Utah refugees suffering, state to free up federal housing money

01/30/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

Yesterday in a post about thousands of Iraqis supposedly headed to Florida, I mentioned that Utah was one of 15 states where Iraqis had complained they could not find work.

So, as if on cue, this morning there is news from Salt Lake City that Utah is attempting a last ditch plan to rescue suffering refugees from the high cost of housing (and lack of jobs). The article in the International Herald Tribune begins:

After escaping violence in Myanmar and spending 27 years in the bamboo huts of a United Nations camp in Thailand, Nyaw Paw, 33, arrived in the United States to face the traumatic adjustment and cultural vertigo known to every refugee.

But between high rents, lagging federal aid and now a recession that is drying up entry-level work, the transition has become harder than ever, refugee workers say. Overwhelming housing costs are its starkest symptom: Many new arrivals spend 90 percent or more of their income on rent and utilities, leaving them virtually no disposable income and creating enormous hardships, officials say.

According to this article, Utah will be the first state to make federal welfare grants, that would normally go to American poor, available to refugees.

Poor refugees – like low-income Americans – can apply for rent subsidies, which require that recipients spend 30 percent of their income on rent, with the U.S. government picking up the rest. But in Salt Lake City, there is a two-year waiting list, and it is longer than that in many other cities.

Starting next month, in the first program of its kind, Utah plans to soften the huge and growing burden of housing costs by providing rent subsidies to recently arrived families for up to two years. The money is being drawn from unspent federal welfare reserves. Under the welfare reforms of 1996, states can use the U.S. government grant flexibly for families that already qualify for welfare – mainly single-parent families like Paw’s. For them, such help will make a world of difference.

There are not enough jobs for skilled and educated Iraqis or for the largest number of refugees, those with no skills, little education and no command of English.

Apart from a share of Iraqis who arrive with professional degrees, most refugees these days arrive from Africa and Asia with little education or experience of Western life, and no relatives to help.

U.S. aid has not matched the rising cost of housing, state welfare programs are skimpier than before and cheap housing is ever scarcer. Meanwhile, the jobs that refugees have often ridden to success, like work in warehouses and hotels, are drying up.

There appears to be no one in the refugee industry even taking note of all this, and no one (except us critics!) suggesting we slow down on the number of unemployable people we are bringing into the US.

The housing plan has drawn no significant opposition in Utah, which is generally seen as friendly to refugees. But the size of the U.S. refugee program, which admitted about 60,000 people last year and is widely regarded as advancing humanitarian and foreign policy goals, has been questioned by some. Critics say America allows in too many people who are surely going to require public aid yet have alternative places to live. Paw, for example, could have remained in Thailand by this argument.

“We are much too permissive about letting refugees in,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors reducing immigration. Refugee admissions, he said, should be held “to the very small number of people who don’t have and won’t have any place else to go.”

Mr. Krikorian’s final statement makes sense, but not to people in the refugee industry who think that ALL REFUGEES HAVE NO PLACE ELSE TO GO!

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you”

01/23/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Via Jay Nordlinger at National Review comes this song from 1915, addressed to immigrants. Can you imagine this song being sung in public today? As Jay comments, “Would today that qualify as ‘hate speech’?” Here are the words:

Last night, as I lay sleeping,
A wonderful dream came to me.
I saw Uncle Sammy weeping
For his children from over the sea.
They had come to him, friendless and starving,
When from tyrant’s oppression they fled,
But now they abuse and revile him,
Till at last in just anger he said:

If you don’t like your Uncle Sammy,
Then go back to your home o’er the sea,
To the land from where you came,
Whatever be its name,
But don’t be ungrateful to me!
If you don’t like the stars in Old Glory,
If you don’t like the Red, White and Blue,

Then don’t act like the cur in the story,
Don’t bite the hand that’s feeding you!

You recall the day you landed,
How I welcomed you to my shore?
When you came here empty-handed,
And allegiance forever you swore?
I gathered you close to my bosom,
Of food and of clothes you got both,
So, when in trouble, I need you,
You will have to remember your oath.

Here is the recording.

In 1915 there was no legal difference between immigrants and refugees. Many of the groups we think of as immigrants were fleeing persecution. My paternal grandparents were part of the large migration of Russian Jews who were fleeing pogroms and looking for a better life. I know they were grateful for being in America. There must have been immigrants who weren’t grateful, or the song wouldn’t have been written. A considerable number of immigrants went back to their countries of origin; I know many Italians did. But they were not escaping persecution, just poverty.

