State Department Can Do Little to Correct Refugee Mistakes
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“The most important thing is for (the State Department) to enforce the rules that they already have and they’re not doing that,” said Chris Coen, who runs his own refugee support group, Friends of Refugees. “I see these same problems all over the country. It’s a lot worse than you think.”
The State Department is looking into how the [International Institute of Connecticut] handled the resettlement of 64 refugees from the Karen ethnic minority, who arrived in Waterbury last summer. Many of the problems it is believed to be examining—poor housing, missed medical appointments and poor documentation—are similar to those it raised “serious concerns about” in 2006.
But the institute made many of those same mistakes, like placing refugees in dirty, unsafe apartments, again when it placed more than 30 refugees in Waterbury’s St. Regis apartments last fall. That leads some Waterbury volunteers and a few national critics to insist that the State Department is something of a toothless tiger, casually monitoring the 400-plus affiliates of the 10 agencies allowed to resettle refugees, but with little enforcement power.
Coen says that in 16 months from July 2002 through October 2003, the State Department completed only 12 monitoring reports of resettlement agencies.
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A challenge
Although the institute is under fire from the State Department and local volunteers, its mission is quite challenging. While the State Department monitors agencies, its goals are often unrealistic, says Chris George, of Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services. “The U.S. government has standards, but they do not provide us with enough money to meet those standards.”
The government provides a one-time $850 per person stipend to resettlement agencies. Of that, half must be used for the refugees, and half for administrative costs. In 1975, that figure was $500. “Whoop-de-do,” said Lavinia Limón, president of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. “God help us if our salaries had not kept pace with inflation like that. The capacity of agencies like (the institute) has been severely curtailed. I would really criticize that.”
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Within 90 days, a resettlement agency is required to place refugees into jobs that will support them. But these are people who have been living in refugee camps, often are undereducated or illiterate and do not speak English.
The U.S. policy on refugees relies heavily on individual initiative. The resettlement agencies are required to help refugees enroll their children in school, to get access to health care, apply for Social Security cards, learn to use the state’s social services, and secure required U.S. documents—all in that 90-day period. The resettlement agency also must offer clients English language training, employment assistance, and other specialized instruction.
That “specialized instruction” could include such mundane activities as how to obtain a money order, buying an envelope, putting a stamp on a bill, operating an elevator and riding a public bus.
Frustration
In Waterbury, refugees who lived in the jungle of Thailand for as long as 15 years had to learn how to use a flush toilet. Many did not understand that diapers were not to be flushed in toilets. Women had to be instructed in the use of feminine hygiene products. The idea of personal hygiene—washing before eating, not eating from the floor—was new to some refugees, as was the idea of keeping an apartment clean.
In the camps they were given rations of rice, charcoal, fish paste and vegetables, but the Karen refugees had to escape the camps and climb high into the nearby jungle to hunt turkey, toad, monkey and even baby tiger to have enough to eat.
In Waterbury, they had to learn the appropriate way to cook and refrigerate meat.
All of this has been done against a backdrop of learning English and assuming the responsibility of a 40-hour workweek.
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Limón, who has been involved with resettlement for 30 years, says refugees had been given longer to acculturate in the past. But, she says, “What we found was that the longer people were not working, the longer it took them to learn English, the less acclimated they became and the more family dysfunction took place. It didn’t work.”
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“Refugees need to get started in their life here. They need to get going.” She compared the U.S. policy to that of Sweden, which gives refugees five years of language and culture lessons before allowing them to work. “I’ve talked to refugees there and they are frustrated that they can’t get to work. You have refugees who’ve been sitting around with their life on hold. They don’t need another five years.”
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(Posted on March 18, 2008)
Comments
Lovely….more lice and cockroaches have arrived….like we didn’t have enough….I know what…sent them to the Kennedy compound and let them live there…see what happens!! I know how to correct the mistakes….SEND THEM BACK TO THE HELL HOLES THEY CAME FROM…HOW ABOUT THAT?????
Posted by lydia at 7:02 PM on March 18
All the Federal Government cares about is getting as many non-Whites into the country as fast as possible, and telling us that we can’t send them back. They have limited resources, so what they have must go to the most important work: displacing Americans. Feeding the imported people can be left to chance, or, most likely, the unfortunate local governments.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 8:22 PM on March 18
It’s disingenous to call what we have a refugee program. What really seems to be happening is that the Federal government is using the program as a political weapon, in roughly the same way that Communist governments (on an even larger scale) used population transfers to cement control over troublesome ethnic groups.
