Tag: Burmese refugees

Burmese refugee: All I want for Christmas is my HIV/AIDS drugs

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

My alerts are filled with news of charitable groups giving Christmas parties and other gift-giving events for the ‘holiday’ season.  I’m fully convinced that we have no more poor Americans remaining.  When I grew up it was all about Appalachia.  But, I guess those folks have moved on up.  Or, as fans of Nascar and Duck Dynasty, they aren’t so attractive to the do-gooder crowd.

This article from Tulsa, Oklahoma says the 5,000 Burmese who have arrived there since 2007 are living “on the fringe” which makes me wonder how we keep hearing that 80% (or more) of refugees have become self-sufficient within their first year in America.

Here is the news from Austin, Texas about the needy Aung Min family.  Hat tip: Joanne.

They want a another baby and they need to keep Dad free of HIV/AIDS long enough to conceive one!

Uka has to stay HIV-negative long enough to conceive a sibling for Okee. Nice shoes!
Photo:Ralph Barrera The Statesman

Uka Aung Min spent two days resting on the floorboards of a car, trying to be invisible. He would take little sips of water and eat only a little bit after dark. As a student protester, he was no longer safe in Burma.

The car took him from Burma, also known as Myanmar, to Thailand and then Malaysia, where he would spend 11 years in a refugee camp. There, he met his wife, Naw.

Now this makes no sense.  Because he was HIV-positive he was allowed to come to the US, but the pregnant wife was left behind?  And, if refugees are becoming self-sufficient, how on earth did he wander homeless from Alaska*** to Texas.   Was no one, no contractor, monitoring his care and his meds?  Wasn’t the whole reason he was given a ticket to America was to get his HIV drugs?  Does no curious reporter wonder how this is possible?

After Naw became pregnant with daughter Okee, Uka Aung Min, 32, learned he was HIV-positive. With no medicine available to him in the refugee camp, he was allowed to become a refugee to the United States.

First he settled in Alaska, and then he came to Austin. At times he was homeless, but eventually he was able to move his family here and meet Okee, who is now 2, for the first time.

Goodies are flowing in, but they need money for HIV/AIDS medicine! (For rent, utilities, internet etc. as well!)  Didn’t we learn that the whole reason Uka Aung Min got into the US was so he would be treated for AIDS?

Since being featured in the Statesman (Season for caring) program, the Aung Mins have received a couch and love seat, beds from Factory Mattress, dental care from Aloha Dental, an iPad and bookshelves.

They still have a lot of needs: rent and utilities assistance; a car; day care for Okee to enable Naw, 36, to attend English language classes in January; Internet service; dressers; dining room furniture; and a toy box. They also would love help paying for medicines to keep Naw HIV-negative while conceiving a brother or sister for Okee. Gift cards for clothing, groceries and gas would be appreciated. Okee loves to draw, and they would like to give her crayons and paper.  [Crayons and paper have got to be cheaper than those high-heeled shoes for a two-year-old!—ed]

So where was Catholic Social Services of Alaska when it came to monitoring Uka?

***I wondered who might be responsible for letting Uka Aung Min wander America and become homeless without AIDS drugs and it sure looks like it was Catholic Social Services of Alaska.  LOL!  They claim to have a self-sufficiency rate of 79%.  Was Uka’s AIDS so bad he couldn’t work? Is he working now?

The resettlement contractors will be quick to tell you that this is America and people are allowed to move without checking in with anyone, however, this story just reminds us that there are refugees with communicable diseases (like HIV/AIDS and TB) who are moving around with no one monitoring whether they are staying on their meds!

For more on refugee health issues, check out our category here with its 186 previous posts on the problems!

Nebraska: Lutheran Family Services partners with ‘big meat’ to bring change to small town

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Cargill, the largest employer in the county, gets its refugee laborers through Lutheran Family Services! Taxpayers foot the bill!

Ho hum!  Here we go again.  Why on earth are US taxpayers paying Lutheran Family Services to bring immigrant labor to meat packing towns in the heartland?  And, if you missed our posts the other day, here and here, about Noel, Missouri, maybe you don’t know that the federal contractors, like the Lutherans, are working side by side with the meat packers to get “comprehensive immigration reform” (S.744) through Congress.