But today gratitude is not in fashion, and nobody seems to be encouraging refugees to feel (or at least act) grateful for their immense good luck at being here. That’s not to say that none are grateful — we know that many are, and many express their gratitude. In fact, I expect that some of our most patriotic Americans will come from refugees and immigrants who know from their own lives how fortunate we all are to live in such a country.

But for those who don’t appreciate America, maybe we need to revive the song.

Refugees are still refugees nearly two decades after the breakup of Yugoslavia

01/13/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a story from Reuters (but written by the UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) about a family driven from their home in what is now Bosnia and still living as refugees in Serbia. It made me think of the Gaza situation.

There are no family photos, no paintings, no book collection, no heirlooms – no possessions recalling their former lives in their hometown of Tuzla in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“We didn’t take anything with us because we didn’t have time. We had to run for our lives. The only thing that comes to mind in such a situation is to save your children and your own life,” says Miljo. “You don’t think about the photographs, you don’t think about personal documents, clothes, whatever.”

Miljo, his wife Milica, son Milutin and daughter Stanislava are refugees, forced to flee Tuzla in 1992. All they have as proof of their past and their identity is a refugee card. Their belongings were left behind as Miljo and his wife, clutching their then infant children, rushed to escape.

More than half-a-million civilians fled to Serbia from Bosnia and Herzegovina and from Croatia in the 1990s conflicts. Considerable success has been achieved on local integration, with over 200,000 former refugees now holding Serbian citizenship. But some 96,000 refugees remain – the remnants of Europe’s largest protracted refugee situation. Many live in desperate conditions and face a bleak future.

The article never tells us why they fled, but I am guessing they are not Muslims. Bosnia today is a majority Muslim country and if they were Muslims I don’t know why they would fear going home, but they do.

Miljo and Milica thought about going back to Tuzla, but their old home had been trashed and looted and they did not feel safe. They considered selling the property, but they would never make enough from the sale to build a new place. What’s more, their children had grown used to Serbia. So repatriation is not an option; nor is resettlement.

That leaves local integration. But taking Serbian nationality will not guarantee them employment or a new house, while the cash-strapped government cannot afford to give too much under its social welfare programmes. So they are holding onto their refugee cards, which entitle them to basic medical care and occasional humanitarian assistance from UNHCR and its partners.

This made me think of Gaza and the perpetual refugee status of the Arabs (Palestinians) for generations who never have to fear they will not be taken care of by the international community through another UN agency, UNRWA.

But Miljo and Milica are aware that one day their refugee status will be revoked because they are no longer deemed to be in danger and the root causes of the Balkan refugee problem have almost ceased to exist. That won’t end the problem of finding employment and paying for food, rent and medical bills at a time when they will be near retirement age.

According to this report, the UNHCR, is trying to figure out how to find a solution for the “protracted refugee situations” not only in Europe but throughout the world.

The UN refugee agency has recently put renewed stress on finding solutions to protracted refugee situations, which account for some 6 million people worldwide who have been in exile for at least five years – many of them for decades. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said last month that political will was a main precondition for finding durable solutions.

How about if the UNHCR gets off the dime and tells the UNRWA to do the same!

Endnote: We brought over 100,000 Bosnian Muslims (the next largest group of Muslims was the Somalis at 80,000) to the US in the wake of Bill Clinton’s Bosnian War. That is what makes me think Miljo and Milica are not Muslims, if they had been they would be here now.

Why so many refugees? International elites, the UN and NGOs are to blame.

01/11/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The number of refugees always seems to be increasing. Why? A friend sent me an article that goes a long way toward explaining why. It’s by Edward Luttwak, a military strategist and historian. It was written back in 1999 but its thesis is just as relevant today. The title: Give War a Chance. It especially applies to the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Here’s the beginning:

An unpleasant truth often overlooked is that although war is a great evil,
it does have a great virtue: it can resolve political conflicts and lead
to peace. This can happen when all belligerents become exhausted or when
one wins decisively. Either way the key is that the fighting must continue
until a resolution is reached.

If fighting is halted before one side achieves victory, there is no motivation for anyone to give up. The only reason anyone surrenders in a war is that there is no hope for military success. But —

Since the establishment of the United Nations . . . wars among lesser powers have rarely been allowed to run their natural course. Instead, they have typically been interrupted early on, before they could burn themselves out and establish the preconditions for a lasting settlement. Cease-fires and armistices have been imposed under the aegis of the Security Council in order to halt fighting.