It is particularly useful in this regard since the Feds and their agencies can actually select the places that the refugees will be sent to, which is perhaps the one shortcoming of the dual assaults of legal and illegal immigration. This allows refugees to “fill in the gaps” by being sent to the remaining majority white areas, often old mill towns, that are too poor to attract immigrants (e.g. Lewiston, Fargo, Waterbury).
The point of this article reinforces all of this - the fact that the government only cares about getting the refugees over here, then forgets about them, goes to show that the program was never really intended to benefit the people themselves in the first place.
Posted by Dave at 9:36 PM on March 18
Minorities have reached critical mass in the United States. Game over.
Posted by at 9:55 PM on March 18
Someone should dump a busload of third-worlders in front of teddy kennedy’s mansion in Hyannis. And provide ‘em all with tents so they can camp out in his yard!!!!!! What would happen then? little teddy would probabaly keel over from a heart attack in shock!!
Posted by at 11:52 AM on March 19
From the State Department website:
Proposed Refugee Admissions for FY 2007: Report to the Congress
http://www.state.gov/g/prm/rls/rpt/2006/73619.htm
(note the section that I placed in brackets)
The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has faced a number of challenges in the past year, including the effect of terrorism-related inadmissibility provisions included in section 212(a)(3)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). [[ The Secretary of State, after consultation with the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, exercised her authority to render the material support inadmissibility provision inapplicable to otherwise admissible Karen refugee applicants residing in Tham Hin camp in Thailand. The decision to exercise the limited material support inapplicability provision was based on the collective assessment that this exercise of discretion serves the foreign policy interests of the United States and that the admission of these refugees will not compromise our national security. Over 75 percent of those who have been interviewed to date have been approved for admission to the United States. ]]
So it seems that that buck-toothed Bush stooge took it upon herself to waive the admission requirements for this particular group of refugees.
Why don’t we just call the entire world “America” and simply mail the checks out (direct deposit, of course).
Posted by Vito Danelli at 12:52 PM on March 19
I think ALL refugees should be settled in the Kennedy Compound (Massachusetts) and on George W. Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch — for at least a two-year period — so they can be properly accclimated to the American Way of Life.
Maybe if these two wonderful proponents of the “joys and benefits of multiculturalism” actually had to be exposed to these “benefits”, they’d be a little more hesitant in dumping this kind of third-world trash into American communities.
Has anyone stories to share about the CRIMES perpetrated by third-world immigrants? This would be a great website to air what you’ve found out. I am tired of hearing “immigrants don’t commit any more crimes than anyone else.” Why do I have a hard time believing this nonsense?
Posted by Fed Up at 1:16 PM on March 19
I’m telling you, if the US keeps devaluing my contribution to this country then I’ll take my services elsewhere. I’m tired of working hard, paying all my taxes and then some, only to see some uneducated, over the border type or refugee driving a nicer car than me and getting free groceries and free healthcare at my expense with their 6 kids in tow.
After a bunch of educated, skilled whites leave the US, the US will certainly turn into a third world country. The white middle class is the tax base and the skill and education base that keeps this country 1st world and technologically advanced. When that base shrinks, then so does the first world status of America.
Posted by RealityCheck at 2:22 PM on March 19
“I think ALL refugees should be settled in the Kennedy Compound (Massachusetts) and on George W. Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch …”
FedUp
Splendid idea! But you forgot one thing: Refugees are brought here for YOUR “enrichment”, not for people like Bush and Kennedy.
Posted by voter at 10:28 AM on March 23
You’re probably right, friend VOTER at 10:28 a.m.
But given I’m mentally a bit backward and not overly good with words… could you explain the “enrichment” part to this pore benighted heathen? I mean, I don’t FEEL very enriched by all this third-world trash being dumped in to our country.
I mean with their crime, their propensity to become perpetual welfare candidates, not to mention those endless social problems — just HOW am I(we) being enriched with their presence? LOL, friend.
Posted by Fed Up at 12:47 PM on March 24