Have a look at this article from Arab American News from last week.
It starts out with the usual heartwarming stories about refugees finding new lives in Michigan (the state getting the most Syrian Muslims) but then read down 11 paragraphs where we hear about the trouble the new arrivals are having after basically being left in the lurch by resettlement contractors and in one case NO agency is helping them.
Readers this is very common, we’ve heard it repeatedly over the years and instead of taking fewer refugees that could be taken care of properly, the federal contractors are overloaded (there are never enough volunteers backing up the paid staff!) and the refugees complain. And, you can’t blame them, they have been sold a bill of goods about life in America and their expectations are very high.
Get this….how is it that a whole family is basically wandering around loose in Michigan with no one responsible for them but another refugee.
The Kabati family now enjoys a new, seemingly peaceful life, but anticipated the challenges that lay ahead as soon as they arrived at the airport.
Kabati said while other refugees were greeted at the airport by representatives of refugee aid groups and taken to their homes, they were greeted by a friend, who offered to provide any further assistance the family needed. Kabati added because they had no family in Michigan, the IOM inadvertently held his friend, also a recent Syrian immigrant, fully responsible for their aid.
The family friend gave them shelter for two days, until he secured them an apartment.
As of Saturday, Kabati and his family have not received paperwork and needed assistance to initiate their resettlement, like Social Security numbers, insurance and food stamps.
Kabati said he and his family are eager to start learning English, so they are able to get around and communicate with others. A tough language barrier prevents them from integrating into American society.
So far, no aid group has offered to place them in ESL courses, unlike the cases with other refugees.
Yikes! How many other Syrians have simply been flown in to a city and dropped? You might not have a lot of sympathy for them, but you should. The refugees are just pawns. Again, we see evidence that this program is being run with incompetent leadership and is not about caring for the the world’s downtrodden as its first priority.
This is an example of gross incompetence on the part of the US State Department and some contractor which dropped the ball in Michigan!
Why? Because instead of slowing the flow to a level that could be accommodated and assimilated, the UN and the US State Department are sending them into communities at unsustainable levels hurting both the refugees and the citizens of the town or city unlucky enough to be a target site.
Continue reading the story for the litany of other complaints the new Michigan Americans have.
The primary contractors operating in the state are the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LSS Michigan), the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and get this, in Dearborn, it is USCRI—the same agency that isn’t doing a very good job in Lowell, Mass.