Friends of Refugees

A U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program Watchdog Group

Archive for the ‘YMCA International Services’ Category

Houston resettlement agency uses refugee slowdown to give additional employment coaching

Posted by Christopher Coen on July 12, 2011

 

The slowdown in refugee arrivals since October 2010 has led to a situation where resettlement agencies are now refocusing efforts on doing needed employment coaching for refugees already here. Did the doubling of the State Department’s per capita grant funding to resettlement contractors last year do the same? Let’s hope so. The federal government increased the funding with no strings attached, which was not necessarily good for the refugees — especially due to the problems at Houston’s four resettlement agencies: The Alliance For Multicultural Community Services, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Houston, Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, and YMCA International Services.

Yani Rose Keo, interim executive director of Houston’s Alliance claims that her agency is now spending more time with refugees, according to an article in the Houston Chronicle.

The number of refugees resettling in the U.S. and Houston has dropped considerably this year because of new security measures, according to the U.S. State Department.

Nationwide, refugee arrivals have declined more than 30 percent, from nearly 54,000 in the first nine months of fiscal year 2010 to about 37,000 during the same period this year.

“We are committed to conducting the most rigorous screening in order to ensure that those being admitted through the refugee program are not seeking to harm the United States,” according to a statement from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Government officials attribute the slowdown to a new “pre-departure” check that went into effect in late 2010. The additional screening is intended to identify information that might have come to light since initial biographical and biometric checks were conducted...

Fewer arrivals means less funding for YMCA International and four other local refugee resettlement agencies, which receive per-capita grants from the State Department to help refugees transition into their new lives in the U.S.

The grants total about $1,800 per refugee, with $1,100 slated for direct assistance, and the balance paying for administrative costs, such as case managers...

The Alliance For Multicultural Community Services laid off four employees, but hired one back last month, as arrivals began to pick up again, said Yani Rose Keo, interim executive director.

“Normally we are super busy June, July, August, September,” Keo said.

She said Alliance is using the unexpected down time to help refugees who are already here.

“We do a lot of employment coaching right now,” Keo said. “That’s what’s the key. When they get here, we spend more time, closer with them, coaching them.”… Read more here

Posted in State Department, USCIS, Nepali Bhutanese, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, funding, Houston, YMCA International Services, employment/jobs for refugees, Alliance for Multicultural Community Services, Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

YMCA International Services’ depth of refugee neglect & contract-cheating revealed in new inspection report

Posted by Christopher Coen on February 27, 2011

The State Department finally released another inspection report of YMCA International Services, a Houston USCRI affiliate, three years after we submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. I blogged about this case last June.

This report is from January 2008 and reports that YMCA International Services was “non-complaint” with most of the terms of its government refugee contract. That’s a nice way to say “contractual fraud” and “neglect and abuse of refugees”.

Here are some of the highlights of the report:

  • All refugee homes inspected had significant roach and/or mice infestation.
  • Refugees and YMCA expressed concern about safety of refugee apartment complexes. Refugee families at the Glendale Park Apartments complex reported that people were harassing them on their way to the supermarket and their children were getting into fights on the bus (being attacked?).
  • YMCA did not give refugees ready-to-eat food upon arrival.
  • Records were in complete disarray.
  • Home visits to refugees were almost never documented.
  • A Cuban refugee couple only had a bed with one small, thin blanket, a plastic folding table, and two folding chairs. The bed was extremely uncomfortable, if not unsafe, with protruding mattress springs. The family waited over 45 minutes at the airport for the YMCA case worker to arrive, who did not speak their language. YMCA did the housing and personal safety orientation using hand signals. The couple did not feel safe in the apartment complex. They had heard of local robberies and the police had come to their door warning them to.use caution in the parking lot. YMCA took 3½ months to give the family community and cultural orientation.
  • Upon arrival YMCA gave an Iraqi refugee couple with a small child only one bed (no bed for the child) with one small, thin blanket, a plastic folding table, and two folding chairs. The bed was extremely uncomfortable, if not unsafe, with protruding mattress springs. The YMCA employee who picked them up at the airport did not speak their language. YMCA did the housing and personal safety orientation in English. The couple did not feel safe in the apartment complex as they had heard of local robberies and the police had come to their door warning them to
    use caution in the parking lot. YMCA took 3½ months to give the family community and cultural orientation. There was no ready-to-eat food upon arrival. The family used money they brought from Iraq to buy food until they received their food stamps. Neighbors told them the apartment complex was “risky” and they wanted to move. The family received an electrical bill that began one month before they arrived, but YMCA told them they must pay it. No one from YMCA visited the family until three months after their arrival, and YMCA did not give them a community orientation so they did not even know how to use the bus system.
  • YMCA placed a Burmese refugee family that arrived in December in an apartment that had a large hole in a ground-floor bedroom window, and the management still had not repaired it two weeks later. The bed YMCA gave them was so uncomfortable that they slept on the floor. No one from YMCA spoke their language at the airport. YMCA did the housing and personal safety orientation in English and hand signals. It was two months before someone from YMCA visited them at home.
  • YMCA placed a Burundian refugee couple in an apartment complex surrounded by barbed wire. The only furniture upon arrival was four plastic folding chairs and five beds. For their first two months the family ate their meals on the floor. They pulled couches from the trash. No one from YMCA spoke their language at the airport. YMCA did the housing and personal safety orientation using hand signals. The family needed clothes but YMCA did not offer to help them.
  • YMCA caseworkers were enthusiastic! Yipeeee!
  • The State Department monitors had to order YMCA to check all fiscal year 2007 refugee cases and compensate refugees for all missing money.
  • YMCA fired the Refugee Program Director, Gabriel Gebray, yet allowed the agency’s Executive Director, Jeff Watkins, to keep his job. He apparently got off scott-free.

