We liked Roy Beck’s “Immigration by the numbers” film so much, it is now a permanent page at RRW. Click Numbers USA in bar above (right next to ‘diversity’).
Month: February 2008
Nashville may get new wave of refugees
Update 2/18/08: See the letter here from Chris Coen of Friends of Refugees adding more to this story.
That’s the title anyway of another refugee puff piece story in the Tennessean today. I’ve seen so many of these articles I know just what they will say before I even read them. The reporter, Janell Ross, has bought the template story hook, line and sinker. It starts out all kind of warm and glowing with a refugee success story (they all do!) In reference to Nashville’s multiculturalism, one refugee gushes:
“When people come out here from California, they can’t believe it.”
(Translation) Oh, we in Nashville are so cosmopolitan, so California.
Then she gives us the usual statistics.
The State Department says it plans to admit up to 70,000 refugees this year. And refugee resettlement agencies working in Nashville have been asked to prepare to resettle a small number [wait, what happened the “wave” in the headline to this article].
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Nashville already is home to an estimated 3,000 Somalis, 4,000 Sudanese and 5,000 to 7,000 Kurds.
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A trip along some of south Nashville’s major streets reveals stores that sell African garments, and Southeast Asian beauty products, as well as grocery stores where indoor and outdoor signs are written in Arabic. Nashville is also home to four mosques.
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In the area of southeast Nashville some call “Little Kurdistan,” it’s not uncommon for people to speak Kurdish, for women to wear traditional Kurdish garments and for 3,000 people to attend a single Kurd’s funeral.
She does throw in a little of the dark side, but it’s all about the bad things those white racist rednecks are doing. Or, how the refugees just aren’t getting all the taxpayer benefits they deserve.
But, one wonders if these lazy reporters know how to google anything. Did she not know about the Kurdish gangs in Nashville or the Somali Center director being arrested, or all that controversy in nearby Shelbyville?
Lookout Nashville, TN, Muslim mayor by 2015 in the heart of the Bible belt?
International Institute of Connecticut continued
Your tax dollars:
Yesterday I reported on public criticism of the International Institute of Connecticut where refugees assigned to this volag (voluntary agency) in Waterbury, CT, charge that the agency is not doing its job. So, now I’ve taken a look at that agency’s Form 990 for 2005 (the most recent available).
We’ve previously written about the International Institute’s mothership the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants here. (Note that USCRI is headed by a former head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the US Dept. of Health and Human Services, the major dispenser of grants and contract money).
For new readers there are basically 10 volag motherships that receive grants and contracts from the federal government and then disperse some of that funding downward to hundreds of smaller volags.
Now, back to the International Institute of Connecticut. According to the organizations Form 990 on file with the IRS, they had a total revenue of $1,214,408 and of that $556,339 was direct government grants. Another $589,441 was from program services (govt. fees and contracts). So that means that the organization is 94% funded by you, the taxpayer.
The Form 990 requires that salaries of top employees and board members be listed. This form only lists Myra Oliver’s salary, the woman quoted in this article, at $100,016. However, it lists $849,471 total for additional salaries, other employee benefits, and payroll taxes. So, who are all those people whose salaries make up the largest part of the entire organization. Can’t whoever all those people are take care of getting refugees to their medical appointments?
The International Institute also spent nearly $23,000 in travel and over $4000 on conferences. Rent (occupancy) was $45,729. They spent a whole whopping 9% ($112,035) of their annual revenue on “specific assistance to individuals.” It’s no surprise I suppose to see that little money goes to those in need and most goes to funding the organization itself.
Reform needed: We have maintained from the beginning of writing this blog that if we are to bring refugees into the country, each family unit must have an individual church or group sponsor/advocates for a year or two to assure that the refugees are assimilated into American society. These volags are not doing their jobs!
Our tax dollars are going to big salaries, travel, and conferences like the one we wrote about here yesterday.
Look for more soon on another of USCRI’s subcontractors, The International Institute of Erie, PA.
Why do we keep reading stories about volags not doing their jobs?
Update 2/17/08: See my post that follows up on this one here.
Update 2/20/08: New information on this story here.
Just this morning I posted on a ho-hum article about Burmese refugees arriving in Connecticut and now, thanks to a reader, I’m posting on another article from the same paper about a volag not taking care of refugees.
This happened in Hagerstown, MD near where we live and it’s what Chris Coen of Friends of Refugees described to us too—non-profit groups funded by the federal government leaving refugees in a lurch. Luckily in Waterbury, CT the refugees have some church people looking out for them. This time the culprit appears to be the International Institute of CT which must be a subcontractor of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigration.
Confusion about late fees for missed rent payments, missed doctor’s appointments and letters from the Department of Social Services have left many refugees frustrated and angry. Some no longer trust the institute to handle their concerns, said Diana Monti of the Living Faith Christian Church. But Oliver denies that. “That’s not what we’re hearing from them,” she said. “They’re going to have to have confidence in us. They’re going to have to trust us and we are going to respond to their concerns.”
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Additionally, a nurse at a local middle school says she has called the institute four to six times over the last two months to facilitate immunization requests for six refugee students. Brenda Gugliotti, of West Side Middle School, says the institute has not returned her phone calls and if the students do not receive immunizations by mid-March, they will be excluded from school. “I try to be fair,” said Gugliotti. “But this is my last warning… It’s very frustrating and it’s very, very time consuming… I have a few children in the building who are medically fragile. It’s not fair. The International Institute does not answer. These are not the only six children in the building.”
This article raises a couple of issues. I really don’t get it, why aren’t these NGO’s who are contracted to take care of the refugees taking care of them? Read the whole article and you’ll see that the volag people are throwing blame to the refugees. Can you imagine being in a very foreign country and within a few months being expected to fend for yourself with government bureaucracy?
And, then the second issue it raises is the one about health. Ft. Wayne, IN has had a very challenging time dealing with health issues with its Burmese population and Waterbury, CT really must get on top of any problems right away. In Ft. Wayne the big concern has been the cost of immunization and the high number of refugees with TB. For readers interested in health issues see our whole category on the subject here.
Immigration by the numbers
See this 14 minute video by NumbersUSA’s Roy Beck that, although released in 2006, tells more powerfully the same story as the Pew Research Center told us the other day in dry prose. Hat tip: create
Watch it!