Such cease-fires give the combatants time to recover their energy and re-arm.

It intensifies and prolongs the struggle
once the cease-fire ends-and it does usually end. This was true of the
Arab-Israeli war of 1948-49, which might have come to closure in a matter
of weeks if two cease-fires ordained by the Security Council had not let
the combatants recuperate.

Remember, this was written ten years ago. This directly applies to the Gaza war today:

Today cease fires and armistices are imposed on lesser powers by multilateral
agreement … for essentially disinterested and indeed frivolous
motives, such as television audiences’ revulsion at harrowing scenes
of war. But this, perversely, can systematically prevent
the transformation of war into peace.

The self-styled international community does tremendous harm to the prospect of peace.

A variety of multilateral organizations now make it their business to intervene
in other peoples’ wars. The defining characteristic of these entities is
that they insert themselves in war situations while refusing to engage
in combat. In the long run this only adds to the damage.

UN forces’ first priority is to protect themselves. Likewise UN peacekeepers. And they make things worse, because local populations think they are protected and do not realistically assess the dangers. This is what happened in Rwanda.

But the most destructive of all are humanitarian relief effort, Luttwak says. His example is UNRWA and the Palestinians, so listen up. He compares UNRWA to UNRRA, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency, which ran the displaced persons camps in Europe right after World War II.

The UNRRA camps were bare-bones operations that kept displaced persons alive, but provided no luxury. Thus there was great incentive to resettle everybody, and indeed everybody was resettled.

But UNRWA camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and the
Gaza Strip provided on the whole a higher standard of living than most
Arab villagers had previously enjoyed, with a more varied diet, organized
schooling, superior medical care, and no backbreaking labor in stony fields.
They had, therefore, the opposite effect, becoming desirable homes rather
than eagerly abandoned transit camps. With the encouragement of several
Arab countries, the UNRWA turned escaping civilians into lifelong refugees
who gave birth to refugee children, who have in turn had refugee children
of their own.

And this makes the point even more keenly:

If each European war had been attended by its own postwar UNRWA, today’s
Europe would be filled with giant camps for millions of descendants of
uprooted Gallo-Romans, abandoned Vandals, defeated Burgundians, and misplaced
Visigoths-not to speak of more recent refugee nations such as post-ig45
Sudeten Germans (three million of whom were expelled from Czechoslovakia
in 1945). Such a Europe would have remained a mosaic of warring tribes,
undigested and unreconciled in their separate feeding camps. It might have
assuaged consciences to help each one at each remove, but it would have
led to permanent instability and violence.

Luttwak touches on a point that Ann has made many times about NGOs, or volags:

…the proliferating, feverishly competitive nongovernmental
organizations (NGOS) that now aid war refugees. Like any other institution,
these NGOs are interested in perpetuating themselves, which means that
their first priority is to attract charitable contributions by being seen
to be active in high-visibility situations. Only the most dramatic natural
disasters attract any significant mass-media attention, and then only briefly;
soon after an earthquake or flood, the cameras depart. War refugees, by
contrast, can win sustained press coverage if kept concentrated in reasonably
accessible camps. Regular warfare among well-developed countries is rare
and offers few opportunities for such NGOS, so they focus their efforts
on aiding refugees in the poorest parts of the world. This ensures that
the food, shelter, and health care offered-although abysmal by Western
standards-exceeds what is locally available to non-refugees. The consequences
are entirely predictable. Among many examples, the huge refugee camps along
the Democratic Republic of Congo’s border with Rwanda stand out. They sustain
a Hutu nation that would otherwise have been dispersed, making the consolidation
of Rwanda impossible and providing a base for radicals to launch more Tutsi-killing
raids across the border. Humanitarian intervention has worsened the chances
of a stable, long-term resolution of the tensions in Rwanda.

Nothing has changed, has it? And here’s something that again can be applied directly to the Gaza situation:

To keep refugee nations intact and preserve their resentments forever is
bad enough, but inserting material aid into ongoing conflicts is even worse.
Many NGOS that operate in an odor of sanctity routinely supply active combatants.
Defenseless, they cannot exclude armed warriors from their feeding stations,
clinics, and shelters. Since refugees are presumptively on the losing side,
the warriors among them are usually in retreat. By intervening to help,
NGOS systematically impede the progress of their enemies toward a decisive
victory that could end the war. Sometimes NGOS, impartial to a fault, even
help both sides, thus preventing mutual exhaustion and a resulting settlement.
And in some extreme cases, such as Somalia, NGOs even pay protection money
to local war bands, which use those funds to buy arms. Those NGos are therefore
helping prolong the warfare whose consequences they ostensibly seek to
mitigate.

