Meeting in NYC to plan strategy to lobby US State Department. DENNIS CLEMENTE/INQUIRER.net US Bureau
It just takes one big storm, like Typhoon Haiyan, to get the engines going in the open borders lobby to seek Temporary Protected Status for anyone from that country who happened to have a foot in the US door already—a legal or an illegal foot.
The problem with TPS is that the “temporary” refugees never go home! How do you think we happen to have a couple hundred thousand Salvadorans here! And, they are all waiting for Comprehensive Immigration Reform to become law!
After a two hour panel session on the topic in NYC, the ‘advocates’ for TPS designation for Filipinos set their sites on a letter writing campaign to Secretary of State John Kerry and Asst. Sec. of State for Population, Refugees and Migration Anne Richard. They don’t seem to know that it is the Dept. of Homeland Security that makes the final call.
NEW YORK—Getting Temporary Protected Status (TPS) granted for the Philippines now depends on a letter-writing campaign addressed to the US Secretary of State John Kerry or his assistant, Anne Richard, supporters concluded during a two-hour long panel discussion on Jan. 28 at the Philippine Consulate.
The Filipino American Legal Defense & Education Fund, Inc. (Faldef) is encouraging people to ask as many prominent individuals and organizations to sign letters that will be sent to the Secretary of State’s office.
Consul General Mariano de Leon and City Council member Dr. Eugene Matthieu called on Filipinos to work together and spread the word through Filipino-friendly messages about the need for TPS.
Why does the Philippine government care so much? Because they will reap the windfall as Filipinos working legally in America will send “home” millions in remittances.
For more information, our archive on TPS is here. And, check out the TPS website for the countries that have TPS now: El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, and Syria.
We have written a lot lately about Bhutanese refugees in America with a very high rate of suicide. Here is one story I’ve had kicking around from New Hampshire that I never got around to posting.
But, this was a big surprise to me. It seems that refugees left behind in camps in Nepal are also depressed and are developing serious mental illnesses. This is just a reminder to the do-gooders who think bringing refugees to the West and dropping them off in troubled city neighborhoods to work as cheap laborers is always an act of kindness, consider this news:
Though third-country resettlement of Bhutanese refugees has provided relief to many, the initiative has been the cause of pain for some.
Durga Devi Odari, who was once a lively, happy person, has been on medication for the past three years. Odari went into a state of depression when her parents were flown to the USA and her brother to New Zealand. Her dreams of settling abroad, for which she even divorced her husband, were shattered.
She can’t find her parents!
“I am not sure about finding my parents and I do not know if I will ever be able to find my loved ones,” said Durga.
Durga’s case is not an isolated one: many refugees awaiting resettlement are battling with depression. As the number of people in the camps decreases, depression is becoming a serious issue for those remaining.
Though the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Transcultural Psychosocial Organisation (TPO) has not officially confirmed the numbers of those with depression, mental disorders, and drug dependency inside the camps, the increase in activity of the TPO, which specialises in providing counselling services, has fuelled speculation that the number of those facing depression is increasing.
Refugees claim UN has separated families!
While the UNHCR has made assurances that they would not separate families without parental consent, some refugees claim that the UNHCR’s actions demonstrate otherwise.
The UNHCR has been working with TPO since 2008, two years after the initiation of the resettlement process.
According to Sanchahang Subba, Secretary of the Beldangi Camp, he receives hundreds of letters per day by those seeking the whereabouts of their loved ones.
How did we come to bring 70,000 Bhutanese to America?
In 2007: Ms Sauerbrey blamed the refugee leaders in the camps in Nepal for the “intimidation”.
We’ve been writing about this subject since 2007 when then Asst. Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey (a Bush appointee) announced the decision to help the UN clean out its camps for Bhutanese/Nepalese in Nepal. Here is one re-cap. Keep in mind the UN and our State Department were never in a hurry to clean out the Palestinian “refugee” camps.
Just now I was looking around further on the history of all of this and was reminded that camp leaders were furious when the third country resettlement began and I suspect the woman in our story above, who divorced her husband to try and be resettled with her parents, was probably married to a camp political leader. The leaders wanted to keep the pressure on Bhutan to take them back until we stepped in and brought tens of thousands of them to the US to work in meatpacking and other menial labor jobs.
Other than our need for cheap labor (and the contractors’ needs for refugee numbers because they are paid by the head!), what was our national interest in getting involved in a dispute involving Nepal and Bhutan?