Here is the news from the Schuyler Sun:

A growing, distinct group of people has been immigrating to the United States, and Nebraska, in the past few years.

They are refugees, escaping their homeland because of war, oppression or famine.

Two representatives from Lutheran Family Services spoke about Nebraska’s growing refugee population during the quarterly community forum held Dec. 12 at St. John’s Lutheran Church.

Lacey Studnicka, development officer for the community services program, said Schuyler is a good example of how a small town can help refugees looking to start a new life.  [This is a standard talking point—praise the  community for being “welcoming” before they have a chance to complain, or if they are already complaining it’s a way to make them feel guilty!—ed]

[…..]

These refugees come from all over the world, but recently, large populations coming to Nebraska have been from Burma and Bhutan, two countries located in southern Asia.

If you are wondering, the Bhutanese and most of the Burmese are not Muslims.  A few years back it was all the rage to bring Somali laborers for the meat packers, but when Somalis began striking and demanding religious accommodation on the job, the US State Department shifted to bringing in more Bhutanese and Burmese, I believe because they are more docile workers.

The ‘do-gooders’ at Lutheran Family Services depend almost exclusively on taxpayer dollars for anything they do for refugees!  These articles always make it sound like the Lutheran contractor is doing all of this out of private charity.

Lutheran Family Services gets two- to four-weeks notice before the refugees arrive in Nebraska. The organization provides the refugees with a foundation, including a furnished apartment and groceries.

Social security cards are obtained within the first 90 days, the adults receive job-placement services and schools are located for the children.

“Cargill has been a great partner!”

Studnicka gives credit to Cargill, which has helped immigrants and refugees make a life for themselves in the community.  [Oh yeh!  And, Cargill is doing all this out of the goodness of its corporate heart!—ed]

“We have seen a lot of growth,” Studnicka said. “Cargill has been a great partner.”

Lutheran Family Services is the largest refugee-resettlement agency in the state.

Last year was the organization’s busiest yet, with 478 refugees resettled in Omaha and 120 in Lincoln. Statewide, there were almost 1,000 refugees who came to Nebraska.

Read the whole article.

Lutheran Family Services gets paid by the US State Department to bring-’em in by the head. Cargill gets cheap reliable labor while the town and state get to support the immigrant families’ other needs (housing, education, food stamps, medical care).   It’s a great business model, wouldn’t you agree!

Photo is from Cargill’s website, here.

Phoenix police discover presence of refugee contractors in wake of murder of Burmese refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

First I came across a story about how the police in Phoenix, AZ  had gotten together with refugee resettlement contractors to find ways to communicate better with the city’s mushrooming multi-ethnic refugee population, and that’s how I learned about how two Burmese refugees were murdered with kitchen knives as they confronted what appears to have been a gang of Hispanics.  (Ah, the joys of multiculturalism!)

Police investigate the crime scene back in April. Two Burmese refugees murdered outside their apartment building by a gang of youths shouting “derogatory names.”

Here is the get-together story.  I am amazed that at a preferred refugee resettlement city like Phoenix police are just now learning about the resettlement agencies that must have been working there for decades.  It further confirms to me that in many parts of the US there is virtually no consultation and communication between the myriad government agencies interfacing with large new non-English speaking populations in  target cities.

Arizona is the sixth largest US resettlement state, click here.  (18,415 went to Arizona in under 6 years!)

From the Arizona Republic:

Tuoy-Giel, the president of the South Sudanese Community Association of Arizona, leaders of other refugee groups, resettlement organizations and Phoenix police met Thursday in an effort to enhance communication and partnerships between refugees and police.

Detective Luis Samudio said he organized the meet-and-greet hoping officers will learn more about how to better serve a growing refugee population. About 2,500 refugees come to metropolitan Phoenix each year, officials said.  [Readers: that is a huge number for a city to absorb each year.—ed]

Police were caught “by surprise” by the language barrier when two Burmese refugees were recently murdered, Samudio said. The police are calling the double homicide at a central Phoenix apartment complex a possible hate crime.

