Writer: Bhutanese ‘third country resettlement’ sets a bad precedent

01/08/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Joseph Mathew (or is it Mathew Joseph?) writing at the International Business Times has penned an interesting article giving us the background on why the people of Nepali origin were expelled from Bhutan which led to the US (under the Bush Administration and continuing into today) taking tens of thousands of those expelled people to America over the last five years. Here is just one recent post about Bhutanese/Nepali people coming here en masse.

Below are my excerpts from the article by Mr. Mathew:

The long pending issue of the repatriation of Bhutanese refugees of Nepali origin, who were housed in the UNHCR-sponsored refugee camps in the eastern Nepal districts of Morang and Jhapa since early 1990s, was “resolved” to many by the Third Country Resettlement proposal put forth and being carried out by countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark and the Netherlands. As of now, a sizable section of the refugees have been resettled in these countries, with a majority of them now living in the United States.

These Bhutanese refugees of Nepali origin were expelled from Bhutan in the early 1990s as a result of the state sponsored Bhutanization drive epitomized in the promulgation of “Driglam Nam Za” (code of social etiquette) in 1989, which stipulated strict controls over the people of Nepali origin who inhabited the southern districts of Bhutan.

The author explains that the ruling class in Bhutan feared the growth of the population of people of Nepali origin.

A growth in the number of the people of Nepali origin and their cultural distinctiveness from the ruling elite became a cause of worry for them. The heightened political consciousness among the people of Nepali origin compounded the fears of the Ngalong ruling elite.

Several times Mr. Mathew implies that the ruling class fears of being eventually taken over demographically by the Nepali people and losing control of their government was an irrational fear. I do remember when I first wrote about the Bhutanese years ago that there was mention of the Maoists agitating within this expelled population. I don’t know if that is so, but that might have been behind some of the intransigence of Bhutan’s government. Yes, I found it! here is the news story that reported Maoists in the camps.

Mathew continues:

In the last 20 years, Bhutan has undergone many changes including transforming herself from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy and became a “democracy” from above. However, while undergoing these changes Bhutan has not changed a bit her policy towards the repatriation of the refugee population located in the UNHCR camps in eastern Nepal. On the contrary, it has created many hurdles in the process of resolving the refugee problem amicably despite the efforts of Nepal.

Frankly folks, I have never understood why Nepal didn’t want its own ethnic people back!

So why did the US get into this squabble?

I have no answer to that. Discerning readers at this point are likely asking—why is it the business of the US to resolve a dispute involving Bhutan and Nepal and to a lesser degree India? Why is this in our national interest?

The only answer I have is this—that open-borders agitators wanted more immigrants, more Democrat voters, more people in need of Social Services, more cheap (captive because they can’t go home!) laborers in meatpacking plants and other low-wage industries.

And, then writer Mathew brings up the downside of this wholesale dispersal of a population to the four winds. He notes that with this UN push to resolve the issue, we helped let Bhutan, Nepal and India get off the hook. Consequently they didn’t have to come up with a solution that might have led to repatriation (or their resettlement in their original home country of Nepal!).

The diplomatic deadlock between Nepal and Bhutan and India’s non-involvement in resolving the problem created the opportunity for the international community to step in. The context of the proposal of the Third Country Resettlement is that. The proposal for Third Country Resettlement came as a blessing in disguise for Bhutan, Nepal and India as it will definitely ‘resolve’ the refugee problem without affecting their interests and concerns. For many refugees, mainly young people, it offered new opportunity in rebuilding their lives, though the older lot among them was not in agreement with this thinking. The socio-psychological impact of the Third Country Resettlement on the Bhutanese refugees is something to be visible in the course of time.

We have already seen some of the psychological impact with the high suicide rate of Bhutanese here in the US.

The decision to move this entire “refugee” population and not resolve it between the countries involved will have “serious implications” for the future resolution of similar problems around the world:

The proposal for Third Country Resettlement in effect, in this particular case, turned out to be a rejection of the right of repatriation of the refugees. This is going to have serious implications for the resolution of various refugee issues pertaining to different regions of the world. International community, instead of making arrangements for Third Country Resettlement, must put pressure on the concerned parties to facilitate the process of repatriation for the resolution of refugee problems. As far as refugee problems are concerned, repatriation not Third Country Resettlement is the only meaningful solution. [Agreed!—ed]

More from the Office or Refugee Resettlement’s year in review

01/01/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Did you know that we pay for day care centers offering “appropriate cultural competency!” What happened to the idea that refugee kids should assimilate into our culture?

A week ago I reported that the Director (Eskinder Negash) of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Department of Health and Human Services had sent out a 5-page e-mail report on how the ORR fared in 2012. Here is more from that letter.

