Update August 5th: See another installment of this group’s how-to on refugee resettlement. It brings a smile to my face because this is the type of initiative that could serve as a model everywhere in the US!
Refugee Resettlement Support is a relatively new blog a reader directed me to yesterday. It appears to be a group of church people who sponsor one family at a time—a practice we have long advocated (instead of the present, widely used method, of a contractor just dropping families off in a rotten neighborhood in your city). Although they obviously get their family assignment from a government contractor, this Wisconsin group does all the rest.
One church or one group per refugee family would cost the taxpayer less and help assure the family would assimilate to America. Ultimately one could get rid of the government contractor middle-men and families could be assigned to churches (or other organizations) directly from a state or federal agency.
The goal of this blogger, Jeffrey Kirk, gives me pause, however!
This website is dedicated to helping refugees find home. Together we can help resettle 10 million refugees by 2030 or sooner!
I’m wondering if “home” for a majority of the world’s “refugees” might best be in their own cultural comfort zone, in their own region of the world.
Check out yesterday’s post at Refugee Resettlement Support where they are giving a day by day description of the resettlement process involving a Burmese family of eight. The family initially wanted to live in Milwaukee with relatives, but this group had a nice place picked out for them in their town. The family ultimately chose the nice house and not the cramped apartment in the city. Incidentally, this section of the post concerns me.
In contrast to the 13 people stuffed into a two-bedroom apartment in Milwaukee they will be living with 8 people in a three-bedroom house in Waukesha.
I think every city in the nation has laws about how many people can live in an apartment and I am sure the US State Department has contractual arrangements with the volag, Lutheran Social Services in this case, that would dissallow that crowded living arrangement. So, I wonder why that might have even been contemplated.
I look forward to reading more of Kirk’s birds-eye view of the refugee resettlement process.
By the way, maybe some nice church groups could rescue the Bhutanese families in that crime-ridden neighborhood in Jacksonville, FL. I doubt that poor Hari would have been murdered if his family had a group like this helping them get settled.