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 March 10, 2011
Greg Wangerin, Executive Director of RefugeeONE (fka IRIM)
The Gapers Block -- a Chicago-centric web publication – has an article reporting about refugee clients of the refugee resettlement agency RefugeeONE (formerly known as Interfaith Refugee and
Immigration Ministries, and InterChurch Refugee and Immigration Ministries), an affiliate of CWS, EMM and LIRS. An audio interview details the abuses the couple suffered in Sierra Leone. When the US government resettled them to Chicago the woman shoveled snow into garbage bags and put them into the dumpster because she didn’t know what else to do with it. An elderly Somali man arrived and told her, “just push it to the side.”
But what about this resettlement agency? It turns out that they recently rebranded themselves as RefugeeONE, after long being known as Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries (IRIM). Why the name change? Sometimes I worry that these agencies think they can rid themselves of past errors and weaknesses (wrongdoings?) by essentially becoming a completely different agency, in the public’s mind at least, via a name change.
So what is in the agency’s past? It turns out we have an old State Department monitoring report of IRIM, when the agency was under the directorship of someone named May Campbell. This is the most recent available inspection report (which tells me that they are just about ready for another once-in-ten-years inspection, or the Admissions Office has been illegally holding back reports from our FOIA’s. It’s either one or the other.)
Let’s see — 1) Placed a refugee in an apartment with a leaking bathroom ceiling and a broken door lock, and another in an apartment with a “water problem” (normal for Chicago low-income apartments after all), 2) left a refugee family, including an elderly woman, to sleep on the floor of their apartment for almost five months (until the day before the pre-announced monitoring visit – funny how that works). It turned out that the eleventh-hour delivery of beds (two single beds for four people) was the only home visit the case worker did (supposed to be done within 30 days, not at 4.5 months), 3) apparently didn’t bother to give another refugee family any chairs or couch, lamp, or a bed for their one-year-old child — just a dresser, three tables, and a double-bed (???), 4) no table or lamp for another family. [Check out so-called "minimum-requirements" in Operational Guidance to see why this is cheating the refugees and the taxpayers], 5) staff were not meeting with refugee families to make sure that they were giving them basic services and meeting their essential needs.
The refugee family that was sleeping on the floor of their apartment also reported that their employer was taking advantage of them by requiring them to make up bathroom break times at the end of the day. Apparently IRIM (now RefugeeONE) did nothing to help these refugees with this blatantly unfair treatment. No doubt the excuse would be that the agency ”didn’t know about it” (yet aren’t these contractors paid to know what’s happening to their refugee clients? If the only people watching over these refugees in their first several months don’t know what’s going on then who would? No one.) Apparently the refugee clients also reported that the agency had not told them what to do — via required community/cultural orientation – in the event that they experienced unfair, exploitive or illegal labor practices. By the way when I made a trip back to Chicago in 2001 some Lost Boys of Sudan” refugee clients of the Heartland Alliance agency told me that coworkers at an O’hare airport baggage handling company where they worked where screaming at them and physically threatening them. They said they told their Heartland Alliance case workers but nothing happened. Things just seem to keep happening when government monitors are away — for 10 years at a time.
On a last note, in 2009 journalists at the Chicago Tribune quote RefugeeONE’s current director, Greg Wangerin, saying,”I’m ashamed. I feel like I’m selling a lie”, in reference to all the problems in refugee resettlement during the recession. Here’s my question: Do these private refugee resettlement agencies ever look to themselves when pointing the finger of responsibility?
Posted in Baptist, beds, Chicago, Christian, community/cultural orientation, CWS, employment abuses, Episcopal, faith-based, furnishings, lack of, home visits, housing, housing, substandard, Lutheran, Operational Guidance, RefugeeONE (formerly, Interfaith Refugee & Immigration Ministries), RefugeeONE (formerly, Interfaith Refugee & Immigration Ministries), RefugeeONE (formerly, Interfaith Refugee & Immigration Ministries), Sierra Leonean, State Department | Tagged: Chicago, Church World Service, Church World Services, CWS, EMM, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Greg Wangerin, heartland alliance, human rights, Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries, IRSA, LIRS, Lutheran immigration and refugee services, Lutheran Immigration and Refugees Service, May Campbell, refugee neglect, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, RefugeeOne, refugees, resettlement, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI | Leave a Comment »
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