Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
Darci Asche, the community liason for Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota (LSSND), advised the Jamestown, ND community about what their reactions should be to incoming refugees, here.
Representatives from local agencies and businesses attended an informational session Wednesday to learn about Somali culture and how best to serve those people here.
Meet in the middle, was the advice Darci Asche said is most helpful. Asche is the community support services supervisor for Lutheran Social Services in Fargo. Several refugee groups reside in Fargo, including a group from Somalia. Both cultures should attempt to give and take, she said.
In Fargo, for example, employers allowed for prayer time during the business day. Muslims are required to pray five times a day and one of them is at about 1:30 p.m. Also, employers allowed for long gloves and other uniform adjustments at businesses where loose clothing like shawls and headdresses could pose a hazard. Muslim women are required to cover most of their body including wrists and ankles.
Adjustments like those are part of the challenge of migration, Asche said, but the benefits include more taxpayers, new businesses, new employees, more children in schools with declining enrollment and more residents offset the population loss in cities where populations are declining.
“My philosophy is the more diverse, the more exciting a place is,” Asche said. About 15,000 people reside in Jamestown and of them, more than 96 percent are white, according to census data from 2000.
…So far, about 30 Somalis have moved here, but about 400 have applied for housing since March, said Dave Klein of the Stutsman County Housing Authority. Many of them may have applied for housing in several cities, but the influx has created a waiting list for available residences in Jamestown, Klein said. Local people seeking housing come first, Klein said, but the housing authority also seeks to help refugees.
“We’re here to help and find ways to encourage people to be here in Jamestown,” he said.
Some local people may express concern about tax dollars benefiting refugees because some of them need housing assistance, Medicaid or other social services. But for Asche, no American immigrant started without help. The benefits of an employed new citizen outweigh the tax burden. Plus, benefits in this state are limited, she said.
“If anyone were looking for a free ride, North Dakota would not be the place to go,” she said.
Dave Klein of the Stutsman County Housing Authority says that local people are first in line for housing assistance, but his statement is a bit misleading because refugees living in Jamestown are local people.
Darci Asche of LSSND makes the sweeping claim that no American immigrant started life here without help, but government welfare programs are certainly relatively new compared to our long history of immigration. I know that my own ancestors were poor farmers and miners who received almost nothing upon their arrival to this country. In the old days charities helped immigrants, and did so with private charitable funds. I don’t think we have to misconstrue history to advocate for refugee support.
The “limited benefits for refugees from our tax dollars in North Dakota” argument is not really honest either as most of the money is federal money. North Dakota is a net importer of federal dollars, as are most rural states, for a large assortment of welfare for the general population as well as for refugees — Medicaid, food stamps, cash assistance, HUD funds, heating assistance, WIC, etc.
It’s interesting that Asche says refugees wouldn’t come to North Dakota for a free ride because certain benefits in the state are limited, but missing here is that most refugees have no say in coming to North Dakota — LSSND and it national affiliate LIRS just places them there. Refugees who come voluntary from other states via “secondary migration” number about 165 per year, while LSSND and LIRS place about 500 per year there involuntarily (almost no one would choose to resettle In North Dakota by choice when you factor in the climate, the lack of employment and consumer protections, and the old-boy power structure evident at almost every level).
LSSND Asche’s comment on the importance of diversity apparently does not apply to their view of diversity of opinion. Our group since 2001 has called attention to their repeated and obvious neglect of their refugee clients, and each time they met us with stonewalling or hostility.
The most ironic issue brought up in this article though is that some refugee resettlement groups advocate for religious freedom in the employment place, e.g. LSSND advocates that employers accommodate Muslim workers, while other resettlement agencies like World Relief and Catholic Charities of Washington DC advocate for their right to discriminate in hiring based on religious beliefs. Which position is the U.S. refugee resettlement program advocating? There seems to be an eery silence emanating from federal government refugee program agencies.
