I predict that jobs (the lack of jobs) is the Achilles heel for the Refugee Resettlement program of the US State Department.
Readers, do you realize that there are those who believe that our supposedly humanitarian refugee program is nothing more than a source of cheap labor for powerful special business interests? I know that many of you involved in the program especially at the local level are probably shouting now that it isn’t so, it is all about taking care of the world’s less fortunate.
No it ain’t!
The more I see and hear from people who have direct contact with the refugees themselves and the more I see and hear about the vile places the volags (non-profit government contractors) are putting the refugees to live, one can only conclude that some of the refugees were lured here by not so caring people for reasons that are not humanitarian.
American workers who expect Obama to save the economy need to speak up now! We don’t need more immigrants to fill jobs that Americans won’t do—jobs that aren’t even there! That is my rant.
Now, back to Michigan. This is a story from NPR yesterday about how Iraqi refugees are flooding Michigan, the state with one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation and are, surprise!, finding no jobs. Judy told us previously that the US State Department was trying to turn off the spigot to Michigan, but I guess it isn’t working.
Michigan has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, so the last thing the state needs is more people coming in without jobs — and that includes refugees from Iraq. The economy is so bleak that the State Department no longer wants to allow Iraqis to settle in Michigan unless they have immediate relatives already living there.
But, the State Department can’t control secondary migration. This is America and after their initial resettlement (usually lasting three months) the refugees are free to move wherever they wish. Looks like for Iraqis that is Detroit.
Two years ago, only 202 Iraqi refugees were allowed into the country. This year, that number is almost 14,000 — and most refugees have gravitated to Detroit, home to America’s largest Arab population as well as a sizable Iraqi Christian or Chaldean community. But now officials say they’re swamped.
Read this lengthy article and note that the Chaldeans (Christians) say they take care of their own and don’t depend on government handouts. That’s good but what about all the other refugees?
Kassab (Chaldean leader) sympathizes with the out-of-work Detroiter, who he says is more entitled to such jobs than a refugee. “I have no quarrel with that, but it’s a competitive market,” he says. “This is something that’s up to the employer who they want to hire.”
And that’s what worries officials. The immediate resettlement — finding a house, giving three months’ worth of cash assistance — is the easy part. The hard part comes afterward, when the money has run out, the economy is still bad and affordable housing is hard to come by. These refugees will have to deal with that in the long run.
No! We will all be dealing with the unemployed in the long run!