Catholic Charities Diocese of Des Moines has decided to continue resettling refugees in Iowa (here and here). This decision comes on the heels of Lutheran Services in Iowa deciding to stop refugee resettlement and the State Department pulling funding from the Iowa Bureau of Refugee Services (an Iowa state agency that was long given an acceptation to the requirement that refugee agencies be non-profits and add private funding to resettlement efforts).

According to the Des Moines Register:

Catholic Charities decided Wednesday it will push on alone in resettling refugees, extending Iowa’s history as a sanctuary for refugees from war-torn, poverty-stricken nations.

The group’s decision comes months after the only other organizations that had been resettling refugees in Iowa – Lutheran Services in Iowa and the Iowa Bureau of Refugee Services – pulled out of resettlement. That put Iowa’s future as a refugee haven in limbo.

Catholic Charities will resettle between 100 and 130 people annually.

That’s far fewer than the more than 900 refugees resettled in Iowa during the last fiscal year, when Catholic Charities and Lutheran Services jointly resettled refugees through Refugee Cooperative Services.

Lutheran Services said it could not afford to continue its program.

Catholic Charities said that it is facing a “financial burden” due to refugees not being able to find jobs in the current economy, and the group having to pay their rent for a longer time. This, even though the State Department doubled per capita (per refugee) funding as of January 1, 2010. (The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services via their Office of Refugee Resettlement also provides refugees with up to 8 months of cash assistance to help pay rent, as well as a large array of other refugee funding).

If Catholic Charities had stopped resettlement – and that was a possibility, given the financial burden – it would have ended a prolific era of refugee resettlement in Iowa. Thirty thousand refugees have made Iowa home since 1975

….Refugee resettlement makes up about 17 percent of the work of Des Moines’ Catholic Charities, or $450,000 of a $2.7 million budget.

The refugee expenses include administrative costs as well as direct assistance such as help paying rent. Catholic Charities will hire three employees for refugee resettlement, which entails assisting refugees with housing, transportation, learning American culture and finding jobs.

Catholic Charities will focus on receiving refugees with Iowa ties instead of so-called “free cases” – refugees with no familial ties in the United States.

“We’re taking a risk, but we’ve been really careful to set this up so it will be successful,” said Nancy Galeazzi, executive director of Catholic Charities. “We have had to be smart about what we can handle. But it’s the right thing to do.”

The organization will benefit from a decision this year by the Department of State to increase the money it directs to resettling agencies. Instead of getting $900 per refugee, resettling agencies now get $1,800.

One continuing concern is refugees’ difficulty in finding jobs in the sour economy. In that case, Catholic Charities continues to pay their rent. But that’s built into the plan, Galeazzi said.

Sol Varisco-Santini, who heads refugee resettlement for Catholic Charities, recently sat in on the weekly resettlement meeting in Washington, D.C., and watched agencies who resettle refugees in the United States allocate the week’s 2,100 arrivals. She wanted Iowa to still be part of that equation. To do that, Catholic Charities decided to focus on fewer refugees.

“One hundred thirty is much more manageable for Iowa than 900,” Varisco-Santini said. “Even though the percentage of people we’re helping is very small, we think it is worth it.”

The meeting she sat in on is the weekly meeting at the Refugee Processing Center (RPC) in Arlington, Virginia. The RPC is a State Department agency at which the private refugee resettlement agencies are allowed to decide where incoming refugees are placed in the U.S. and who will take which refugee “free cases” (refugees with no family or sponsors in the U.S.). Resettlement agencies often fail to mention this process via the RPC, and instead tell refugees, community members and the media that they have no control over how many or which refugees they resettle locally.

The article also refers to the chance that refugees will continue to arrive in Iowa via “secondary migration” (after first being resettled to other states, and then migrating on their own to Iowa).

John Wilken, director of the Iowa Bureau of Refugee Services, applauded Catholic Charities’ decision to continue resettling refugees. But he predicted a rise in secondary migration – refugees who resettle outside Iowa, then move here to be close to family. Wilken estimates some 1,000 additional refugees came to Iowa through secondary migration in 2009.

“When you take a state with a long history of resettlement and reduce its capacity by 80 percent, what do you do with all the cases who wanted to come here but can’t?” Wilken said. “The fact our numbers are down here does not stop the individuals being processed from getting resettled. They’ll just be assigned somewhere else.”