Category: Refugee Resettlement Program in Maryland

Confusing the folks in Frederick, MD, asylee or refugee?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

When our refugee issue boiled up in Hagerstown, MD we learned that the largest city close to us, Frederick, MD, was also receiving refugees.    That was way back last spring.    So, I was surprised that a well-connected Frederick woman called a month or so ago to ask about the Burmese she had heard, through the grapevine, were in Frederick with more on the way.

Sure enough, now literally years after the first refugees were resettled the Frederick News Post has a couple of articles about the Burmese who started arriving there in 2002.  Here is some information from the first article.

 According to statistics from the U.S. State Department Worldwide Refugee Admission Processing System, from October 2002 to September 2007, 43 refugees from Burma moved to Frederick.

Then here is where it gets confusing.  First, our old friend Martin Ford explains that refugees go through a rigorous vetting process.

Burmese admitted to the U.S. have escaped a repressive military junta in their country and have waited in refugee camps, sometimes for months, sometimes for years, said Martin Ford, associate director of the Maryland Office for New Americans.

The office, part of the Maryland Department of Human Resources, is tasked with providing assistance in the form of money, employment services and English language training to refugees for an eight-month period after they arrive.

The refugees go through a rigorous vetting process, and are citizens before they arrive [not], he said. Refugees who need help are then sponsored by one of 10 voluntary agencies throughout the country.

Then the reporter switches gears and talks about how many of the Burmese in Frederick are actually asylees.  Asylees are a whole differant type of immigrant.  These are people who were not “vetted” in camps in Thailand, they are people who came into the country illegally and then said they were Burmese and claimed asylum from persecution in Burma.   We have really no way of knowing if what they say is true.  We don’t send investigators to Asia to find out who they are.

Asnake Yeheyis, a statistician with MONA, said that there are also Burmese in Frederick with asylum status. Asylees share the same legal definition as refugees, but obtain their status after arriving in the country.

MONA tracks only those asylees who seek benefits, which accounts for roughly less than half of the asylee population, Yeheyis said. During the same five year span, from 2002 to 2007, MONA recorded serving 22 asylees from Burma in Frederick.

According to report compiled by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics, from 2004 to 2006, the U.S. government accepted 1,612 new Burmese refugees. [In 2007, the US accepted over 15,000 with another 15,000 expected this year].   In 2006, Maryland received 524 asylees.

Also, note that the MONA representative says they only keep track of those looking for services.  I guess if your motives for being here are not necessarily pure, you might not want to sign up for government programs and English lessons.

Frankly, I was shocked that half of the so-called Burmese refugees going to Frederick were actually asylees.  And, the overall number of asylees coming to Maryland struck me as high.

This is where the line gets blurred between legal and illegal immigration.  Someone sneaks into the US from a trouble spot in the world, makes an asylum claim and bam—-welfare, food stamps, English lessons, and an employment case worker.  I guess the Mexican illegals wish they could make the persecution claim too.

Folks in Frederick need to check out a couple of posts we have done in the last few weeks.   The first is about an asylee in Philadelphia.  I think you will be shocked to see how he got into the US.  And, the other is about the tragic rape and murder of a 7-year-old Burmese Karen (Christian) refugee by a 21-year-old Burmese refugee in Utah.   I’m wondering now if he was an asylee? 

You might also want to check out the huge costs being run up by the Health Department of Ft. Wayne, IN which has the largest community of Burmese in the country.   Rumor has it too that they are experiencing friction between the Burmese Karen and the Burmese Muslims that are somehow getting into the US.

As we said in Hagerstown, the bottomline for any city is that the citizens who live there need to be given all the facts in advance of the city becoming a resettlement city.  Decide how many refugees you can afford.  Make absolutely sure that each refugee family unit has a sponsor, like a church or other group.  What good is it if the sponsor is some immigrant who has been here for a few months— that is the blind leading the blind!

My advice to Frederick, get all the facts.

 P.S.  To regular readers of RRW,  Walkersville, MD where the Ahmadiyya Muslims were seeking to build a convention center is also in Frederick County.   

Note on April 13th:  For those of you searching for more information on what happened in Hagerstown last fall, we have an entire category to your left called “September Forum,” or feel free to e-mail me through our contact address at right.

“Unwelcoming”—Hagerstown join the crowd

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last week the good folks of Hagerstown and Washington County took a whoopin’ in the mainstream media, accused of being “unwelcoming” to more refugee resettlement.  Both the Hagerstown Herald-Mail and the Baltimore Sun made it appear that we alone were saying NO to the “persecuted” of the world.   All this occured at the very same time a report was being delivered in Geneva, Switzerland at the 58th Session of the Executive Committee of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.  This from the Washington Times this morning:

Asylum seekers are finding an ever-colder reception, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees found, with nearly 99 percent of them detained or turned away each year.