Do you have day care centers in your town? You know! the small entrepreneurial ones run by a stay-at-home mom or maybe an older woman whose kids are grown. Wouldn’t putting immigrant kids in those day care programs help integrate the kids into American culture?

And, do you think those small American home-based day care centers get FEDERAL GRANTS AND MICRO-LOANS to get started? I doubt it!

According to Director Negash, refugee women do get federal (your!) money and support to set up their businesses. This is from his year-in-review e-mail:

At the inception of the Microenterprise Development – Home-Based Child Care program in FY 2011, ORR awarded 13 grantees in 13 states grants totaling $2.225 million per year for two years. The primary goal of the program was to assist women refugees to become economically self-sufficient and integrated into the mainstream. A secondary goal was to expand home-based child care business options for other refugees, to enable them enter the workforce with confidence that their children are being cared for by individuals possessing appropriate cultural competency. ORR is pleased to see the overwhelming successes achieved by this new program thus far, encouraging continued support and expansion of the grant: in FY2012, ORR increased funding to the program, raising it from $2.225 million to $5,752 million, and offering grants to a total of 34 agencies.
During the first year of the project, the original 13 grantees have collectively:

* Enrolled 879 refugee women in the program;

* Trained 745 refugees;

* Helped 172 refugees obtain business licenses;

* Assisted 160 refugees to start home-based child care programs

* Created 1,061 childcare slots for children;

* Paid $249,000 in grants to partially cover business startup costs, and assisted the home-based child care owners to obtain an additional $208,000 in subsidies;

* Helped 207 refugees find and secure jobs, and

* Taken 79 refugees off public assistance.

Wow! We trained hundreds, paid out millions of dollars and got 79 refugees off public assistance all the while assuring the kids were cared for by appropriate culturally competent caregivers.

Greeley, CO school system struggling to educate all of the refugee kids; want meatpacker to help pay for it

12/30/2012 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday, I thought I would check and see what was new in Greeley (Weld County) Colorado after all of the turmoil there in 2008 over a demand by newly arrived Somali workers at meatpacking plants to have special break times during Ramadan. At first Swift caved in to their demands and then all hell broke loose with the other ethnic workers, especially the Hispanics, who protested the special treatment for Muslim workers. The Somalis walked out and many were fired. A lot of the fired Somali workers from Greeley moved on to Cargill at Ft. Morgan (but that is a story for another day).

At the time we created an entire category on the controversy (here it is) and here is just one of many posts summarizing what happened. In a nutshell, the big meatpackers were being raided by the feds looking for illegal workers in the early to mid-2000s. So they went to “legal” refugee labor (thanks to the US State Department) and welcomed the Somalis, thereby causing themselves a different sort of problem. Cities like Greeley and neighboring Ft. Morgan initially swooned over the joys of diversity brought to their cities.

Changing the subject for a bit….

Was the Muslim Brotherhood born in Greeley? Say what!

In an incredible twist of fate, the answer is Yes! in a roundabout way. See this post I wrote about Greeley in 2008 (and btw, the State Department set up a refugee office in 2007 for Greeley and Ft. Morgan in advance of the trouble that began with Swift the following year).

Do you know the name Sayed Qutb considered one of the greatest thinkers in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood? In 1952 he studied at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and was appalled by the decadence of American society (yes, in 1952!). He was especially offended by dancing he observed at a church function and saw what we now commonly call Shariah Law—a complete government/religious system—as the solution.

After returning to Egypt he joined the fledgeling (at that time) Muslim Brotherhood and wrote some of its earlier treatises that Islamists still look to today for guidance. He became one of its preeminent leaders and was executed by Nasser along with other Muslim Brotherhood leaders in 1966. Think about it, his early work has led to al-Qaeda and to the now Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt.

But I digressed! Back to Greeley 2012.

Wouldn’t Qutb be astounded to see Muslims gaining a foothold in Greeley!

I haven’t visited the Greeley/Ft. Morgan topic for awhile, so just checking around I found this article from a few days ago about how the school system in one portion of Weld County can’t handle the costs of all the refugee students they must educate.

This is not the only place where a school system is struggling with large numbers of third worlders who don’t speak English. I recently let two previous stories pass me by (didn’t post them) on the same subject—school system problems—one was from Burlington, VT, the other was from a Texas city, can’t remember which city.

Here is the story from Northern Colorado Business Report (emphasis is mine):

The county wants Swift (a Brazilian company), the “source of its problems,” to help pay for their schools! And, why not? I’ve argued for years that these meatpackers get the cheap “legal” immigrant labor and then social services, schools (and police) in the surrounding community get the extra costs dumped on them!

