Here is a comment we just received from Scott to a post about Canada in which I lauded Canada’s program of private sponsorship of refugee families.
Canada isn’t the only country that tries to secure private sponsors for incoming refugees. I work at a resettlement office in the US, and we actually have a staff member who is responsible for getting local churches to sponsor specific families. Granted, we only get sponsors for a small percentage of our cases. Then again, we get 5 or 6 families a month, so any expectation that we could locate enough private sponsors for everyone would be wildly unrealistic.
So, if we can’t find enough private groups to sponsor refugee families then why would we bring tens of thousands of refugees to the US and place the full burden on the taxpayer. We have 500 churches in our county and I know for a fact that when the Virginia Council of Churches quietly came to our Maryland county, they never even approached but a tiny fraction of the congregations here. They completely stayed away from what I would call churches on the political right and only went to leftwing churches (yes, there is a religious left!) and as far as I know never approached any civic associations or other such groups.
In my cynical opinion, they don’t find enough sponsors because it is too much work, it’s easier just to drop the refugees on the welfare system and collect their government contract money for doing so! I say the size of our Refugee Resettlement Program should be based solely on how many sponors can be obtained. As a matter of fact, a refugee’s opportunity to succeed in the US would be enhanced tenfold if they had someone special looking out for them!
New readers, do you know that within 3 months a refugee can just up and move anywhere in the US and no one ever tracks where they are or checks on how they are doing?