——–

Erika Feller, head of the refugee agency’s protection unit, expressed mounting concern to UNHCR board members last week about “untouchables” seeking resettlement.

——–

“Increasingly, some groups of refugees are becoming simply unwanted by resettlement countries. Neither their refugee status nor their protection needs are in question, but their desirability is,” she said.

———

Governments are increasingly wary of politically sensitive ethnic groups as well as the elderly, who may become public charges, she said. Others having trouble with resettlement include large families, single men who might become a threat to public order, or refugees with low educational levels.

So, instead of the perception that we are neanderthals in the dark ages, could us Hagerstown Hicks actually be in the vanguard of a worldwide movement?  Immigration industry (volags and other government employees) beware you might want to start thinking about your paycheck.

Baltimore Sun Bombs – Part III

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Actually this shouldn’t be titled as I have it above, it should be “Baltimore Sun Pimps for Business”.   I asked these questions a few days ago when I posted about Louisville, KY and its huge immigrant population:  is refugee resettlement being driven by the need for business to import immigrant labor?  Is this about depressing wages of low income workers?   Is this about having a captive work force partially supported by the taxpayer?  Are these humanitarian groups making themselves feel good while knowingly or unknowingly abetting big business interests?  It sure looks like it.

Here is just one of several quotes from The Sun about how happy employers of low-skilled labor are about refugees:

“To be honest with you, we’ve had a hard time finding people who want to work here from the Hagerstown area,” said Cheryl Eyler of Parker Plastics, who has hired about eight refugees. “The refugees have a great work ethic. They’re here every day, they don’t call in sick and they work hard. … They’re extremely thankful for having a job.”

——–

Eyler currently has a few openings for $10- to $11-an-hour packing jobs. She would like to hire more refugees, she said, but now that is unlikely.

Of course, now I’m wondering who encouraged all these factory, warehouse, distribution employers to come to Hagerstown without first asking where the labor force was going to come from?  Do we change the way we live to oil the machinery of big business? 

Refugee Resettlement needs to be reformed and as a first step the Refugee Act of 1980 needs to be updated with an amendment requiring a social and economic impact study of a city or town PRIOR to the arrival of refugees.

Baltimore Sun Bombs – Part II

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

After writing my previous post on this topic, something occurred to me.   I had spoken at length on several occasions with Rona Marech the reporter who wrote “Unsettled by Resettlement” in today’s Baltimore Sun.  She was very interested in Refugee Resettlement Watch and the role it has played in the controversy in Hagerstown.   We also talked about the many complex aspects of refugee resettlement in general.  But, she wrote not one word about this blog or what we discussed.   Instead she followed the laughable politically correct template for issues like this one.   My only conclusion can be that the Baltimore Sun, like most newspapers in America, knows the threat bloggers are to their very existence.  Eventually people will get all of their news from TV and internet sources.   So, duh,  of course they aren’t going to give free advertising to bloggers doing more investigative work than they do. 

I plan to have Part III tomorrow.

Baltimore Sun Bombs–Part I

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I know, I know…should I have really expected a lengthy balanced article about the complex issue of refugee resettlement in Hagerstown, MD?   Yes, there is still a bit of me that believes some mainstream news outlet will do a serious open-minded investigation about refugee resettlement, but I guess I won’t hold my breath.  Thank goodness for alternative media.

For a little token balance, The Sun reporter throws in some small criticisms of how the Virginia Council of Churches handled the resettlement, but the whole tone of the piece follows the politically correct theme—those who challenge the righteousness of this sacrosanct program are bad bad people:

But ultimately, the problem was an “unwelcoming atmosphere,” said Frances Tinsley of Church World Service, the church council’s parent organization. “It’s pretty dangerous when you have people who say, ‘We don’t want you here.’ ”

———
“That’s very sad,” she said. “What does that say about America?”

What is very sad is that tactics like these are employed by those who purport to be such good Christian people against other Christian people in order to silence them. 

For new readers, Church World Service is the federal contractor that hired Virginia Council of Churches (VCC) to bring refugees quietly to Western Maryland.   To answer Tim Rowland’s question about who pulled the plug on VCC—Church World Service pulled the plug because the US State Dept. told them to.  The whole issue was eating up staff time and VCC had become an embarrassment for all those involved.  As a matter of fact, I’m guessing, but I have a hunch that VCC got the hook for reasons greater than its Hagerstown troubles.