GREELEY – Born in a Kenyan refugee camp, Asha Abdi spoke no English when she arrived to the U.S. more than five years ago. Today, she’s fluent, thanks to her own desire to learn and the work of her teachers at Weld County’s School District 6. [Abdi’s is the inevitable appealing face of the refugee that most mainstream articles begin with—ed!]

A senior at Greeley West High School, Abdi is a Somali and, although she is thousands of miles from her homeland, she is far from alone. The 17-year-old is one of 434 refugee students who attend schools in the district. Her two sisters and a brother are among them, part of an immigrant population that includes thousands more students who speak dozens of different languages. More than a quarter of District 6 students are learning English as a second language.

Like Asha and her siblings, many are the children of parents drawn to Weld County by jobs at one of Northern Colorado’s largest employers, JBS USA in Greeley.

Their swelling ranks have helped to create one of the more diverse student bodies in Colorado. But there’s a high cost associated with educating these children, an expense that is fast becoming an unmanageable burden for District 6, leaving it with fewer dollars for other programs.

[….]

Faced with shrinking funding from the state and federal government, District 6 is now looking for help from the very source of its problem: JBS itself.

Then get this! They want to make you think that all these refugees just showed up in Weld and Morgan counties spontaneously in 2008! In 2007, in one of the first posts I ever wrote at RRW, I told you that the State Department was opening a refugee resettlement office for Greeley and Ft. Morgan, here (unfortunately the link at the Greeley Tribune is now gone!). This infusion of refugee labor was planned in advance!

Families like Abdi’s have been coming here since the spring of 2008, when 10 students from Somali families who got jobs at JBS enrolled in the school district. Today, the District 6 student population comprises 20 nationalities, including children from Myanmar, Guatemala, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Indonesia.

So JBS Swift has to pay-up, after all they are responsible (along with the US State Department and the Refugee contractors who are the head-hunters for Swift?). But, then that is us—the US taxpayer!—we have helped make this happen through our silence!

Nancy Matchett, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Northern Colorado and director of the Institute of Professional Ethics, thinks District 6 has a good case to make. [Does Nancy know about Qutb and his ‘education’ at UNC?—ed]

“They have a kind of duty of charity to give to the school districts,” she said of JBS. “They are primarily responsible for this large influx (of refugees) that places a burden on the local school system. We don’t have a political system that is set up in such a way to absorb those costs.”

But there is a benefit to us! We get DIVERSITY! So much CULTURE! Heck, we get to learn about the massacres of villagers in the third world! That is worth something, isn’t it?

District 6 educators say they appreciate the global perspective that the refugee students bring into their classrooms.[LOL! just broke the BS meter—ed]

“They add so much culture to our community and to our district,” said Kathi VanSoest, the district’s executive director of student support services. “It’s been a great experience while also being a very impactful experience.”

[…..]

They also tell of atrocities, including the massacre of fellow villagers. “They’ve seen some things that you don’t know how they’re OK,” Hoff said.

There is much more, read it all.

So where does Abdi, the star of this story, plan to go to college? The University of Northern Colorado of course. Ain’t it grand!

Is something going on in Grand Island, Nebraska?

12/21/2012 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Grand Island is another of those American meatpacking towns (like Garden City, KS which I just wrote about this week) being transformed through the Refugee Resettlement program as it imports workers for those giant corporations, some of which, like Swift and Company, are no longer American companies. Swift is owned by a larger Brazilian company, here.

I see this morning that many readers are reading this post from 2010. It’s about the Grand Island police chief at the time saying that it was “chaotic anarchy” there among the myriad ethnic groups imported for their labor. Surprise! they weren’t melting in the magic American melting pot.

Readers I see every day in my statistics which posts readers are gravitating to, that old Grand Island post is bringing people in today making me wonder if there are new problems in Grand Island. From time to time, you might find it interesting to review the list of TOP POSTS in the right hand sidebar to see what fellow readers are interested in.

If anyone sees anything breaking on Grand Island, please send it my way. Also, type ‘Grand Island’ into our search function for lots more posts on that town. There was quite a controversy there in 2008 when the Somalis tried to get the Mayor fired from her job because she made politically-incorrect comments to the New York Times.

University of Kansas professor to study Garden City, KS adjustment to demographic change

12/18/2012 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…But even before his research of the educational system and the challenges of a diverse student population it faces begins, he is prejudiced in favor of a positive report.

Here is how the story in the Garden City Telegram wraps up:

Stull [Don Stull professor of anthropology] said that in contrast to many other demographically similar communities that he has studied, Garden City is one of only a few that views diversity as something positive.

“Not everybody is happy about it, certainly, but Garden City, as a whole, has met those challenges head on and has seen the growing cultural and linguistic diversity as something to be valued and celebrated,” he said.

