be in the refugees’ languages? Will they be accompanied by handouts in the refugees’ languages summarizing what was taught in the orientation? Will the sessions be in manageable segments so as not to overwhelm the refugees with information they will not be able to absorb and remember?
Of course the resettlement agencies and their government oversight agencies should have standardized all of this decades ago, and slowly refined it. As it is, each resettlement agency covers community and cultural orientation in its own way. There is no established curriculum. There are no quality standards. I’ve never heard of tests to show what refugees have learned from these orientations. Some resettlement agencies do a 15 minute home safety orientation. Others invite in representatives from local police departments to orient refugees to rules and laws.
Government oversight agencies give resettlement agencies enormous leeway in determining the minimum standards of the services they give for the resettlement grants they receive. One consequence of that is the typical low quality results we so often see in the refugee resettlement program.
Posted in African Community Center (Las Vegas), community/cultural orientation, Congolese, ECDC, Las Vegas, Nevada, police | Tagged: African Community Center, Congolese refugees, ECDC, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Las Vegas, refugee cultural orientation, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, sexual assault | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 10, 2010
The African Community Center and the State Department are continuing to resettle refugees to Las Vegas despite the city’s official unemployment rate of 14.2% (some estimate the “real” unemploymaent rate is closer to 25%). An article in the Vegas Seven publication extolls African Community Center’s virtues, while not asking any questions, here.
Since 2003, the ECDC African Community Center has helped hundreds of legally admitted refugees resettle in Las Vegas, often working with Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada and Nevada Partners to provide much-needed resources such as health insurance, language classes, job training and cash.
“One of the missions of the ECDC is to resettle and to help refugees, to integrate them fully in their new community and to help them find their way around in the new community, and to organize all the resources available, public and private, toward that end,” says Berihun Teferra, managing director of the African Community Center.
The center obtains funding from federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which offers a variety of assistance programs. The programs’ qualifications vary, and the center sifts through the details to find funding sources for every refugee. The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration also provides $1,100 of direct assistance for each refugee, which the African Community Center manages on their behalf.
Prior to the recession, the African Community Center saw 80 percent of its refugee clients placed in jobs within three months of arrival, which limited the amount of monetary assistance they needed. Now it usually takes six to nine months for refugees with training and knowledge of English to find work.
“Times are tough,” Teferra says. “Nevada is leading the nation in unemployment. That makes our task more difficult, but we’re not giving up. We have to do everything possible, and we are optimistic that the public is still generous.”
Private donations help bridge the gap when federal funding runs out, Teferra says. The African Community Center also relies on its partnerships with local hotel-casinos to find jobs for new refugees.
Yet, why is the State Department, the African Community Center, and ECDC (Ethiopian Community Development Council) continuing to resettle refugees to a state and city with such a high unemployment rates? Does it make any sense to do so? The ECDC and the African Community Center would no doubt protest that they would have to shut down operations in Nevada if the State Department were to cut the flow of refugees and federal funding, but at what price does this come to refugees to continue to resettle them to a place with such low employment prospects? What is more important, jobs for refugees or jobs for refugee resettlement workers? I guess we know th answer.
I also notice that the African Community Center’s managing director Berihun Teferra refers to private funding that her organization supposedly gathers for refugees, yet doesn’t give any details. This always seems to be the way it is with the private refugee resettlement agencies. They claim their involvement in the US refugee program is critically important as a “private sector” contribution, but give no information about what funds they actually give.
We know that these groups’ participation comes at a price to the refugees and the public, e.g. some of the agencies discriminate in hiring against the public and the refugees based on their religions. Also, the private resettlement contractors don’t have to answer to the public. They use layers of contractors and subcontractors, and the public is not able to look at their books the way we can with government agencies. So again, what are we getting for having to give up so much? How much do they actually give in real private funding?
Finally, a quick look at the State Department’s inspection report for the African Community Center indicates that they did not always bother to deliver the minimum-required items and services they contract to give, here.
Health screenings are often not done until well after the required first thirty-days. The African Community Center doesn’t give ready-made, culturally appropriate meals to the refugees upon their arrival after long intercontinental flights (refugees often haven’t eaten for two days because they are not familiar with food served on airlines). The agency jammed one refugee family into a small apartment that required seven children to sleep in one bedroom and violated local occupancy codes. Refugee families did not have minimum furnishings for their apartments — missing lamps, shower curtains, dresses. Refugees did not know that they had to report new addresses to Homeland Security. Case files were spotty (missing written records means possible missing services to refugees).
Posted in African Community Center (Las Vegas), Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada, discrimination in hiring, ECDC, employment/jobs for refugees, food, funding, furnishings, lack of, household items, missing or broken, housing, housing, overcrowding, Las Vegas, late health screenings, Nevada, public/private partnership, Rwandan, State Department | Tagged: African Community Center, Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada, ECDC, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Las Vegas, Nevada, refugees, resettlement | Leave a Comment »
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
