Doing so will benefit our “collective public health” says Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet.
Editor: I don’t know if anyone noticed, but sorry I haven’t been posting. It wasn’t for lack of wanting to, but a big storm took out our TV and internet for a couple of days. LOL! I have to admit, I wasn’t sure if I wanted it back on! Amazing how many projects around the farm could get done with most access to the world cut off!
And, there really isn’t a whole lot of refugee news happening. There are a lot of stories about how refugees in America are suffering due to the stay at home orders, but I’m sure that you don’t want to hear too many of those. I’m going to put up a bunch of short pieces to get caught up.
As far as I’ve been able to figure out, the Administration has not fully re-opened refugee resettlement nor made a statement that I know of. However, this news from Colorado would indicate that reopening has not occurred.
Bennet objects to Trump’s coronavirus border policy
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet said America should help refugees and asylum seekers not turn them away at the border, the plan imposed last month by President Trump.
The administration suspended refugee resettlement programs and began denying asylum seekers entry to the country under the president’s emergency powers for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Friday Bennet sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf urging the administration not to use the global crisis “for anti-migrant or anti-refugee policies, or use it as an excuse to shut the door on those fleeing war or persecution.”
“COVID-19 is certain to have tragic consequences to refugees around the world. Refugees living in crowded and unsanitary conditions are especially at risk of exposure to COVID-19 without access to clean water and food,” the letter states.
As I said a few days ago, the warningsabout refugee camp carnage have not yet materialized.
“An extended ban on resettlement programs will endanger the lives of even more refugees, further jeopardizing our collective public health.”
….but it isn’t for lack of searching for it by the mainstream media.
For weeks I have been scouring news stories daily looking for the widespread arrival of COVID-19 in refugee camps around the world where people are living packed together and soap is a scarce commodity.
Several times I’ve wanted to just post the breathless headlines that scream a human tragedy is on the way. “Catastrophe” and “carnage” are the words that appear in many of the articles I’ve read.
But, so far (and I emphasize ‘so far’) the places where you would think the virus should have spread like wildfire are pretty much untouched.
However, this morning I found this headline at US News and figured it was time to report on the refugee ‘catastrophe’ about to explode (or maybe not):
Coronavirus Cases Rise in Refugee Camps
AS THE NUMBER OF coronavirus cases in refugee camps starts to rise around the world, experts are sounding the alarm over the vulnerabilities of displaced people during the pandemic.
There is a paragraph here taking a whack at the US and ICE, then this….
Meanwhile, confirmed coronavirus cases are turning up in refugee camps. In Greece, authorities announced on April 2 that a migrant camp had been quarantined after 23 asylum seekers tested positive for the coronavirus – the first such facility in the country to be hit since the outbreak, according to Reuters.
Bangladesh imposed a lockdown on March 24 after the first case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, was reported in the refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Reuters reported. The camps at Cox’s Bazar house more than 1 million Rohingya.
A combination of population density, a lack of information and access to basic human services make refugees particularly vulnerable to the spread of the coronavirus, according to Refugees International.
In a country where soap and water is in short supply, as of today the whole country of Bangladesh has only 482 cases.
Chris Boian, a senior communications officer with the U.N. Refugee Agency, the UNHCR, says that there have been “relatively low numbers of suspected or confirmed cases among refugees” overall.
Never letting a good crisis go to waste, here comes the New Yorker yesterday with an interview with ‘moneybags’ Miliband about the International Rescue Committee’s report on the crisis they are sure will unfoldin refugee camps worldwide.
On April 1st, the I.R.C. released a report on how the coronavirus pandemic could affect refugees. Focussing on displaced populations in Syria, Greece, and Bangladesh, the I.R.C. found that refugees will likely face extreme risk when the virus begins to spread. “The rapid spread of covid-19 on the Diamond Princess”—the cruise ship that was quarantined in the port of Yokohama, Japan—“showed how the virus thrives in confined spaces,” Marcus Skinner, a senior policy adviser at I.R.C., wrote, but the conditions of millions of displaced people “are far more cramped and poorly serviced, and the risks are far deadlier.”
I recently spoke by phone with David Miliband, the president and C.E.O. of the I.R.C. He was formerly a Labour Member of Parliament and the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what can be done to prevent vulnerable populations from contracting the coronavirus, how the I.R.C. is protecting its own staff, and why a pandemic makes international coöperation all the more necessary.
Of course their plan offers no real solutions. They say they are fighting “disinformation” and promoting government health services and are happy to report that private donations haven’t dried up.
They also want governments to keep their borders open, blah, blah, blah.
There is no way to promote social distancing in refugee camps, but Miliband does offer up a suggestion that more soap is needed because we all need to know this.
Miliband:
Everyone needs to know Anthony Fauci washes his hands fifty times a day and, if possible, know that their local trusted people are doing the same.
It is along articlethat you might want to save for future reference.