Got a hint now of the tone of the final report on this town in the heartland that has been transformed over three decades of immigrants arriving there to supply the cheap labor needs of Tyson Foods!

Before I launch into the rest of this very informative piece in the Garden City Telegram, check out our archives on Garden City. We have written many posts about the problems there with the burgeoning immigrant population thanks to readers from Garden City who are the unhappy ones Stull refers to above.

One of my all time favorite stories from Garden City is when members of the Somali community demanded their own publicly funded section of the Cemetery so they didn’t need to be near the infidels even in death. No assimilation even in death. For our lengthy archive on Garden City, go here.

Another city in Kansas, Emporia, couldn’t take it when Tysons brought in hundreds of Somali workers, much controversy ensued and ultimately Tysons closed the Emporia plant and moved those workers to towns, like Garden City, that “celebrate” diversity. See our whole category on what happened in Emporia (there are other posts in that category about how meatpackers are changing towns). Other struggling meatpacking towns with immigrant controversies may be found in our category, Greeley/Swift Somali controversy.*

Here is the Garden City Telegram story from earlier this month (emphasis mine):

Because of its diversity, Garden City will be the focus of a research study conducted by the University of Kansas, beginning in January.

KU researchers recently were awarded a grant that will allow them to study the impact 30 years of continuous population changes in Garden City have had on local schools, and what that could teach educators in other communities nationwide.

“Garden City was at the forefront of that changing demographic and has been an exemplar, not only of what has happened, but what will continue to happen,” Don Stull, KU professor of anthropology, said. “Schools are one of the places in any community where everyone comes together. That’s not necessarily true of work, recreation, religion or similar institutions. We’ll be able to look at that intersection of school and community and learn a great deal.”

Stull has done research about Garden City for the past 25 years, contributing to his expertise about the impact meat and poultry industries have on communities.

Apparently Stull plans to report that Garden City is an “exemplar” that other cities should follow. His report will then be used to guilt-trip other overloaded meatpacking towns to not complain about the immigrant labor flowing in and out of their towns.

American blacks have high unemployment rates.

By the way, just this morning Roy Beck of NumbersUSA sent out an e-mail stating that the media is starting to pay attention to the high unemployment numbers for black Americans. Here is one paragraph from his e-mail:

As has happened in every great wave of immigration, the nation’s employers have eliminated channels of recruitment into poor Black communities. Employers don’t need Black American workers for construction, manufacturing, service and transportation because the government provides masses of new immigrant workers every year who, as the Post noted, have built-in job networks and a rootlessness that give them advantages for the scarce jobs of this economy. [Additionally, the immigrant workers, esp. the refugees, are taking advantage of the social safety net so that meatpacking wages can be kept low.—ed]

I digressed! Back to Garden City….

Since Iowa Beef Processors (IBP) opened in December 1980 in Holcomb (now Tyson Fresh Meats), immigrants from Latin America, southeast Asia and, more recently, Somalia, Ethiopia and Myanmar have relocated to Garden City.

The $40,000 grant awarded by the Spencer Foundation will allow professors Stull and Jennifer Ng, KU associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies, to conduct interviews with teachers, administrators, parents and students, to see how they have approached the cultural shift in terms of meeting the educational needs of Garden City’s migrant and refugee students, who collectively speak 21 languages other than English.

“The Spencer Foundation research will afford me the opportunity, along with Jennifer, to spend quite a bit of time in Garden City, focusing specifically on the schools and how administrators, teachers and other staff — how they really are dealing with that growing diversity,” Stull said.

The professors’ research will enable them to compile and share data with other communities in the nation and Canada that are experiencing similar change.

Stull: Garden City is a “micropolitan” community! Bet you wish you had one of these!

“Micropolitan communities are rural, small towns, based largely on agricultural economies, but they experience the kind of social and cultural challenges that metropolitan areas face. So one of the attractive things about Garden City, to researchers like myself, is that there are a lot of really interesting things happening, but they’re happening on a scale small enough that you can kind of get your mind around it, you can see it,” he said.

Readers might want to visit this post from 2010 where another professor in Kansas (Kansas State) wrote not so favorably about the refugees being delivered into the hands of meatpackers by the government (and the NGOs!) to Kansas towns and leaving the problems of assimilation to the towns to cope with!

* I have a theory that when the Somalis caused such problems a few years ago in meatpacking plants with their lawsuits and religious demands, that the big boys in the meat industry said to the State Department—bring us refugee laborers that are more docile! Thus the Burmese Karen and Bhutanese/Nepalis began being resettled in huge numbers. Legal and trapped labor is just the ticket for the meat giants!

Trapped? Refugees can’t go home unless they can scrounge up money for a return flight. Some have managed to do that.