Here is a question: if an Executive Director of an organization claimed he had no idea how his refugee clients were being neglected, what does that tell you about his performance? Don’t Executive Directors ever look at the records or talk to refugee clients?

I know ignorance is bliss but is it an excuse to not be accountable?

Posted in beds, Burma/Myanmar, Burundian, clothes, community/cultural orientation, Cuban, dangerous neighborhoods, food, furnishings, lack of, home visits, household items, missing or broken, housing, housing, substandard, Houston, Iraqi, language, language interpretation/translation, lack of, meeting refugees at the airport, rats and roaches, safety, State Department, USCRI, YMCA International Services | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

New report released on USCRI’s YMCA International Services, in Houston

Posted by Christopher Coen on June 12, 2010

U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants’ (USCRI) Houston affiliate, YMCA International Services, touts itself as an “agency that provides holistic services to Houston’s refugee and immigrant communities”. 

According to a June 2008 State Department inspection report we recently received these  so-called holistic services include:

1) Placing refugees in a dirty apartment complex, with apartments without smoke detectors, apartments infested with roaches and mice, broken, running sink faucets (not repaired for 2 months), inadequate clothing storage and no hangers, and refugee families packed into apartments too small for them, 2) making refugees wait 3 weeks after arrival for community and cultural orientation, so that until then they had no idea even how to use the bus, 3) failing to give refugees ready-to-eat food upon arrival after their long intercontinental flights to the U.S., 4) basic furnishings provided late, 5) waiting 2 and 3 months before enrolling refugee children in school,  6) leaving refugees without interpreters at medical appointments, and 7) mixing up refugee client records so that files contained missing reports, files contained documents from unrelated refugee cases, documents in the same file contradicted each other, and case notes that didn’t begin until four months after a refugee case’s arrival.

The State Department temporarily suspended refugee assignments to YMCA International Services, but not due to the above conditions. In fact, these conditions, which the State Department termed “partial compliance” (of refugee resettlement contract requirements) were what actually allowed the suspension to end. The suspension ended due to improvement from earlier worse conditions (“non-compliant” with contract conditions), which included among other things:

1) Placing refugees in roach and insect-infested apartments that the refugees did not feel safe in, 2) requiring refugees to pay for electricity for a time that predated their arrival to the U.S., 3) giving refugees sub-standard mattresses, as well as apparently a whole list of unmentionables, perhaps deemed unprintable.

Now wouldn’t you think that refugee resettlement would have been permanently terminated with this inept agency (or are they just uncompassionate?), and certainly not resumed? Apparently not. Yet, in what other areas of life is ”partial compliance” with contracts considered an acceptable form of business? It seems like this is accpetable only because the customers – the refugees and the taxpayers – are voiceless in the matter. The system doesn’t answer to them.

I think that State Department Office of Refugee Admissions officials have some explaining to do.

Posted in beds, Burma/Myanmar, Burundian, community/cultural orientation, Cuban, employment services, Ethiopian, failure to enroll refugee children in school, food, furnishings, lack of, housing, overcrowding, housing, substandard, Houston, Iraqi, R&P, State Department, Texas, transportation, USCRI, YMCA International Services | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

 
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