And here is his conclusion, with which I heartily agree:

Policy elites should actively resist the emotional
impulse to intervene in other peoples’ wars-not because they are indifferent
to human suffering but precisely because they care about it and want to
facilitate the advent of peace. The United States should dissuade multilateral
interventions instead of leading them. New rules should be established
for U.N. refugee relief activities to ensure that immediate succor is swiftly
followed by repatriation, local absorption, or emigration, ruling out the
establishment of permanent refugee camps. And although it may not be possible
to constrain interventionist NGOS, they should at least be neither officially
encouraged nor funded.

Why large numbers of “Bhutanese” are coming to the US

01/11/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have written 31 posts in which we have mentioned “Bhutanese” refugees who are coming to the US in large numbers now (we have agreed to resettle 60,000 over the next few years), and it wasn’t until this week that the whole issue became clearer to me.

Who are the “Bhutanese” refugees? How did they become refugees? Why are we and other western countries resettling so many? and Why is there agitation in the camps (to the point of violence) by some to halt the resettlement?

From World Politics Review, I am beginning to see the light! The Bhutanese are really ethnic Nepalis who had been entering Bhutan since the 1800’s and a rise in ethnic nationalism caused them to be expelled.

By the 1980s, when the ethnic Nepalese bloc mushroomed to represent one third of the kingdom’s population, Bhutan responded with a “one nation, one people” policy that at once bolstered the majority Drukpa culture by mandating its traditional dress and language for all, and restricted the rights of the ethnic Nepalese population. After a series of civil rights protests by the ethnic Nepalese, many of whom were Bhutanese citizens, the state clamped down — hard.

“We left because we were scared that they would imprison us, that they would beat us, that I would be raped,” Matimya told World Politics Review. In the weeks leading up to her family’s departure from Bhutan in 1991, she says, the army had begun to take women away from their houses.

This was just one tactic in what human rights groups say was a widespread campaign of ethnic cleansing of a minority population that claims to have arrived in Bhutan as early as the mid-1800s. Other tactics, say the refugees, included torture, beatings and the destruction of property.

That is one side of the story. The new Bhutanese democracy government has another side. They say the Nepalis had been illegal aliens in Bhutan, and had come to Bhutan because Nepal was a mess. Although they don’t say it here, it appears that the rise in population of the ethnic Nepalis could ultimately swamp the democracy. This made me think about illegal Mexicans in the US.

But in today’s Bhutan, which in March made the transition from a century of absolute monarchy to become the world’s newest democracy, another narrative prevails.

“Deep inside, they know they never belonged to this country,” says Bhutanese Prime Minister Dorjee Y Thinley in his office in Bhutan’s capital Thimphu. What is labeled elsewhere as an ethnic cleansing of Bhutanese citizens is seen in Bhutan as the “regularization” of an illegal immigration problem that had been left unbridled for decades. “They are refugees not of Bhutan, but of the ecological degradation, political upheavals, economic deprivation and insecurity in Nepal,” Thinley says, referring to Nepal’s 10-year civil war that ended in 2006.

But, Nepal doesn’t want them back either which is why they have lived in camps for going on 20 years.

From a publication at Arizona State University:

Joanne Morales, director of refugee programs for Catholic Charities Community Services, said the Nepali government established new eligibility requirements for Bhutanese citizenship in the 1980s that disenfranchised many ethnic Nepalis, stripping them of their civil rights. Since then, all ethnic Nepalis from southern Bhutan have been living in seven different camps in eastern Nepal since they were expelled from their homes more than 16 years ago. Of the more than 100,000 refugees in Nepali camps, the United States will consider resettlement for at least 60,000 of them.

“These refugees have literally been physically forced out of Bhutan and have nowhere to go,” says Morales…

So, they should be referred to as Nepalis. But, the plot thickens. The reason that there is violence and agitation in the camps is that Maoists (Communist ‘community organizers(!)) among these refugees want the Bhutanese /Nepalis to be able to return to Bhutan and I would guess ultimately overthrow the democratic government there. I wrote about that earlier here.

And so, like it or not, we are scooping up tens of thousands and resettling them in a town near you.