Category: Christian refugees

Citizens of Rome, NY ask, can we afford more refugees?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update:  I had forgotten all about the Delphi Technique until responding to a commenter at this post.  Go here and see how what happened at the meeting in Rome puts the technique on full display.  Judy posted this in advance of our meeting in Hagerstown, MD last September. 

Usually there isn’t a public meeting to discuss whether a city will take more refugees, the volags just bring them, so this article leads me to believe there must be problems afoot.   Either Rome has too many refugees already or word has come 20 miles up the road from Utica (the city that loves refugees) that everything is not sweetness and light in that city.

Just as in our city of Hagerstown, MD this time last year, the citizens’ main concern is economic, can our city afford it?

While many Rome residents welcomed the dozens of Burmese refugees who will be moving to the city within the next year, other residents expressed concerns Monday about the economic impact of such an influx.

With roughly 250 Burmese refugees expected to arrive in the community the four to five years ahead, Rome Mayor James Brown hosted a town hall meeting to discuss any questions or concerns people might have about their future neighbors.

And the first concern voiced by two city residents involved money.

Expressing what we found a common theme in Hagerstown, one citizen said,

“We can’t afford any more,” Russitano said. Later, he added, “It’s not who they are, it’s not what they are. What we care about is the economics, and economically it’s a challenge.”

It has nothing to do with the Burmese Karen people themselves, and by the way, they are Christians not Muslims.   But, people want to know why we don’t take care of our own impoverished people first. 

Notice when you read the article how the Mayor is promoting more refugees, perhaps he should talk with the Mayor of beleagured Ft. Wayne, IN, or maybe the Allen County Health Department.

And, one final thought, it’s disgusting to parade refugees into a meeting of this sort.  We flat out opposed the idea for the public forum in Hagerstown last September.  It’s embarrassing and demeaning.  Citizens are there for a serious public policy discussion about such things as finances, which could only make those refugees in attendance feel even more unwelcome.

Waterbury Burmese helped by volunteers not government contractor

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an update on the series of articles we reported on earlier in the year from Waterbury, CT.    Yesterday’s article in the Republican American shows how refugee resettlement could work and should work—communities and individual churches working closely with immigrants such as these Burmese Karen (Christians).   The present refugee resettlement system is run almost exclusively by government contracted volags (supposedly voluntary groups) who, like the International Institute of CT, frequently drop the ball and don’t care for the refugees.  At least in the case of Waterbury, the US State Department took action and suspended the Institute.

This article tells how private citizens have stepped in and this particular group of refugees is on the way to becoming American—-with summer camp for the kids (arranged by volunteers).

Ideally, this is the way the U.S. State Department would like refugee resettlement to work — the community and non-profits helping refugees assimilate. In Waterbury, however, friction developed early between volunteers and the International Institute, the non-profit agency that brought the refugees to Waterbury last fall, and volunteers responded by doing more. The Institute has subsequently been reprimanded by the U.S. State Department and has been forbidden from processing more refugees, but a degree of frustration — and anger — remains.

“If these people didn’t have us, where would they go?” said Caren Smith, the Living Faith volunteer who has spearheaded physical and dental appointments, meaning she is in these clinics up to four times a week. “These kids were running around with six to eight teeth rotting in their mouth. I mean rotting.” Smith has been helping Karen refugees since November and estimates she, or a member of her family, is in the refugees’ homes three to four times a week. She says during all that time she has not seen an institute staff member.

“[Jo Ann’s] fear is that if she and the other volunteers don’t do something, there’s no other safety net available,” said James Robertson, a Waterbury lawyer. “Who will help these people if not them? If there were a superstructure, a well-developed network that took care of them, maybe these volunteers would not be as energized.”

“The International Institute has really been a disappointment,” concedes Mike Monti, assistant pastor at Living Faith. “Fortunately, there’s a group of folks trying to help these people in spite of the lack [of attention] on the International side….[The refugees]just left to the mercy of someone who would knock on their door and say, ‘Can I help you?'”

Be sure to read what Lavinia Limon (head of USCRI, the mothership of the International Institute) had to say about Waterbury here.  

Reform needed:  We must go back to the old system of resettling refugees one family at a time with the help of private groups and churches.  Presently we are paying multi-million dollar non-profit groups to do this work and they are failing on many levels—refugees are not being assimilated (Somalis!), refugees are left in the lurch,  and the tax payer is footing the bill (including for salaries topping $100,000 for these groups’ staffers).  Cut out the middlemen!

Blog on Iraqi refugees: more questions then answers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have written 201 posts on the Iraqi refugee situation and still feel like we are not getting the truth, or anything near the accurate story of the supposed “crisis” with Iraqi refugees.   I came across this blog the other day reporting on a first hand account of a visit to the UNHCR office in Jordan.  Now I have even more questions.

