Nothing new here. Ninety refugees from West Africa are arriving in this Iowa town of about 23,000 with the help of Lutheran Services of Iowa. According to the Muscatine Journal, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services interviewed the refugees in Africa and invited them to come to the US. In Muscatine they work in various local industries and I’ll bet there is food processing involved somewhere nearby. The article also says many more are coming.
Category: Who is going where
200 Burundian Refugees arrive in Des Moines, IA
Here is an article from the Des Moines Register a couple of days ago describing how tough it is to assimilate refugees from African countries who have lived in camps most of their lives. This is worth a read to understand what is involved. In this story 200 Burundians have arrived in Des Moines, IA for work in a meatpacking plant (what else!). We are bringing 10,000 “vibrant” Burundian refugees into the US this year alone.
The article jogged my feeble memory about a report I read months ago and just found after searching through piles of documents spread around my desk and on the floor. It’s entitled, “The New Face of America’s Refugees: African Refugee Resettlement to the United States” by Heidi Boas and published in the Georgetown Immigration Journal. I’m telling you the source because I haven’t the patience to find it on line.
Here is the pertinent section that jumped into my mind when I read about the Burundians (as the din of Presidential politics plays in the background). Ms. Boas cites Congressional Black Caucus support as one of the main reasons for our refugee resettlement program extending to Africa in a big way.
* “A coalition of refugee resttlement organizations in Washington, DC, known as the InterAction Commission on Migration and Refugee Affairs (CMRA), took select Congressional staff members on three separate trips to Africa during the late 1990’s.” (this included members of the Congressional Black Caucus).
* “With Congressional Black Caucus members as leaders on both these Committees [Judiciary/John Conyers and International Relations/Mel Watt] during the mid-1990’s, the Caucus was ideally positioned to help refugee advocates push for their cause.”
* The trips lasting a week to two weeks took staffers to camps in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, the Bururndi-Tanzania border, Guinea and Liberia.
* “The trips that CMRA organized helped bring Congressional Black Caucus members on board to support increased African refugee resettlement to the United States.”
* “Indeed several individuals interviewed for this paper identified the Congressional Black Caucus as one of the most influential groups advocating over the past decade for increased African refugee resettlement to the United States.”
So, that’s why 10 years later we have resettled over 80,000 “vibrant” Somalis and will have 10,000 Burundians real soon. And, just think, we taxpayers likely paid for those CMRA trips to Africa.
See a previous post on Burundian Hutus to Tennessee here.
Roanoke, VA refugee director to retire
Roanoke, VA is the largest refugee resettlement site in that state, partially thanks to the ‘Dragon Lady’ director of Refugee and Immigration Services, Barbara Smith who will soon retire. For financial reasons, according to the Roanoke Times , Refugee and Immigration Services will soon merge with Catholic Charities. I’m bringing you this information and this article simply because it’s a good behind-the-scenes look at what happens in a “blue heaven” refugee resettlement office and it likely parallels what is happening in your city.
One bit of information here that most people don’t know is that it’s up to local government agencies to foot the bill for translators when refugees require services.
So it goes [Smith will get tough] when a federally funded agency or institution fails to provide a translator for an immigrant. That violates the nondiscrimination clause in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Smith can recite it from memory — curtly, if necessary — on her refugees’ behalf.
Lincoln, NE, lament—we have poverty
Here is an article yesterday in the Lincoln Journal Star about the release of a report on the high poverty level in that city. The article begins dramatically:
Poverty can hide in Lincoln.
______
It does not show itself in the form of extensive slums or hordes of homeless people begging on the street.
______
Here, it mostly hides inside chilly homes and in the form of late payments, and it’s masked by a variety of community solutions.
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How poverty affects Lincoln, and how each person could help, isn’t an issue that begs for an answer here.
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But Lincoln Action Program is looking for one anyway, and it is challenging the public to help.______
On Thursday, LAP rolled out its part in a nationwide campaign titled “Rooting Out Poverty.”
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With it, agency leaders hope to raise awareness of need in Lincoln, where they said more than 33,000 people live below the federal poverty line.
The article goes on to lament that 53% of those are on Food Stamps (funny that is just about the same percentage nationally of refugees on Food Stamps).
As you read further down, one wonders what the mystery is all about. This city has a large immigrant/refugee population that keeps groups like the Lincoln Action Project (with its 20 programs) in business.
It (LAP) helps people like Nabil Shokai, a Sudanese refugee who came to Lincoln in 2005 and took career training at LAP. Today, he is an Americorps volunteer, getting work experience while helping other refugees with paperwork and resettlement.
So, Mr. Shokai is paid by the Federal government (Americorps is a federal program) to help more refugees resettle in Lincoln. Earth to Lincoln! You will never get out of your cycle of poverty when you keep importing it!
Lewiston, ME, not exactly singing Kumbaya yet
Update 1/7/08: See my post today on this here.
When we had our public meeting in Hagerstown, MD back in September we were surprised that a young woman from Lewiston, ME just happened to be in the audience to report that everything was just going swimmingly in Lewiston after a few rough patches with the Somali refugee influx there. An incident reported yesterday indicates she might have jumped the gun with that assessment.
A poster of a lost dog named Mohammad was posted near a Somali owned store. See the news coverage here. (Hat tip: Eric) All people of good will condemn such an act. But, it further demonstrates that communities are increasingly stressed by large numbers of immigrants of any race or religion, legal or illegal, flooding into small cities in rural areas at a rate faster than any community can absorb. I think we need a breather and suggest the solution is a moratorium on all immigration. For immigrants already here, there needs to be less focus on their rights and more on their responsibility to learn how to live as Americans.