I’m sure this is happening everywhere, so it is all the more reason to continue the suspension of new refugee arrivals that was supposed to have been liftedthis week by the US State Department.
No jobs for newly arrived refugees and no one to give them instructions in person as to where to get signed up for their taxpayer-funded ‘services.’
Nonprofits Retool to Serve Refugees Struggling During COVID-19 Shutdown
Refugees who arrived in the Bay Area around the time shelter-in-place orders were issued, as well as those who have been her for an extended period, are struggling to stay afloat, organizations who serve them said.
The most recent arrivals are simply trying to establish themselves, whereas others are unaware of services available to them, are being led astray by misinformation on social media or are faced with a rekindling of the trauma they thought they had left behind.
Given the shutdown of many businesses, new arrivals are less likely to find jobs.***
Without employment, refugees have less access to health insurance and more need for income assistance. Lacking income to buy cars, newly arrived refugees must rely on drastically curtailed bus and rail service to do essential tasks like shop for groceries or get to the hospital. New arrivals without existing community connections can then end up extremely isolated.
[….]
….the system of refugee resettlement in the United States is based on rapidly finding employment. “You are looking at a substantial pool of individuals who may not be able to pay for rent and their needs even if they were working,” said Blythe Raphael, who heads the refugee services program at Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay.“Those families we’re watching carefully and trying to find assistance.” [This organization is asubcontractor of HIAS.—ed]
Multiple organizations that serve refugees have shifted gears, reorganized and launched new services to ensure they can meet this population’s needs during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The stay-at-home order was issued just after several families arrived in the area from Aghanistan, forcing Raphael’s East Bay organization to retool for remote work at the same time it was delivering assistance. “As all services were closing to in-person interviews, we had to really review our model in order for us to make the service connections for all of our new arrivals and for our case managers to be able to serve people with essential course services,” Raphael said.
In other words, it is hard to get new refugees signed up for their various welfare programs and other services when so much is closed.
These groups have had to quickly adjust to the shelter-in-place order, and are themselves vulnerable to the economic fallout, so they need as much public support as they can get, said advocates. “Small organizations are going to suffer a lot from this economic crash that’s going to happen,” said Zand (Leva Zand, development director of the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland).
***One of those jobs that refugees are hired to do is slaughterhouse work. And, now comes news that meat plants are having to close due to the number of workers getting sick with COVID-19. See here.
I’m looking every day for official word from the US State Department about whether refugees will again be streaming to America after the UN/IOM shut down refugee travel in mid-March.
However, as I pointed out here a few days agoin a post that went viral, refugees have still been coming in, the spigot was never entirely closed.
But, today was the originally designated day for the flow to resume and I am seeing nothing by way of a public announcement one way or another.
You can be sure that the US State Department must have already notified their “partners” (aka paid contractors).
We will work with our implementing partners to plan for a resumption of refugee arrivals on or after April 7.
How about letting the public know, after all, we pay for it all one way or another.
And, if they are opening the refugee spigot, we need to know if tests for COVID-19 are being given before the refugee boards a near empty plane for Anytown, USA.
More people who are unemployed, hungry and in need of health care coming to America—what could go wrong!
In mid March we reported that the UN’s International Organization for Migration had halted refugee travel due to the virus crisis, so imagine my surprise this morning when I checked the data for the last two weeks of March and learned we admitted 221 regular refugees and 373 Special Immigrant Visas from Afghanistan in those two weeks.
For the entire month of March we admitted 1,110 regular refugees and 844 SIVs mostly from Afghanistan that are treated just like refugees except some can choose where they want to live in the US.
So we can’t safely fly, but nearly 2,000 ‘refugees’ were being flown into the US during March.
The refugee admissions program is scheduled (so far) to resume this week after April 7th, but it never really stopped!
Here is where the 1,110 were placed in March:
Top ten ‘welcoming’ states are: TX, OH, NY, IL, WA, KY, MA, CA, MO, and TN.
Now see this map (below) for where the 221 regular refugees were placed since the supposed suspension of travel. They must have been transported across America on near empty flights.
The vast majority of the arrivals in the last two weeks are from the DR Congo (161). See my post about how many we have now taken since Obama agreed to take tens of thousands of Congolese. We are way past 50,000 but they are still coming!
More unemployed and more hungry mouths to feed as America suffers…..
Editor: I’m not planning on posting anything today because I must try to answer some of your many e-mails and comments.
However, I just came across this information from the Refugee Council USA(the lobbying arm of the refugee industry) that explains in great detail (and with links) how trillions will be distributed and how immigrants and refugees can get their piece of the pie.
The first thing I thought of when I read this postby an Italian man who describes how Italy is gone was whatever happened to that proposed Chinese meatpacking plant in Montana?
As described by author Giacomino Nicolazzo the COVID disaster for Italy has its roots in the deals between the Leftists running the Italian government and the Chinese who were furiously buying up one industry after another primarily in the Italian north.
A recipe for disaster?
Along with those purchases of major industries they were sending in Chinese workers, many from Wuhan, to help run their new acquisitions. It is long, but well worth reading because it makes sense.
What Montana Chinese slaughterhouse you ask?
Senator Steve Daines
This one! I told you about it in 2017when Montana ranchers and their US Republican Senator Steve Daineswere cooking up a trade deal with China that would see the export of Montana beef to China.
But, someone figured it would be so much easier if the Chinese actually ran a meat packing facility right there in Montana.
Take the time to read what I said about the deal in 2017.
“It’s a really smart place for China to put in investment and to partner with Montana to have a really good packing industry and processing plant here.”
(Fred Wacker, rancher)
Here is one thing I said in that post:
I suppose there is one bright side–unlike Chobani Yogurtin nearby Idaho, I doubt the Chinese owners will approve of Muslim workers in light of their clear historical animosity to the ‘religion of peace.’ I can just see the mess when the Chinese company gets hit with some discrimination lawsuits when they say “NO” to Somali workers.
Heck, maybe they will insist on bringing in Chinese workers!
(Prescient wouldn’t you agree!)
So then what happened to the scheme?
I looked around today and the best answer I could find was that the deal began to fizzle when Trump’s trade war with China began.
Nevertheless in the summer of 2018, Montana cattlemen were still dreaming that they would see a giant Chinese meat plant in ‘Big Sky’ country.
Montana hopes for beef deal with China’s JD.com despite Trump’s trade
HELENA, Montana – Montana officials are hoping that a blockbuster deal with Chinese retail giant JD.com to export local beef will be possible despite the US Government’s escalating trade war with China.
“We are still talking,” Jay Bodner, executive vice-president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association (MSA), said.
In an exclusive interview with Xinhua on Tuesday, Bodner said the win-win deal inked last November in Beijing is not dead in the water, despite a 25-percent tariff on $34 billion of imports from China imposed by the Trump administration last Friday.
Beijing’s expected response – an additional 25-percent import tax on top of an existing 12-percent hike – was hard for Montana to digest, especially in light of the pending JD.com deal.
“There is a pretty high level of concern,” Bodner, a rancher from eastern Montana who has been with the MSA for 16 years, said.
Comparing JD.com to America’s Amazon.com, he said the Chinese internet giant’s commitment to spend up to $100 million to build Montana’s largest meat processing facility was still on the table.
