I know, I know we haven’t renamed RRW the Emporia Refugee Watch (yet!), but there is so much interesting news being made there we can’t stay away. Here is the latest from the Emporia Gazette today.
Since this article is chock full of information, I’m going to focus on a couple of points we need to make over and over again, especially because we have hundreds of new readers every day. This is what caught my eye in the piece today (the discussion is about direct resettlements from foreign countries vs. secondary migrations within the US of previously resettled refugees):
Direct resettlements typically occur in metropolitan areas that can absorb diverse populations, she said, citing St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit as examples.
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“That’s why places like Emporia would never be considered,” Lewis said.
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Lewis said that Catholic Charities receives no payment for helping refugees resettle.
Ms. Lewis is the director of Catholic Charities in Kansas City and I am sure she is not misspeaking on purpose. As a matter of fact, in my reading lately (piles on the floor and over my desk), I learned that many of the agencies both government and non-profit, international and within the US have no idea what some of the others are doing and it is causing internal concern and strife.
On Ms. Lewis first two points, we reported to you just a few days ago that in fact we are resettling refugees in medium and small cities throughout the US. See our post on the Brookings Institution report. I wouldn’t call Hagerstown, MD, Cayce, SC, or Erie, PA “large metropolitan areas.”
Then on her last point that they receive no payments for resettling refugees. Her organization is a subcontractor of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops which according to this information compiled by Gringomalo’s blog (see also our post on his research) received 89% of its funding ($39 million) from the federal government in 2005. And, according to its own annual report Catholic Charities of Kansas City received 46% of its annual budget in 2006 from government grants. Is none of this money used for refugees in any way?
We have had an “Open Invitation” page on the top bar of RRW from the beginning on which we ask for corrections from anyone in the refugee industry for anything we post. We never get any corrections, thus we can only assume that our facts and figures are accurate.