….where are all of you ‘Christian’ do-gooders with your personal charitable giving?
This story should make your blood boil. We are lectured that we should “welcome” refugees to our towns and cities and then those doing all the yammering leave families like this one high and dry, living in a series of motels and expecting their teenage children to morph into successful assimilated American citizens (yeh right!).
Read this story, read the whole thing from the Boston Globe on Friday (hat tip: Diane). And, don’t get mad at the refugees, get mad at your Senators and Members of Congress, get mad at the UN, get mad at the US State Department and get especially mad at the International Institute of New England which brings them in and drops them off!
Do not read this as a plea for more taxpayer funding, but as a plea for a reduction in the number of refugees we admit. If we can’t take care of them, then don’t bring them.
And, for those of you contemplating ‘welcoming’ refugees to your town for the first time, you will be paying for it. This article highlights the fact that local and state taxpayer dollars are involved; and, that many of these traumatized families require expensive mental health treatment.
It also points out that your local refugee resettlement contractor simply washes its hands of troubled families and moves on to the next paying ‘clients’ the State Department sends them!
I told you yesterday, that the US State Department is accepting testimony (by May 19th) about the size and scope of the Refugee Admissions Program for FY2017 (Obama has already signaled it will recommend bringing in 100,000 for that year). Someone should write up this story from Massachusetts as an important point in your testimony.
Boston Globe (this is just a bit of the story about the contractor):
Refugee families depend on the federal government to help once they arrive. To assist them, the State Department contracts with nonprofits to help families find an apartment, sign up for health care, enroll in ESL classes, obtain food stamps, and look for employment opportunities. But the organizations are only required to provide guidance for three months, and refugees who need more help must turn to state programs and case managers for other benefits such as welfare.
Samantha Kaufman, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, declined to comment on the Rubayes’ plight. “We can’t release any personal information about individuals and families,” she wrote in an e-mail.
Dr. Richard Mollica, director of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, called for increased refugee benefits from the government.
“If you have a medical problem or a mental health problem or you’re a survivor of torture, the probability that you’re going to make it to independent living after eight or nine months is probably nil,” Mollica said.
Currently, the biggest allotment of financial aid for refugees is a one-time federal payment of $2,025 for each family member. Some families pool those funds for rent and clothing, but at least $900 of each allowance goes to pay administrative costs to such resettlement agencies as the International Institute of New England, which was assigned to the family originally for three months, according to Rubaye. The International Institute did not respond to queries about resettling refugees. [No surprise!—ed]
There is much more, read it all.
See our recent post on the number of (potentially troubled) Iraqis entering the US and note that in recent years Iraqis made up the largest ethnic group admitted (82% are Muslims). We also have an extensive archive with 688 previous posts on the Iraqi migration to America.
Way back in 2008, a wise Iraqi refugee boy penned a letter to the editor in which he said this about the large number of Iraqis entering the US as refugees:
It is better to have 10 Iraqi refugees who are satisfied with their lives than having 100 angry ones with no life at all.
But, the truth is that resettlement contractors can’t keep their doors open if they slow the flow as each refugee brings money (your taxpayer dollars) per head they resettle. The whole resettlement model is (wrongly, I believe) built on increasing the numbers we admit! It is not about assuring assimilation and success!