Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
6-10-05, letter to Office of Admissions re. Refugee Travel Loans
June 10, 2005
Theresa Rusch, Director/Refugee Admissions
Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration
U.S. Department of State
2401 E Street, N.W. — Room L-505
Washington, D.C. 20522-0105
Fax (202) 663-1364
Re: Refugee travel loans
Dear Ms. Rusch:
We write in regard to the travel loan policies of the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program. We have some concerns regarding the impact that some of these policies are having on refugees resettled to the U.S.
We understand that the refugee resettlement agencies earn a 25 percent commission for acting as collection agencies for the travel loans that most refugees agree to repay after they have been resettled. For example, the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops during a recent year earned $2.6 million in collection commissions. We also understand that the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) places no restrictions on how this money is spent. We are concerned that much of this money is simply being channeled back into salaries and administrative costs where two out of every three public dollars for refugees now goes, rather than being used for refugees’ basic needs. We believe that this money should be used to directly benefit refugees. As you may know many agencies rely almost exclusively on the public subsidy to serve refugees. The 10 charities in the program contribute just 25 cents on average for every tax dollar they receive, even though the resettlement effort was designed 25 years ago as a partnership backed by public and private dollars. Resettlement agencies have argued that they do not receive enough public dollars for refugee resettlement, while doing little to raise additional funds. Under these circumstances we believe that the IOM travel loan profits should be used directly for the benefit of the refugees.
In addition, we’re concerned that the resettlement agencies are not notifying refugees about the rules of the program. We’ve found in many cases that refugees who are unemployed or working only part-time, and who are unable to afford travel payment installments, are making those payments anyway while going without basic needs. The agencies do not notify the refugees that they may request deferments if they are unemployed, work only part-time, or if for some other reason such as having enormous medical bills they are temporarily unable to reasonably make travel loan installment payments. This places refugees in jeopardy. The agencies should be required to notify each refugee in writing that they may request deferments and how they may go about doing that. Furthermore, we’ve also discovered numerous cases in which refugees have been billed before their sixth month in the U.S. It is inappropriate for
p.2
refugees to be receiving travel loans bills so soon after their arrival as in many cases they’re adjusting to paying many new bills and are often still looking for jobs. We believe that the PRM needs to instruct the resettlement agencies that they should not bill refugees until those refugees have been in the U.S. for at least six months.
We thank you for your time and your attention to this serious matter and we hope to hear back from you soon.
Sincerely,
Christopher Coen
Director
c. Kimberly J. DeBlauw, Director, Office of Executive Director, PRM, U. S. Department of State