The refugee population is scattered throughout Phoenix with the majority located in three of the department’s eight precincts—Cactus, Mountain View and Central City, Samudio said.

[….]

Representatives from the four resettlement organizations in Phoenix gave a brief overview of the refugee community and tips on how to help them.  [Learn more here about Arizona refugee resettlement—ed]

[….]

Officers also can use the resettlement organizations as a resource as they have staff members who speak different languages and have translators on-call, she said ( Donna Buckles of Refugee Focus, formerly Lutheran Social Services.)

That story led me to the story (also at  the Arizona Republic) about the latest arrests  (three days ago) in the murder of the two refugees in April.

Police have arrested the remaining three people suspected of fatally stabbing two Burmese refugees in Phoenix two months ago, but they continue to hunt for the woman who drove the three to Nogales, Mexico, to escape prosecution, officials said.

Investigators arrested Cassandra Devore, 18, Daniela Stone, 17, and her brother Michael Stone, 16, in Mexico on June 19, according to police. The two juveniles are being charged as adults, according to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Ofice. Two others were arrested May 7.

The arrests last week brought an end to a manhunt that started in central Phoenix in late April in a murder case that prosecutors are considering as a possible hate crime.

On April 28, a group of three males and two females were suspected of chasing three Burmese refugees, a 21-year-old man and two 16-year-old boys, with knives and metal pipes near 29th Avenue and Camelback Road, court records showed.

Earlier two males from the group had confronted the refugees and taunted them with “derogatory names,” documents say.

The Burmese refugees ran back to the Serrano Village Apartments near 28th Avenue and Camelback Road to a unit where a wake was being held and told those inside that a group with knives was chasing them, police records showed.

Ker Reh, 54, and Kay Reh, 24,  stepped outside to talk to the group, which was trying to force its way into the apartment, according to police documents.

Police said they believe the group used “large kitchen-type knives” to stab the Ker Reh and Kay Rey to death. The group then fled the scene.

Hispanic mom drove her kids to Mexico to escape the police (police are still looking for her!):

Police on May 7 arrested Johnny Romero, 22, on suspicion of second-degree murder and Jonathan Tineo, 16, on suspicion of aggravated assault. Tineo also is being charged as an adult, according to Jerry Cobb, a spokesman for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.

Romero’s wife told police that Lovonne De La Luz Ruiz, 40, the mother of Daniela and Michael Stone, drove her children and Devore to Nogales the day after the incident to avoid arrest, according to records.

Possible hate crime:

Cobb said prosecutors can present to a jury that the defendants committed the crime out of malice toward a victim because of the victim’s identity such as race, color, religion or sexual orientation.

This is not new to us.  Tensions run high in rough multicultural neighborhoods where refugees are usually dropped off by contractors believing that the now mythical American melting pot will work its magic.  The melting pot is broken because the numbers are too high!

Mostly Christian refugees to be repatriated to Burma; US to end program for them

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This story has been languishing in my posting queue for weeks, so I thought I better get it posted so as to keep our archives up to date.

Thailand’s Mae La Refugee Camp

After taking tens of thousands of Burmese refugees to the US, and turning cities such as Ft. Wayne, Indiana into the Burmese capital of America we are now saying, it’s o.k. for the rest of you to go back home.    Truth be told, I think we’re bored with the Burmese Christians and are planning to make room for Burmese Rohingya Muslims to diversify our refugee collection (after all that is only “fair”, right?).  We have already taken some Muslims from Burma.

This is the AP story from early last month:

Since the day she was born, 20-year-old Naw Lawnadoo has known almost nothing of the world beyond the fence and guard posts that hem her in with 45,000 others — ethnic minorities from Myanmar and those like her who were born and raised in the Mae La refugee camp in neighboring Thailand.

School, family, friends, shopping and churchgoing — many of the refugees are Christian — have all been confined to a valley of densely packed bamboo-and-thatch huts huddled under soaring limestone cliffs.

