Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
Refugee Advocate Nkazi Sinandile was in her 16th day of a hunger strike last friday in Albuquerque (here and here).
State and city lawmakers have met with a woman who was on day 16 of her hunger strike Friday.Advocate Nkazi Sinandile, known as Mama Kazi, is trying to raise awareness for people who left their countries to escape violence and now live in Albuquerque. She says refugees are trapped in poverty because they can’t speak English and don’t have much job experience.
“I said enough is enough. When I see people digging for used clothes and household items. And a lot of them wasting away in their homes without jobs,” she said.
I guess the first question is why are refugees needing to dig for used clothes and household items if resettlement agencies are required to provide these items? These items are supposedly minimum-required items of the agencies’ State Department refugee contracts (see Operational Guidance here). Is Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Santa Fé not meeting even minimum standards even though the per capita (per refugee) payment they receive from the State Department was recently doubled to $1800?
Marshall Jensen, the director of the Center for Refugee Settlement and Support for Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Santa Fé is also falsely claiming that refugees can only get 4 months of assistance, when in fact they get a minimum of eight months of assistance.
The man who provides resettlement services to all exiles who move to New Mexico said many refugee families struggle to make ends meet.
“I would say, in many respects, the system is broken, particularly with the recession,” said Marshall Jensen, the director of the Center for Refugee Settlement and Support for Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
Catholic Charities is contracted by the State Department to provide refugee resettlement services. For many families, Jensen said federal money runs out in four months.
“Most people can’t attain self-sufficiency in 120 days. The policy we envisioned isn’t working. Most people need additional support,” Jensen said.
Since Mr. Jenson well knows how much assistance refugees receive I can only surmise that he is deliberately lying to minimize his agency’s responsibilities and to justify increasing government spending for the refugee program. The resettlement agencies and their friends in the federal government agencies are trying to increase the budget for the ORR (here). Most of the time when you read a media article about refugee resettlement you will find that the resettlement agencies and the state refugee coordinators will lie about the public financing or at least attempt to obfuscate the financing and responsibilities of those involved in resettlement. There is obvious coordination in this attempt to deceive the public.