First, we have been inundated by the media, especially the Associated Press, telling us how bad the Bush Administration is in admitting refugees from Jordan and Syria.  However, according to this UN office in Jordan, up until sometime in 2007 the UNHCR had not registered very many refugees (the UN is the gatekeeper to refugee resettlement).   As a matter of fact, the blogger here, says that when he entered the UN office he had expected to see a long line of refugees and saw none.

In 2007 UNHCR set a submission target of 7500 Iraqis, they met this target and more with 8062 Iraqis registered and processed. A cumulative total of 4,663 persons have been submitted to these 16 countries.

So, now my question is, if the refugee crisis is so great why had the UN been dragging its feet?

The blogger then reports that he asked the UN employee about the problem of Muslims who have converted to Christianity feeling threatened by revealing that information to Jordanian Muslim officials.  Why haven’t we heard about this before?   And, we have been told over and over again that information was not collected on the religious affiliation of refugees.

I asked about the some of the concerns of the people I have interviewed. One was concerning Muslims who had secretly converted to Christianity. That they were afraid to tell the caseworkers of their conversions, afraid of reprisals as it is illegal in the Kingdom of Jordan for a Muslim to convert. Ziad assured me that anyone giving information about their case had to be forthright and need not fear any reprisals.

The UN employee then tells the blogger that single men are not given priority in resettlement, but that doesn’t fit what we are hearing on this end.   We have reported on many single Iraqi men getting into the US.  So, what is the truth?  Just the other day I reported on the Iraqi refugee who exposed himself and a few weeks back I wrote about two questionable Iraqi young men in the Bay area interviewed on a radio program (the volag representative even said they were resettling single men in California).

I also asked Ziad who was given resettlement priority. He replied that priority was given to; single females, the elderly, children separated from their parents or relatives, and family reunification.

Last, the blogger relates how Jordan is trying to push Iraqi refugees out of that country by imposing fines on those who stay too long.  According to the blogger this has pushed “hundreds of thousands” to Syria.  What the heck?  How come we haven’t heard about this?

Second option: if they choose to leave the fine would be waved. *This may account for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees who have left Jordan for Syria.

Where is Matthew Lee and all the rest of the biased and lazy mainstream media?

Burmese conflicted about coming to the US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about the large number of Burmese refugees entering the US.  You may have noticed them in your city or town already.  Since 2006, according to this article, we have resettled 32,000 Burmese refugees (mostly Christian with some Muslims slipped in) and expect another 18,000 this year.

We’ve written many times about the Burmese but since we have so many new readers I thought this article had some useful information about the Patriot Act and the what is known as the ‘material support for terrorism provision’ and how it can be waived. 

Thanks to a new U.S. policy, Nid Paw hopes to become one of 18,000 Burmese refugees allowed to settle in the United States in 2008. Before the change in law, the Patriot Act had barred refugee status for those who had provided “material support” to organizations on the State Department terrorist list. Because many Burmese refugees had lived in regions where ethnic armies have fought for independence against government troops for decades, they were typically denied entry simply for giving food, water or housing to guerrilla fighters – even if under duress.

In 2006, the Department of Homeland Security recognized that Burmese refugees were unlikely to be terrorists and waived the material support clause, opening the door to an estimated 140,000 Burmese refugees living in nine camps along the Thailand-Burma border.

But the change also makes Nid Paw and other refugees uncertain about the lives they will leave behind and the problems they will face with a different culture, language and educational system, and an economy that is likely to offer no better than a minimum-wage job.

Besides the information on terrorism and the situation in Burma, it was interesting to see that the Burmese really hope to return to a democratic Burma someday.   Chances are slim because most refugees in America won’t make much more than minimum wage, so the cost alone would be prohibitive.

Nid Paw is unsure how she will arrange travel documents to return to Thailand. Refugees must wait five years before applying for green cards, and even then many lack the funds to return.

Using our search function for ‘Burmese refugees’ here is the archive for previous posts on this group.

Canada rejects Christian Iraqi refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

While Canada is busy taking Muslim refugees with no links to Canada like the Rohingya, it is also busy rejecting applications from Christian Iraqis with extended family living there according to this article in the Toronto Star:

Azad Sarkissian’s Armenian great-grandparents settled in Iraq more than a century ago, and none of their descendants has stepped on Armenian soil since.

His sister and her family fled the violence in Iraq and are living precariously as United Nations-recognized refugees in Jordan. Sarkissian, in Toronto, has tried and failed three times over the past six years to bring them to Canada through a refugee resettlement application sponsored by the Assyrian Methodist Church of Canada.

But they were startled and angered by the latest response by a Canadian visa officer in Damascus, who said the family should go to Armenia instead.

 Since when do refugee officials tell people to go back to where their ancestors came from?