Tag: Bhutanese refugees

Nearly 100,000 Bhutanese refugees later we help UN clean out camps in Nepal

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Lesson! When the Department of State welcomes an ethnic group to America expect the resettlement to be larger and longer than they initially said it would be.

We have followed the process of cleaning out UNHCR camps in Nepal of Bhutanese refugees ever since the Bush Administration said: ‘come on in’ we well take 60,000.  This resettlement was planned to last for five years (as we now approach ten!). I suspect it was UNHCR Antonio Guterres (now Secretary General of the UN) who talked the Bush State Department in to this!
***Update*** More news here: UN says the movement of over 100,000 third worlders to first world countries was a great success.
The so-called “Bhutanese” are people of Nepali ethnicity that were pushed out of Bhutan when the Bhutanese government basically said, we want Bhutan for Bhutanese and you Nepali people who have moved in here for decades need to leave.  To learn more about what happened, check out wikipedia, here.
bhutan-map
When we began posting on this group of mostly Hindu people back in 2007, most did not want to be resettled anywhere but back in Bhutan. And, obviously Nepal wasn’t welcoming their kinsmen home.

So, how did this become our problem?

Why did the US decide to resettle tens of thousands and scatter them around America? Frankly, with our economic muscle certainly we could have prevailed on either Bhutan or Nepal to work this out! Or, did we simply acquiesce to pressure from the United Nations? And, was the refugee industry looking for more paying clients and big business looking for cheap labor?
So here we are almost ten years in.  We said we would resettle 60,000 and so I checked Wrapsnet.org (2007 to December 15, 2016) to see exactly how many we have taken since 2007.  The answer is 91,713!  But according to this article in the Katmandu Post we will be closing the program in 2017 (I guess to make more room for the Muslim Syrians, Iraqis and Somalis).
For ambitious readers, visit our archive on the Bhutanese by clicking here.  Some have done well in America, but for years they had an extremely high suicide rate that worried the resettlement industry. One of many morals to this story is that when the US State Department gives you a number that will be resettled, expect the resettlement to be much larger and much longer than they said it would be!

Many forced to choose resettlement against their will!

Here is the story from before Christmas from the Katmandu Post (notice that many are still holding out hope that they will go home to Bhutan):

Dec 15, 2016- More than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees have been resettled in various countries under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) third country resettlement programme. But some the remaining refugees in eastern Tarai are still putting their feet down for repatriation.

Around 2,000 of the remaining 11,000 refugees, put up at various camps in Jhapa and Morang, are refusing the third country resettlement and willing to return their own homeland in Bhutan, according to a source at the UNHCR. The repatriation campaign has come closer to end after the UN body’s resettlement programme. The repatriation campaign has been weakened as the leaders spearheading repatriation themselves opted for third country resettlement. And the majority of the remaining refugees are also in resettlement process, giving up hope of repatriation.

Bhampa Rai, Balaram Poudel, among other refugee leaders, are still campaigning for repatriation, though. They blamed the government of Nepal for its failure to take any initiatives for their cause. “Nepal could neither convince Bhutan to take back refugees nor pressure the international community over the issue,” said Rai, claiming that hundreds of refugees had been forced to choose third country resettlement against their will.

[….]

According to the UNHCR, 107,000 refugees are already resettled in various host countries, including the US, Australia and Canada. Another batch of around 9,000 refugees are in the process of resettlement, officials at the UNHCR said.

The UNHCR’s third country resettlement programme will come to an end in 2017.

So where are they in America? (Or, at least where were they originally resettled). Map is from Wrapsnet.org.

screenshot-104
States cut off in my screenshot are Hawaii (0), Alaska (148) and Florida (671)

Here are the top ten states where the Bhutanese were resettled:
screenshot-103
Inds stands for Individuals.

One of the things I’ve always wondered about is this:  The UN was so anxious to close these camps (to deny these people a ‘right of return’) while they never had any interest in resettling the Palestinians around the Arab world, but has kept the Palestinian camps (really cities) open for over 60 years.  I’m actually not wondering. I really do know the answer! It was (and is) to keep a thorn in Israel’s side.

Fargo: Lutheran federal refugee contractor kept information on active TB from public

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In yet another in a series of investigative reports on Tuberculosis, and diseases generally, in the refugee population coming to America, Michael Patrick Leahy now reports that in Fargo, North Dakota the lead contractor bringing refugees to that state was not forthcoming about information one assumes they would know—-how many of the refugees they resettle there have latent and active TB.