Now, she and other camp residents face a future that will dramatically change their constricted but secure, sometimes happy lives. With the end of 50 years of military rule in Myanmar, aid groups are beginning to prepare for the eventual return of one of the world’s largest refugee populations — some 1 million people in camps and hideouts spread across five countries.

The US took-in about 92,000 Burmese refugees in recent years.

Some may melt into Thailand, joining the 2.5 million migrant workers from Myanmar. A few may be resettled in third countries, though the United States is ending a program under which it has taken 80 percent of the 105,000 settled so far. With shrinking options, most will likely have no choice but to return.

While camp life is hardly cosmopolitan, some of the young can meet foreigners, have access to the Internet and occasionally slip out to a nearby town, or even the shopping malls and bright lights of Bangkok, Thailand’s capital. For them, the prospect of planting rice in isolated villages to which they would probably go holds little attraction.

I guess it wouldn’t.

Just goes to show the fickle nature of the US State Department’s refugee admissions program.

Fort Wayne: Too much debris, code violations close Burmese community garden

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If you haven’t heard my rant about how your federal tax dollars are being spent on “community” gardens for refugees see my most recent post on the topic here.

W.O.W! World on Wheels, diversity wheelbarrows on display in Ft. Wayne to represent the 21 diverse immigrant groups in the area. Let’s hope federal tax dollars are not invested in wheelbarrows.

It is one thing if some truly charitable organization wants to help refugees grow fresh food, it is another for the US taxpayer to be supporting such efforts.

Here is the latest news from Burmese over-loaded Ft. Wayne, Indiana, headline (hat tip to an Indiana informant): ‘No more gardens for Burmese at Fort Wayne apartment complex’  in the News-Sentinel:

Burmese residents living in Autumn Woods, 1004 Fayette Drive, will no longer be able to grow their own vegetables behind their apartments.

Due to a large number of citations from the city in 2012 to the management company, residents were told no more gardens were allowed and their plots were removed last fall.

Current management at Autumn Woods was asked to comment but said it was not at liberty to do so at this time.

According to Cindy Joyner, of Fort Wayne Neighborhood Code, a large portion of the gardens were built in ditches, which is against city code, because it can block water flow. The department also found pieces of indoor furniture, which had been re-purposed for use in the gardens, which also is against city code. There was a lot of debris including animal cages that were also found in the ditch, another code violation.

“It was the amount of debris that really drove the citations,” said John Urbahns, director of Fort Wayne’s Community Development department.

Urbahns said the city has these codes in place to protect the values of the adjoining property.

John Perlich, city spokesman, said the city took a closer look at Autumn Woods after some concerns about the condition of the property had been raised in the community.

Some of the items that were removed from the complex were small swimming pools that had been donated to the residents through a program at the Catherine Kasper Place to be used as container gardens.

“Some of these were removed because they were not being used as functioning garden spaces; they had been left to deteriorate,” Joyner said.

It is not clear to me whether this Autumn Woods failed project received federal grants, but other Burmese gardens did as we see here at the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Refugee Agricultural Partnership Program (be sure to see quote from Michelle Obama–a model for the Nation, for the World!)  Go there and note that Holly Chaille, quoted in this News-Sentinel story, did get $75,000 of your tax dollars for her project(s).

Of course it would never be mentioned in a mainstream media piece but there has been some information leak out that the failed gardeners might be from a certain religious persuasion.   Ft. Wayne has “welcomed” both Burmese Christians and Burmese Muslims, a sure-fire way to build tension in a community.

Related:  I had been meaning to post on the State Department visit to Ft. Wayne, here, last month but didn’t get to it.  Clearly everything is not copacetic in Ft. Wayne or the head guy for admissions, Lawrence Bartlett, wouldn’t be visiting in an obvious effort to smooth feathers and repair damage.  The State Department needs to hang on to every “welcoming” city they can get.

Here is our entire archive on problems in Ft. Wayne going back to our earliest posts in the summer of 2007 when we discovered the problem that the Allen County health department was having treating all the TB cases.  The Ft. Wayne garden controversy is explained in a guest post here in 2010.