Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) held their annual conference in Washington D.C. April 13-16, and it seemed to be as much about lobbying Congress for more public funding as it was about training EMM’s affiliates’ staff (here).
The State Department’s Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, Eric P. Schwartz, gave the conference’s keynote address. His address was quite revealing about what the State Department considers to be “reform” of the refugee resettlement program when he said:
“The White House is leading a comprehensive effort to review the resettlement program and we will remain deeply engaged in this enterprise,” he said. “We will be working closely with the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services to secure additional job training, education, cash and medical assistance in the months that follow reception and placement.”
So, in other words, the comprehensive review of the refugee program ordered by President Obama via the National Security Council’s (NSC) interagency task force (here) is really nothing more than a smokescreen to secure more public funding from Congress for the State Department and the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS). It almost makes one feel a bit sick. Refugees were really counting on someone actually examing where all the current funding goes while they go without basic services and material items supposedly guaranteed under current funding.
I guess I also don’t understand why a State Department official would be “working with” the ORR to help it secure more funding. Is that his role? Shouldn’t he be focusing on keeping his own house in order at the State Department? What about all the refugees we keep hearing from all over the country that never get minimum-required State Department-funded services and material items? Shouldn’t Mr. Schwartz solve that problem before trying to help the ORR get more money too? I’m just saying.
Of course, I guess I should have known that the NSC’s look at the program was going to be a farce when I first read (here) back in June 2009 that President Obama’s review of the program came at the instigation of the volags and their lobbying group Refugee Council USA (RCUSA).
Hoping for reform, the Refugee Council USA and other organizations are requesting a review of the system by President Barack Obama and the federal agencies that administer it.
And to think we wrote 19 pages (here) of analysis and reform ideas for the NSC interagency task force’s refugee program review! (wondering if Dr. Samantha Powers is using that as blotter for the NSC task force’s coffee mugs.) Probably.
Anyway, the refugee resettlement agencie’s friends in Congress are wasting no time in putting forward legislation to secure more funding for HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) — even before the NSC has finished their review of the progam with a supposed eye toward reform.
Michigan Democratic Representative Gary C. Peters, in a March 14 letter addressed to his colleagues, said he “will soon be introducing legislation to reform the current refugee resettlement program to make it more successful in its mission to help refugees achieve self-sufficiency.”
Has Representative Peters sought out any ideas or views of others in refugee resettlement, such as community volunteers or refugees? (You know, the refugees that don’t work for the resettlement agencies.) Has he made any attempt to review how effectively the ORR is using current funding levels? How effective is their oversight, so that we know public funds won’t be wasted, but instead, will be effectively used to aid refugees?
I suppose I’m being too logical.