Lutheran Fargo building
Doing well by doing good! This time last year, LSSND was busy with its grand opening of its huge brand spanking new headquarters in Fargo. Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney was on hand for the ribbon cutting. http://www.kvrr.com/news/local-news/nd-lutheran-social-services-celebrates-grand-opening/33595274

Breitbart:

Dr. John Baird, Health Officer for the Fargo Cass Public Health Department in North Dakota, confirms to Breitbart News that the agency, which serves all of Cass County, has diagnosed and treated four refugees with active tuberculosis (TB) between 2012 and 2015.

Baird’s confirmation of active TB among refugees in the Fargo community comes barely a month after a spokesperson for Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota (LSSND), the resettlement agency hired by the federal government to operate the program in North Dakota, denied that any refugees it has resettled in North Dakota have been diagnosed with active TB.

“We have a good working relationship with NDDoH [North Dakota Department of Health], and have not encountered any issues pertaining to active TB disease among refugees,” an LSSND spokesperson told Fargo’s local NBC television affiliate, KVLY, as reported by the station’s Valley News Live program on May 16.

“Based on Dr. Baird’s statement, the LSS statement to Valley News Live in May was factually inaccurate at best, and an intentional deception at worst,” Breitbart News said in an email to LSSND, asking for a comment to explain their statement that they “have not encountered any issues pertaining to active TB disease among refugees.”

Continue reading here for more important details in an article that once again shows the complete lack of transparency on the part of federal contractors and some officials that work closely with them.
I continue to wonder if community members who sign up with the contractor (LSS in this case) to help refugees get settled are given any instructions in how to avoid exposing themselves to any communicable diseases or parasites.  Does anyone know? Has anyone who volunteered for a resettlement agency been briefed on health issues?
See also our post last week about Fargo’s welcoming Democrat Mayor Tim Mahoney. Fargo has been selected by some millionaires and billionaires as a Gateway to Growth, here.

On the Bhutanese refugees

Leahy mentions that the large numbers of Bhutanese refugees (and some Somalis) come from countries with high levels of TB. For new readers, the Bhutanese (not! Muslims) are really ethnic Nepalis who had been expelled from Bhutan when that country sought to keep Bhutan for true Bhutanese people.  The refugees’ (we call Bhutanese) original country is Nepal.  Nepal wouldn’t take them back so they lived in UN camps on the border of Nepal for 20 years or so.
We had no national interest that would lead us to get involved in this refugee situation…but we did!
In 2007, the George W. Bush Administration said (heck yeh!) we would help the UN by cleaning out those camps and ‘welcoming’ (the original number was somewhere around 60,000) of them to live in your towns.  I bet we are now up to 80,000 who have been transported on your dime from UN camps to your cities.  And, the camps are still not cleaned out because more arrive at the camps looking for a plane ticket to the west!
We have a huge (and I mean huge!) archive on the Bhutanese here at RRW (find more than you ever wanted to know).  The big medical issue that brought them to the attention of the federal government and the CDC was not TB, but the extremely high suicide rate after resettlement to the US.  Why are they killing themselves asked the CDC and the ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement)? Could it be culture shock?
Endnote:  Just now I had a look at LSSND’s website. So tell me why a Lutheran non-profit group is now in partnership to build low income housing in North Dakota.  See here.  Forget the humanitarian BS, this is all a money making racket! Lutherans get paid by the feds to bring in the refugees and then they make money building them housing!
This post is filed in our ‘health issues’ category with 304 previous posts. Leahy’s previous reports are posted there.  You will find the Bhutanese suicide posts filed there too.

Concord, NH: Bhutanese refugees' religious ceremony draws neighbors' ire

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m running out of time this morning after writing so much about Allentown, PA, but want to get a few more things posted before I have to move on to other of life’s duties.

Over a week ago a large gathering of Bhutanese refugees disturbed a quiet Concord neighborhood with chanting, large numbers of people and traffic.  The original story is here at the Concord Monitor.  One resident put a “GO HOME” sign in a window.

