Jim and Karen Jacobson are now the parents of 12 children having just adopted 8 Burmese refugees. To all of our readers who persist in supporting the failed model for refugee resettlement that we are witnessing in the US and which has become an even starker failed reality as the recession continues—no jobs for refugees, slum apartments, extended welfare benefits, etc—this is my answer to you. I must say it bluntly—put your money where your mouth is! Adopt kids or put one family under your family’s wing (or your church’s wing) and care for them and lay off bullying taxpayers into pouring huge amounts of government funding into resettlement contractors coffers!
Here is the story I saw this morning on a blog called Deacon John:
Jim and Karen Jacobson might describe themselves as ordinary citizens, but the Michigan residents have done something so extraordinary that they just may have set a new precedent in the U.S. adoption arena. After nearly 18 months of wading through the murky waters of bureaucratic red tape, they have become the legally adoptive parents of eight refugee children, all of whom hail from Burma, one of the most devastated and war- torn countries in the world.
[….]
Hundreds of Burma’s refugees who relocate to the United States each year have been orphaned by the violent war in their homeland. When the question arose for Jacobson and his wife, Karen, about whether to adopt four refugee siblings — who had previously received care through CFI in Thailand before arriving in the U.S. in the spring of 2008 — the challenges stretched down a seemingly endless road, one where no American had ever ventured before.
[….]
As possibly the first American family to adopt Karen children without foreign birth certificates, the Jacobsons are determined to let other Americans who live in or near refugee resettlement areas know that adoption can be an effective way of not only providing a stable and loving home for Burma’s refugee children, but to give them easier, swifter access to educational opportunities and even American citizenship.
Jim and Karen Jacobson now have 12 children and reside in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
We will never be able to bring all the world’s refugees to the US, NEVER! We should only be bringing refugees that individual private charities are willing to “adopt” and financially and emotionally support until they are on their feet. I can’t emphasize enough how accepting American people will be to refugees if they aren’t feeling like they are badgered into paying for them—there is nothing charitable about taking other people’s money for your “charitable” work (for you to feel good about yourself!).
I’ve told you about Christian Freedom International here and recommended to any reader wishing to financially support refugees to do it through this group and not any of the Top Ten Federal Refugee Contractors and their 300 plus subcontractors which I call the refugee industry!