Only time will tell if the ‘carnage’ arrives in refugee camps like this million-plus Rohingya camp at Cox’s Bazar, but I find it interesting that it has been three weeks since the first case was reported there and there has not been any widespread infection where I expect there is no social distancing and little hand washing happening.
I’m sure this is happening everywhere, so it is all the more reason to continue the suspension of new refugee arrivals that was supposed to have been liftedthis week by the US State Department.
No jobs for newly arrived refugees and no one to give them instructions in person as to where to get signed up for their taxpayer-funded ‘services.’
Nonprofits Retool to Serve Refugees Struggling During COVID-19 Shutdown
Refugees who arrived in the Bay Area around the time shelter-in-place orders were issued, as well as those who have been her for an extended period, are struggling to stay afloat, organizations who serve them said.
The most recent arrivals are simply trying to establish themselves, whereas others are unaware of services available to them, are being led astray by misinformation on social media or are faced with a rekindling of the trauma they thought they had left behind.
Given the shutdown of many businesses, new arrivals are less likely to find jobs.***
Without employment, refugees have less access to health insurance and more need for income assistance. Lacking income to buy cars, newly arrived refugees must rely on drastically curtailed bus and rail service to do essential tasks like shop for groceries or get to the hospital. New arrivals without existing community connections can then end up extremely isolated.
[….]
….the system of refugee resettlement in the United States is based on rapidly finding employment. “You are looking at a substantial pool of individuals who may not be able to pay for rent and their needs even if they were working,” said Blythe Raphael, who heads the refugee services program at Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay.“Those families we’re watching carefully and trying to find assistance.” [This organization is asubcontractor of HIAS.—ed]
Multiple organizations that serve refugees have shifted gears, reorganized and launched new services to ensure they can meet this population’s needs during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The stay-at-home order was issued just after several families arrived in the area from Aghanistan, forcing Raphael’s East Bay organization to retool for remote work at the same time it was delivering assistance. “As all services were closing to in-person interviews, we had to really review our model in order for us to make the service connections for all of our new arrivals and for our case managers to be able to serve people with essential course services,” Raphael said.
In other words, it is hard to get new refugees signed up for their various welfare programs and other services when so much is closed.
These groups have had to quickly adjust to the shelter-in-place order, and are themselves vulnerable to the economic fallout, so they need as much public support as they can get, said advocates. “Small organizations are going to suffer a lot from this economic crash that’s going to happen,” said Zand (Leva Zand, development director of the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland).
***One of those jobs that refugees are hired to do is slaughterhouse work. And, now comes news that meat plants are having to close due to the number of workers getting sick with COVID-19. See here.
Or a combination of the two! Whatever, it can’t be soon enough for member states like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic who steadfastly insist on their right to control their own borders.
Invasion of Europe news….
No!!! Said Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 2015.
Gatestone writer Judith Bergman has agood piece this morningabout the recent decision by The Court of Justice of the European Union that says those three countries violated the EU principle of “solidarity” in not inviting thousands of supposed “war refugees” to live in their countries.
EU: Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic Broke EU Law
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic broke EU law when they refused to take in migrants under the European Union’s September 2015 relocation agreement. During the 2015 migrant crisis, EU leaders agreed to relocate 160,000 migrants and refugees EU-wide, assigning each EU member state a fixed quota from the camps in Italy and Greece, where migrants and refugees were arriving in record numbers. However, the Czech Republic accepted only 12 of the 2,000 refugees assigned it, while Hungary and Poland took in none.
In 2017, the EU took Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) over that refusal to take migrants. On April 2, 2020, the CJEU ruled against the three countries. The ruling followed the October 2019 recommendation by the Court’s Advocate General, legal advisor to the Court, which said that EU law must be followed and that the EU’s principle of solidarity “necessarily sometimes implies accepting burden-sharing”.
In its judgment, the Court dismissed the three countries’ argument that they were entitled to refuse the relocation scheme based on concerns for the maintenance of law and order and the safeguarding of internal security.
I’m looking every day for official word from the US State Department about whether refugees will again be streaming to America after the UN/IOM shut down refugee travel in mid-March.
However, as I pointed out here a few days agoin a post that went viral, refugees have still been coming in, the spigot was never entirely closed.
But, today was the originally designated day for the flow to resume and I am seeing nothing by way of a public announcement one way or another.
You can be sure that the US State Department must have already notified their “partners” (aka paid contractors).
We will work with our implementing partners to plan for a resumption of refugee arrivals on or after April 7.
How about letting the public know, after all, we pay for it all one way or another.
And, if they are opening the refugee spigot, we need to know if tests for COVID-19 are being given before the refugee boards a near empty plane for Anytown, USA.
More people who are unemployed, hungry and in need of health care coming to America—what could go wrong!
Chris Boian, a senior communications officer with the U.N. Refugee Agency, the UNHCR, says that there have been 
