I repeat! Communities have little say about the amount of refugees they receive….
Update April 2nd: I’m told that Drudge posted this Concord Monitor story yesterday which says to me that the whole refugee issue and its impact on communities is starting to be noticed at a national level!
That is the headline of a piece that ran on Sunday in Concord, NH which is starting to feel the pain of increasing numbers of refugees being deposited there by the former Lutheran Social Service of New England (renamed Ascentria Care Alliance, why did they dump the word “Lutheran?”) and the US State Department.
For years the city of Manchester, NH has been swamped with refugees (over 80 languages in the school system) and the Mayor has tried to get the flow slowed. The flow has only been slowed slightly as the contractor’s focus has shifted to neighboring cities in New Hampshire, like Concord!
So, anyone just getting started with your own “welcoming” refugee resettlement program (Spartanburg!) pay attention!
From the Concord Monitor:
The federal resettlement program began 35 years ago, and today includes some 190 sites across the country.
In New Hampshire, four cities – Nashua, Manchester, Laconia and Concord – take in refugees, but the numbers are not evenly distributed. Nationally, nearly 70,000 refugees immigrated to the U.S. in the last fiscal year; 373 of those came to New Hampshire, and 189 of those came to Concord.
The city of Concord has minimal say, and minimal official responsibilities, over refugee resettlement. [Local elected officials will bear the brunt of public ire when the availability of subsidized housing declines, the schools are overloaded and the health department is swamped!—ed]
State and resettlement officials will typically share the information they receive about resettlement projections with local officials. [That is not always the case!—ed]
Concord, in turn, has an opportunity to provide some input on those projections. But as decisions are being made about how many new refugees will resettle here, there’s rarely a discussion – with Concord officials, at least – about the current status of the local economy and what kind of resources are available, according to City Manager Tom Aspell.
Below, when they say “states can comment,” they don’t mean elected state officials, they mean the state refugee coordinator who is ideologically in tune with the US State Department and the federal contractors working in the state and will not likely stand up to the contractors on behalf of an overloaded town or city!
The national refugee resettlement program runs as a partnership between the federal government and nine private resettlement agencies. Ascentria Care Alliance, which oversees resettlement in Concord, is a subsidiary of three of those private agencies.
Each year, the State Department announces resettlement projections for the coming fiscal year. States can then comment on those, raising concerns or requesting changes.
Barbara Seebart, New Hampshire’s refugee coordinator, said she regularly meets with school officials, health care workers, social service providers, state partners, volunteers, ESL teachers and local resettlement agencies to gather feedback.
She gathers feedback, big deal, does she ever stop the flow to New Hampshire?
Readers concerned about your state should make a point of contacting your state coordinator.
I suggest you be polite, uncritical, and find out as much as you can from the coordinators about what is going on in your state. BTW, the state coordinator knows how many new refugees are destined for your state and where they will be coming from.