This story is no surprise and I expect there will be many more like it in the coming days and weeks.
Refugees work at menial labor—cleaning hotel and dorm rooms, working in restaurant kitchens, etc. all no longer essential services—and they are increasingly unemployed (however $$$ is on the way from the feds).
I guess we can say it sure is a good thing that the Trump administration cut the flow of refugees to America starting last October or we would have even more unhappy, struggling people as those described here.
Refugees in Orange County struggle to make ends meet amid COVID-19 economic hardships
All those North Carolinians who have been ‘welcoming’ refugees to the state for the last decade need to get out there now and pay the rent, tutor the kids and feed/clothe the impoverished people they invited to their towns and cities.
Coronavirus has forced many families to alter their ways of life. Although COVID-19 has impacted almost every Orange County resident, a group that has been especially devastated is the local refugee community.
Refugees can already be a vulnerable population without something like the coronavirus, said Flicka Bateman, director of the Refugee Support Center, a volunteer-based organization that helps transition refugees in Orange County to their new lives.
“I know people who’ve been here less than three weeks, I can’t imagine what in the world for them it must be like,” she said. “They’re totally uprooted, they’ve left situations that were full of violence and uncertainty, and then they come here and instead of being able to learn English and get all these services, suddenly they’re told to stay where they are and people will do the best they can remotely. It’s just very tough.”
Orange County has about 1,200 refugees, primarily from Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria. [It would be many more if Trump had not cut the flow this year—ed]. Bateman said a lot of refugees in the area have lost their jobs or seen reduced hours, especially those who work in restaurants or hotels, or in food service and housekeeping at UNC, where dorms have been closed and dining services have been severely reduced.
Adam Clark, office director of World Relief Durham, a refugee resettlement agency based in Durham that serves refugees across the Triangle area, said programs that help refugees with employment have seen a spike in applications due to a greater amount of people needing sudden job assistance.
He said they’ve seen about 20-30 unemployment applications among refugees just in the last week, and a long list of people are already waiting.
“There are a lot of refugees worried about their rent, obviously the same things that are affecting everyone,” he said. “But I think it just affects them even more because of the sectors they work in.”
Hannah Olmstead, a junior at UNC who is a part-time caseworker at World Relief Durham, said as local school districts transition to online instruction, many refugee parents don’t have the English ability or understanding of American education to homeschool their children.
Although as you know by now the arrival of refugees has all but stopped due to travel restrictions put in place worldwide.
The UN halted refugee travel a few days ago and the US State Department has reported that no new refugees will arrive now before April 6th.
However, I have been on the hunt to find out if Special Immigrant Visas are still coming in and sure enough they are.
Thanks to a reader for spotting this e-mail from Lutheran Social Services National Capital Area:
Now check this out! They want a piece of a House goody bag! You’ve been reading that Nancy and her Democrat pals are working on a massive giveaway that apparently the refugee contractors expect to benefit from!
I have been checking the data at Wrapsnet (Refugee Processing Center) and sure enough 211 Afghans (who receive all the benefits regular refugees are entitled to) arrived this week bringing the total for the month of March (3 weeks) to 660 from Afghanistan.
That brings the overall total to over 66,000 since FY2008 when this effort to bring Afghan ‘interpreters’ to American towns began.
Although there is no data readily available on where the 211 were placed in the last week, one might expect they were placed in the usual top sites—obviously in Virginia and Maryland as LSS reported in its e-mail.
In this fiscal year (FY2020) that began on October 1, 2019 these are the top five states that ‘welcomed’ Afghan interpreters and their relatives.
California (2,697)
Texas (1,280)
Virginia (730)
Maryland (510)
Washington (489)
So, as your travel is being restricted, planes are still in the air bringing Afghans here for American taxpayers to support!
And, btw, Afghanistan has COVID-19. Are the arriving special refugees being tested?
What the heck! We have been admitting 400-500 a week recently and so it seems we are right on schedule if 182 arrived in the last three days.
***Update March 20***Total since Monday is now 214, presume that is it until April 6th when they expect to resume the movement of third worlders to America. We will keep an eye on it!
When I checked the Refugee Processing Centerthis morning I expected to see the number of new refugee arrivals stalled at 69, not more than doubled!
Of the 182 ‘new Americans’ arriving just this week, 124 are from the DR Congo.
Top ‘welcoming’ states are Texas, Massachusetts, Idaho, Tennessee and Georgia.
According to contractual arrangements with the State Department, workers and volunteers for resettlement ‘charities’ must meet the new arrivals at airports and get them settled in their new apartments and sign them up for myriad welfare and healthcare programs available to them.
Guess those do-gooders will be out and about while the rest of us are told to stay home!
