Here is another of those basic template stories, this time from Nebraska. (The second Nebraska Iraqi refugee story in two days!) A nice family is featured. They can’t go home to Iraq for this reason or that reason. They couldn’t survive in Jordan and so despite the fact that jobs are scarce and the US government isn’t generous enough, they’ve come to America and have seen their first snow and know that everything will be great. Well, truthfully this story has no snow in it, but they often do.
And, as is the usual pattern for these stories, one reads through many column inches before getting to some of the problems. But, before I get to the bumps, check this out! We’ve written about this before but it’s been a long while since I’ve seen it in print anywhere.
Divvying up refugees!
Ten non-profit government contractors are making the decision every week in Washington about what city these refugees will be sent to!
Think about it, these agencies which have no elected officials overseeing them in any way (State Department officials involved are career bureaucrats) are determining the character and economic future for your neighborhood, your town, your city and your state. Additionally, since they are paid to resettle refugees, each must surely be first and foremost defending its own turf and offices throughout the US.
Once a week in Washington, 10 resettlement agencies under contract with the government, most of them church-affiliated nonprofit groups, meet to divvy up the refugees deemed eligible for entry because of a “well-founded fear of persecution” at home.
It’s a process that Jeff Vandenberg, of Omaha-based Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska, likens to the NFL draft [clever, huh?]. Priority is given to reunifying families — the reason behind many of the arrivals in Nebraska and Iowa — and to placing the newcomers where they’ll find relatives or countrymen nearby, as was the case for al-Kadhim and his family.
The “bumps” for Iraqi refugees are that they expected to enter a life where they would work in the field in which they were trained and have nice housing. For most, it’s not happening. And, as we have reported previously, some have returned to the Middle East and the culture they are comfortable with. Despite the problems and lack of jobs, the Obama Administration is promising that we will resettle another 17,000 plus Iraqis this fiscal year.
Since the 2000 Census, Iraqi natives have pushed their numbers to perhaps 1,100 in Nebraska and 165 in Iowa, estimated David Drozd, a demographer at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Problems with the newly arrived Iraqis here have been few, although “there are always bumps,” said Vandenberg. The federal goal — even in the midst of the “Great Recession” — is for resettled refugees to be economically self-sufficient within six months, the point at which their eligibility for government cash assistance generally expires, he said.
After two recent studies criticizing how Iraqi refugees have fared nationwide, the Obama administration vowed to review the resettlement process, a system essentially devised in 1980 to welcome Vietnamese and Cambodians displaced by war. The studies, by Georgetown University Law School and the International Rescue Committee, found that government resettlement funds were too quickly exhausted and job prospects too often scant, among other problems.
“I’m ashamed. I feel like I’m selling a lie,” Greg Wangerin of Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries told the Chicago Tribune recently in an article that chronicled poverty and homelessness among the refugees in Chicago,* home to the second-largest Iraqi community in the United States, after Detroit.
Yes, Mr. Wangerin, you are.
* For more on the Chicago mess go here.