The photo is from this BBC story where Sauerbrey said sending the Bhutanese to western countries (the US took the lion’s share) was all done for “humanitarian” reasons.
Thang Lian is a resettled Burmese refugee student who attends Jefferson County Public Schools’ Newcomer Academy. In March, he turns 21, which means the district can no longer financially support his education.
So he’ll have to choose another path.
“My parents and my counselor were talking about next year I move to GED,” he says.
For some the GED high school equivalency diploma is an option; others may enroll in Jefferson County’s online alternative program. [Take it from me, there is nothing wrong with going the GED route! And, some one of the refugee contractor organizations could provide charitable tutoring along the way!—ed]
On Tuesday, Kentucky’s House Education Committee approved bill that would give refugee students like Lian an additional two years to graduate, extending state spending for these students to age 23.
Concerns center on additional costs and the fairness issue. Although not raised here, do we want 23-year-olds in school with 14-year-olds?
But the Kentucky Department of Education is concerned about parts of the bill. For example, there could be additional costs to the state and local districts and equity issues could arise, like not providing the same opportunity for special education students, education department officials say.
Refugee overload in Jefferson County?
As WFPL previously reported, officials estimate more than 500 school-age children have been resettled in Jefferson County alone over the past year. That number is expected to rise, officials say.
[…..]
Further, data from the Kentucky Office of Refugees (aka Catholic Charities) shows over 100 refugees between the ages 14 and 17 have been resettled each year throughout the state over the past several years.
So who is bringing all the refugees to Louisville? Why it’s none-other than Catholic Charities of Louisvillewhich is coincidentally also the Kentucky Office for Refugees. Gee, sounds like Tennessee where Catholic Charities calls the shots on the demographic change for the state. Progressive Catholics are busy changing the South!
Check out a recent Form990 for Catholic Charities of Louisville. On page 9 note that their income was $13,179,017 and you (taxpayers) gave them $11,349,920 of that through government grants.
Thank Catholic Charities too for bringing all the Muslims to Louisvillewhere 8 mosques now serve the growing Muslim community….
… including thousands of refugees from such lands as Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.
A trip down memory lane: In 2007, then Bush Asst. Secretary for refugees, Ellen Sauerbrey, told an audience in Louisville that we bring refugees to America to keep them from becoming terrorists! Funny in light of the fact that Kentucky should have been the home for those two Iraqi refugee terrorists subsequently caught there.
Seeyesterday’s postabout how many refugee teens are not finishing high school. Maybe Catholic Charities could offer tutoring services through private charitable giving (of time or money) by local Catholics, or better still, give all those refugee kids free tuition to private Catholic schools until age 23!
Last week we reportedon the mental health issues plaguing America’s 70,000-strong Bhutanese refugee population and now according to reporter Erika Beras, here at New America Media, it seems they are also being plagued by diabetes they got after arriving in America. Type II diabetes is associated with too much weight gain. Sure is a good thing Obamacare has come along to take care of them!
And get this! Pittsburgh now has 4,000-5,000 Bhutanese (mostly Hindu) refugees. That population growth is only since 2008!
Bhutanese family in Pittsburgh sees first snow! Reporters love these refugee snow stories! http://www.alleghenyfront.org/story/new-natural-world-bhutanese-refugees-brave-pa-weather
On a typical weekday morning, 47-year-old Tek Nepal is moving about the Mount Oliver duplex he shares with his wife, sons, daughter-in-law and grandchild.
He works nights, so he gets his family time in the mornings. And often, that time centers around eating. Those meals used to consist of lots of starches. But since a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis last year, they have changed.
“I don’t eat rice at all. I don’t eat potatoes. I try to eat a lot of green vegetables like lettuce, spinach … carrots, and I don’t eat totally fried things,” he said, showing off a chart of appropriate foods on his kitchen wall.
Nepal is ethnically Nepalese. He was resettled in California as a refugee, moved to Tennessee, then Pittsburgh, which has a lower cost of living and boasts a growing Bhutanese-Nepalese population. Before coming to the U.S., he spent 17 years in refugee camps in Bhutan.
About 4,000 to 5,000 ethnically Bhutanese-Nepalese refugees call Pittsburgh home. Having migrated in the last six years, it’s a new population that is falling into an old immigrant paradox.
Nearly 26 million Americans have diabetes, and another 79 million are pre-diabetic, up sharply over the last few decades. Included among those statistics are newer Americans, people such as Nepal who came here as refugees. According to a study published in the journal Human Biology, an immigrant’s risk of obesity and hypertension — indicators of diabetes — grow with every year they are here.
