We have written about problems the city of Ft. Wayne (Allen County) Indiana has had with the impact on the Health Department with increasing numbers of refugees with TB, now it looks like the impact will be felt throughout all community services. According to the News-Sentinel yesterday, the President of the United Way has called for a closed to the public meeting to address the coming “surge.”
In addition to the 800 anticipated direct resettlement Burmese the community has been warned the number could go over 1000 when the refugees who have been resettled elsewhere also come to Ft. Wayne (this is called secondary migration). Attendees at the closed meeting will discuss issues that should concern taxpayers such as housing, health, schools, translation services and so on. Meanwhile Debbie Schmidt, executive director of Catholic Charities is headed to Washington to find more federal money for the volags.
Schmidt is planning a return trip to Washington to talk with HHS [Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement] officials to get more money for Indiana’s four refugee resettlement-sponsoring agencies [non-profit federal contractors such as Catholic Charities].
We’ve heard rumblings that a culture clash is coming in Ft. Wayne as Karin Christians are being placed in neighborhoods with Burmese Muslims. What I would like to know is why would these volags assume that conflicts from the camps would not extend to neighborhoods in America?
One final thought–if the community of Ft. Wayne is all for more refugee resettlement, why close the meeting to the public? Doesn’t Indiana have ‘open meeting’ laws?