That story was followed by an apology of sorts from one of the Bhutanese refugees involved.  But interestingly he blamed the federal refugee contractor for not giving the former UN camp residents, the Hindu Bhutanese, a sufficient cultural orientation.
For new readers, we have now resettled over 80,000 Bhutanese refugees from camps in Nepal (they are really Nepali people that Nepal didn’t want back once they were expelled from Bhutan).   The UN wanted to clean out the camps (the plan was very controversial because many did not want to be “scattered to the four winds” as they said at the time).

bhutansa
People ask me all the time—who are these Bhutanese? Here is a map of Bhutan and Nepal. The so-called Bhutanese refugees were living for 20 years or so in UN camps in Nepal. The UN wanted to clean out the camps so we said o.k. and now more than 80,000 are scattered throughout America. They are not Muslims. http://www.oocities.org/bhutaneserefugees/refugeecampmap.html

The Bush Administration decision to resettle 60,000 in the US was made by former Maryland candidate for Governor Ellen Sauerbrey who was the Bush Asst. Sec. of State for PRM.  As I said, we are now up to 80,000 and they are still coming.
Don’t forget readers that the Refugee Admissions Program is 35 years old and Republicans like George W. Bush enthusiastically helped this migration of third worlders to America.
We have a very lengthy archive on the Bhutanese resettlement going back to 2007, learn more by clicking here.   Pay attention to stories about the high suicide rate of the Bhutanese people in America.
So back to the Concord news.  This is PRAJA SHAPKOTA writing a sort-of apology for the disruption in the neighborhood, here (see photo!).

I feel concerned with the discontentment generated due to the religious ceremony in the Heights neighborhood of Concord (Monitor front page, Oct. 7).

As a member of the community in Upstate New York, I wish to express my personal viewpoints with some background information.

We the Bhutanese people of Nepali ethnicity have come to the United States after persecution and eviction by the absolute monarchy of Bhutan from 1985 to 1995. We have spent more than 18 years in crowded refugee camps of Nepal in uncertainty when Nepal was undergoing political metamorphism.

The refugee camps strengthened family and neighborly bonds with higher interpersonal interactions, which has become a community culture. What we see and do shapes our ways of life – our very culture.

We primarily follow the Hindu traditions, and for a family a lengthy religious function is once or twice in a generation. In case of Rudra Timsina, the function was a way of sharing joy with the community after buying a house – the achievement of a dream. Most invitees attend the discourses and cultural activities at least once in seven days as this is also a method to socialize among people with cultural and language barriers.

Such people constitute more than 50 percent in our community – illiterate in English and unaware of the American culture and traditions. We have never lived with people of totally different culture. Hence, this is a case of “conflict of culture and outlook” and not a conflict of community.

[….]

….in my opinion, the resettlement agencies with local community organizations should initiate at least a month of group orientation on the various aspects of American culture, such that a “conflict of culture” can be lessened.

I’ve had complaints from some of our readers about the large number of Bhutanese refugees in their communities.  At least this writer is sensitive to the disruption created in this Concord situation.

Who is bringing the Bhutanese to Concord?

Go here to the handy list, and see that three federal refugee contractors are dividing up the pie in the same office in Concord (Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service).  Manchester, NH has been overloaded so now it looks like they are busy little beavers colonizing Concord.

Bhutanese refugees in Ohio need more costly mental health care due to high suicide rate

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There is nothing new in this story from the The Columbus Dispatch.  We have reported ad nauseum about the high suicide rate among Bhutanese (really Nepali) refugees first admitted during the Bush Administration.  Even before Bush’s Asst. Secretary of State for Population Refugees and Migration, Ellen Sauerbrey, gave the go-ahead to resettle 60,000 from UN camps (the UN wanted to close the camps so we said sure! and now we are up to over 80,000 Bhutanese scattered across America) we learned that the Bhutanese really preferred to live in their own culture in their part of the world.

The “Bhutanese” are really Nepali people who had lived in Bhutan. Bhutan expelled them and Nepal didn’t want them back. So, why was it in our national interest to bring over 80,000 to America? It was a Bush Administration decision. Did the Republicans want to import more cheap labor?

See our huge archive on the Bhutanese (mostly Hindu) migration to America by clicking here.   It goes back nearly eight years to a time when the Bhutanese did not want to be “scattered to the four winds.”
For all of you contemplating ‘welcoming’ refugees to your towns and cities, remember that health care/mental health care costs will be borne by state and local taxpayers.
From The Columbus Dispatch  (hat tip: Julie).  What is going on in Ohio that there is so much immigration and refugee news coming out of the state (see our Ohio archive)?  A suspicious person might think that Ohio was somehow being targeted for colonization!

