We are told it is “rare” for refugees to go back to their homeland, it may well be, but I think there are more than we are told about. It would undermine the refugee resettlement program if too many of these cases were made public.
Buried in a puff piece on refugees in North Carolina is this little bit of information about a homeless African refugee.
It can take up to five years to assimilate, Ognodo (director of the Neighborhood Good Samaritan Center) says, but some never do. In December, Ognodo said he found one former student homeless and involved in drugs. The teen’s father had died. The youth had stopped visiting the Samaritan Center. Ognodo helped send him back to family in Africa.
Reform needed: If a refugee wishes to return home, his or her airfare should be paid by the volag (government contractor) whose job it was to resettle the refugee in the first place. The volag should also use its own funds and not taxpayer money for the plane ticket! It would be a way of identifying which volags were not doing a good job of caring for and assimilating refugees.