At the Squirrel Hill Health Center, a federally qualified facility that provides the bulk of initial and follow-up care to refugees, Chief Medical Officer Andrea Fox is perpetually busy. She spots trends in her patient population. Rarely do the Bhutanese come to the U.S. with a diabetes diagnosis, but they’ve found a high prevalence of the disease in those they treat.
[…..]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention monitors refugee populations. Among their priority health conditions for the Bhutanese are anemia, B12 vitamin deficiency and mental health. They haven’t been tracking diabetes numbers.
See our ‘health issues’ category for 191 previous posts on refugee health problems. We have them all—HIV/AIDS, TB, intestinal parasites, mental health issues, and now diabetes.
…..resettlement agencies responsible for solving the problem!
That’s what the Wall Street Journal blog reported earlier this week (thanks to two readers for sending it).
UN and the US in its infinite wisdom scattered the ‘Bhutanese’ refugees to the four winds.
Before I give you the highlights from the WSJ, this is how we came to have tens of thousands of Bhutanese refugees in America. After nearly 20 years of a stalemate between the tiny countries of Nepal and Bhutan, the United Nations basically got sick of running the camps in Nepal (unlike the Palestinian camps they have been running for 60+ years).
The Bhutanese refugees are ethnic Nepalis (mostly Hindus) who had lived in Bhutan for decades, but were expelled by the government trying to keep Bhutan for its religious (mostly Buddhists) and ethnic majority. Nepal didn’t want them back either.
So, the US State Department (under Bush Asst. Secretary Ellen Sauerbrey) announced in 2007 that we would resettle the lions’ share of the refugees—60,000. How we had any national interest in this situation is still beyond me, and I don’t know how we couldn’t have persuaded (with some international aid) those two small countries to work it out is troubling.
Honestly, I am so cynical now I believe we brought them here for cheap docile captive LEGAL laborers! And, the resettlement contractors needed more bodies to resettle since they are paid by the head to bring ’em to your towns and cities.
And, maybe, just maybe, every ethnic group in the world is not going to melt in the mythical American melting pot! How would you like to have been protected and cared for in a camp for your whole life and then dropped into the heart of some American city—often in slum neighborhoods—and expected to make it!
Before Menuka Poudel left the refugee camp in Nepal where she and her family sheltered for almost two decades after being displaced from Bhutan, the 18-year-old spoke to me about her hopes of pursing her college education and living the American dream.
Just over a year later, on Nov. 30, 2010, she was found by her mother hanging in an apartment in Phoenix Arizona, where her family had moved a month before. They had hoped to begin a new life under a resettlement program for Bhutanese refugees who had fled cultural and religious persecution.
Ms. Poudel, who was still breathing when her mother found her, was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix where she was pronounced dead the following day, according to her family.
The young woman was one of over 30 Bhutanese refugees who have taken their lives in the U.S. since the summer of 2008 when the resettlement program began.
The problem of suicide in the community seems to be worsening: Since the start of Nov. 2013, seven Bhutanese refugees have killed themselves after resettling in the U.S.
[….]
As of Oct. 2013, there were around 71,000 Bhutanese refugees living in the U.S., according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. [Originally we were only taking 60,000!—ed]
Mismatch between their idea of the American dream and the work they do in America (yeh, like working the line in a slaughter plant, if they even find a job!).
“Different psychological stressors occur at each stage of the resettlement process,” the study said. Once refugees are relocated, factors such as inability to find work, increased family conflict and symptoms of anxiety, depression and psychological distress are associated with suicidal thoughts, it added.
After resettlement, many young Bhutanese adults seem to find a mismatch between their idea of the American dream and the availability of work and quality of pay in the U.S. [What! We are told all the time that refugees are finding plenty of employment!—ed]
Those working with the Bhutanese community in America say there is a lack of support and provision to deal with the problem.
Organizations that resettled them are responsible for solving the suicide problem! Hah! Don’t hold your breath unless they get some (more!) taxpayer grants to do it.
Mr. Subedi [community volunteer in Philadelphia] says that to tackle the problem properly and highlight the issue among Bhutanese refugees, a U.S.-wide campaign by the organizations responsible for the resettlement program is required because the community in general is a self-contained and introverted culture.
We have written many posts on the Bhutanese resettlement. Click here for all of them. Here are our posts on Bhutanese suicide. We are also putting this into our Health issues category as it relates to what we have been saying lately about refugee mental health problems.