The International Organization for Migration, a wing of the UN, announced refugee travel was being suspended. “This is a temporary measure that will be in place only for as long as it remains essential, ” said the IOM in a statement released yesterday.
I am still not seeing any official announcement from the US State Department and no commentary, so far, from the refugee contractors. See below that 69 new refugee arrivals were ‘welcomed’ to America since Monday.
IOM, UNHCR announce temporary suspension of resettlement travel for refugees
If you see the distinctive IOM blue bags at the airport, it is a sure sign of refugee arrivals. IOM arranges the plane tickets that you, taxpayers, pay for!
Geneva – As countries drastically reduce entry into their territories owing to the COVID-19 global health crisis, and restrictions around international air travel are introduced, travel arrangements for resettling refugees are currently subject to severe disruptions. Some States have also placed a hold on resettlement arrivals given their public health situation, which impacts on their capacity to receive newly resettled refugees.
Refugee families are being directly impacted by these quickly evolving regulations in the course of their travel, with some experiencing extensive delays while others have been stranded or separated from family members.
In addition, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and IOM, the International Organization for Migration, are concerned that international travel could increase the exposure of refugees to the virus.
As a result, IOM and UNHCR are taking steps to suspend resettlement departures for refugees. This is a temporary measure that will be in place only for as long as it remains essential.
[….]
Both agencies look forward to resuming full resettlement travel as soon as prudence and logistics permit.
I decided to check to see if we were still seeing refugee arrivals since I reported, here, that as of a week ago, there was not a slowdown.
Here are the numbers this morning at the Refugee Processing Center from Monday (the 13th) to this morning.
We had 69 arrivals, 62 of those from the DR Congo.
In 2013, Anne Richard, Obama’s head honcho for refugees, told then UNHCR that we would ‘welcome’ 50,000 impoverished Congolese to America.
Just to review, in 2013 the Obama Administration told the UNthat we we would take 50,000 needy people from the DR Congo over five years.
In 2020, we are at 60,880 and they are still coming in in large numbers.
In fact, since Trump took office we have admitted 32,000 from the DR Congo and distributed them throughout America.
Here is a map from the Refugee Processing Centershowing where 69 refugees were placed since Monday. 62 hailed from the DR Congo (including the 13 who went to Idaho and 21 of 22 who were placed in Texas).
In addition to the 62 from the DR Congo, 3 refugees arrived from Iraq, 2 from Eritrea and one each from India and Somalia.
These numbers do not include the Special Immigrant Visa holders arriving from Afghanistan and Iraq and treated like refugees. There is no daily breakdown that I know of for their arrival. Make note that since October 1, 2019 to yesterday we admitted 6,867 special refugees from Afghanistan and 152 from Iraq. Will check in a few days and see how the number changes.
I’ve been mentioning in recent posts*** that I have seen no news about curtailing refugee arrivals as travel bans grow world wide, so I just checked the arrival data at theRefugee Processing Centerand sure enough there is no slowing of refugee arrivals.
***Update***UN suspends refugee travel for at least a few weeks so as not to expose refugees to coronavirus.
Here (below) is a map of where 1,768 refugees who arrived in the US were placed between February 15th and yesterday.
Thinking maybe a slowdown was evident if I checked the numbers for the last week, I found that we ‘welcomed’ 488 refugees to your towns and cities in the last seven days. No slowdown. All traveled through airports in Asia, Africa and Europe.
Of the 1,768 ‘new Americans’ who arrived in the last month, the largest numbers came from the DR Congo (728) followed by Ukraine (278), Burma(136), Iraq (130) and Pakistan (50).
Top welcoming states were: California, Washington, Texas, New York, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Georgia.
If you want to research the data at the Refugee Processing Centeryourself, I gave instructions on how to do that in Knowledge is Power IV.
***See my tag for COVID-19 to find other posts on the subject here at RRW.
Editor’s note: As RRW approaches its 13th birthday, there are over 10,000 posts archived here at Refugee Resettlement Watch. Unfortunately, it is just me here with no staff and so it has become virtually impossible to answer all of the basic questions that come into my e-mail inbox or to RRW’s facebook page every day. I don’t want to appear rude—I simply haven’t enough hours in the day.
Please take time to visit RRW(don’t just read posts in your e-mail) and use the search window in the right hand sidebar and see if you can find the information you need. Also see my series that I wrote in recent months entitledKnowledge is Powerwhich explains some basic principles of how Refugee Resettlement is carried out in the US.
And, lastly, I don’t write that much every day, so if you made a habit of reading my posts here on a daily basis, you would eventually catch on to what is happening because I do link back to previous posts as much as possible. LOL! Thank you for helping me not go crazy!
