Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) has done it again. YET ANOTHER one of their offices or affiliates was found out of compliance with the bare minimum requirements of the State Department refugee contract (the Cooperative Agreement and its attachments) - this time in Raleigh, North Carolina here.
The State Department found that this USCRI field office was “non-compliant” with many aspects of the contract, including core (basic) services that were not always provided within required time frames, core services delegated to churches without a co-sponsorship agreement, and case files that were seriously deficient. In addition two of the four refugee homes (apartments) visited by the State Department inspectors were roach-infested and needed maintenance.
The State Department’s refugee office seems to grasp the concept of a representative sample of refugees, selecting refugee cases themselves from the files, or at least not allowing the contractor to select the refugee cases — in contrast to the ORR allowing resettlement contractors to hand-select refugees to speak at the Annual Consultation. I’ll give them credit for that. For this inspection of the USCRI Raleigh field office they selected four refugee cases to visit.
The first refugee case was a Burmese family — a husband, a wife, and their four-year-old daughter. They said the USCRI had placed them in an apartment without food (the Operational Guidance to Resettlement Agencies requires resettlement agencies to give the refugees food upon the their arrival). The inspectors also noticed that the case file notes indicated in one place that USCRI purchased food for the family before their arrival, and in another place indicated they purchased it after their arrival. Suspicious, they then found an altered Food Lion receipt in the file to make it seem that USCRI had purchased the food before the refugee family’s arrival. Nice try.
The second refugee case was a Burmese refugee family consisting of a husband, wife, and three young children. The wife said no one from USCRI had talked with her about employment, and that the family didn’t have beds for the adults or youngest child, nor a couch, until a week after they arrived. The family’s apartment also had second-floor windows that were in disrepair, presenting a danger to the young children. The USCRI listed a church as the responsible party for certain core services even though USCRI Raleigh does not use co-sponsors. The church was supposedly responsible for registering the school-age child for school, yet there was no notation when that had happened.
Another Burmese refugee said USCRI placed him in a heavily roach-infested apartment, with roaches crawling in every room. Again there was no food in the apartment upon arrival. He said his couch had broken springs, he had inadequate clothing storage, and the stove had broken burners.
A Montagnard (Degar – Vietamese highland people) refugee woman who arrived with her son told inspectors that USCRI Raleigh, similarly, never gave her any help to find a job. The USCRI also assigned her to the church that was not an official co-sponsor, and later a church volunteer ruined her efforts to get Medicaid, failing to take her to the interview in the required time-period and failing to bring the proper paperwork to the interview. USCRI also visited this refugee woman a week late (since home visits are only required to be done once in the first 30 days, that means this one didn’t happen until the refugee woman had been here for over 5 weeks!).
In addition, the agency’s case files were an utter and complete mess. Two files had no case notes at all, and a third contained only one post-arrival case note. Another case file began nearly two months after the refugee’s arrival, and four others ended only one month after the refugees’ arrival, even though the core-service period is 90 days. The agency also failed to document referrals to employment assistance, ESL, and whether or not they had provided food and home furnishings.
Unbelievably there is no sign that the State Department did even its usual wrist slapping by temporarily suspending assignment of refugees to this negligent USCRI field office.
Sadly, I suppose that this type of contract-cheating and refugee neglect from the State Departments “partners” is so common that it just doesn’t seem to call for much of a response.