So they recently surveyed 200 members of the Nepali-speaking Hindu minority who had fled the Himalayan mountain kingdom of Bhutan a quarter-century ago during an ethnic cleansing led by the Buddhist elite.

What they discovered shocked them.

Bhutanese refugees in central Ohio are twice as likely to report thinking about suicide as are those elsewhere in the U.S. They have high rates of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress and report that they smoke and use alcohol more frequently than other Bhutanese refugees.
“It’s a serious wake-up call,” said Surendra Bir Adhikari, an administrator for the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services who led the research project.

[….]

Between October 2008 and September 2014, 5,654 Bhutanese were resettled in Ohio, including 1,738 in Franklin County. The total population is larger because of the family members and others who have arrived in the state from other parts of the U.S.

Local leaders of the Bhutanese community estimate the total population at close to 20,000, but state officials think it is lower. In 2012, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the suicide rate among Bhutanese refugees resettled in America was 20.3 per 100,000 people. That’s nearly twice the rate among the general U.S. population and higher than the global suicide rate of 16.9 percent.

No jobs and yet we keep the refugee flow coming!  Look at the Ohio numbers on this map!

Besides facing language and religious barriers, refugees worry about loved ones and friends left behind. And there’s often a disconnect between their idyllic views of life in America and the difficulties they encounter finding jobs that pay well.

[….]

Much more needs to be done to address the social isolation, substance abuse and trauma experienced by refugees and immigrants, local and state officials say.

They want “mental-health first-aid training” offered to help identify, understand and respond to signs of addiction and mental illnesses in refugees. They’d like to see more health-care systems provide both medical and mental-health services under one roof to lessen the stigma.

There is more, continue reading here.

U. of Vermont psychologists helping Bhutanese refugees with mental problems; send more refugees to Vermont!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There really isn’t much new and exciting in this story, but I’m posting it because I was interested in the small number of refugees going to Vermont, after all, Vermont’s senior Senator Patrick Leahy has, over the years, been a big pusher for more refugees and more stuff for them.

UVM psychology professor Karen Fondacaro will be busy with her Bhutanese torture victims. Here with co-founder of NESTT (New England Survivors of Torture and Trauma). http://www.uvm.edu/~psych/?Page=news/NESTT_walk_2010.html

We have had many many reports of Bhutanese (really Nepali people) who were living in UN camps on the edge of Nepal until we took 80,000 of them to America in the last 6 years or so and who are now in the US in need of mental health programs.  See our Bhutanese archive with many posts on the high suicide rate among this group of refugees, some want to go home. (BTW, Reader CW recently suggested a the creation of a ‘Repatriation Fund’ for any refugee, unhappy with America, to be allowed to go home.)

From Kentucky.com (I wondered if a Kentucky publication reported this story as a hint to start mental health counseling in KY for its burgeoning refugee population):

BURLINGTON, Vt. — The scars Ajuda Thapa carries today are emotional — the product of years living in fear, being forced from her home in Bhutan and enduring the murder of her husband during 19 stateless years before she arrived in Vermont as a refugee.

Like many others like her here, she’s helping ease the emotional trauma she suffered through a special program at the University of Vermont for the region’s refugees.

[….]

But the safety she has now didn’t do anything for the anxiety, depression and lingering emotional scars that threatened to turn her into a recluse hiding in her home. So her doctor referred her to Connecting Cultures, a program at the University of Vermont that has helped ease the emotional trauma of hundreds of others like her.

Thapa regularly attends meetings where she talks about what she experienced.

“It helps a lot to get relief from that kind of mental pain,” said Thapa, an ethnic Nepali who became stateless after leaving Bhutan in 1992.

Here are some numbers for Vermont:

Connecting Cultures organizers have found that about 65 percent of the estimated 7,000 refugees living in greater Burlington from more than two dozen countries had suffered some form of torture. [Dr. Fondacaro will be very busy!]

[….]

Thapa has struggled to deal with the emotional trauma that comes with the nearly two decades of fear and loss she experienced after being forced from her home. She is one of an estimated 1,300 Bhutanese refugees who have been resettled in Vermont, the largest single refugee nationality in the state.

Those are paltry numbers compared to many other states…

There surely needs to be a national campaign to persuade Vermonters to be more “welcoming” and to accept more refugees there, after all that would only be fair!

See our Vermont archive by clicking here.