…..and you, the US taxpayer, will be paying for it! (or else!) An estimated 1000-2000 of the coming 10,000 Syrians could need (costly!) mental health treatment!
Here is the AP story at ABC News(emphasis is mine):
For the thousands of Syrian refugees expected to arrive in the U.S. in coming months, the first order of business will be securing the basics — health care, jobs, education and a safe home.
But what organizations helping resettle them might not be prepared for, and what refugees themselves might be in denial about, is the need to treat the mental scars of war, experts said.
[….]
Organizations that work with refugees said it’s too early to assess the full scope of arrivals’ mental health needs. But experts say it’s important to keep tabs on the emotional state of new arrivals, since symptoms may not appear until months or years later — well after most resettlement support services have ended. [It is all on the community then which must come up with the $$$ for all of this care!—ed]
The U.S. has taken about 2,500 Syrian refugees since the conflict there began in 2011, including about 100 in Massachusetts. The Obama administration expects to take in at least 10,000 in the federal fiscal year that began in October. Experts estimate 10 to 20 percent of incoming Syrians will have war-related psychological problems warranting treatment.
At about two years after arrival reality hits and mental health problems appear according to Dr. Richard Mollica at Harvard. Photo and bio: http://www.williamjames.edu/about/profiles/faculty/richard-mollica.cfm
“They’re in the honeymoon phase,” said Richard Mollica, a psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School who has spent decades working with torture and genocide victims. “In the first year, they’re so happy to be out of that situation. They feel something wonderful is going to happen in America.
And “wonderful” doesn’t come and that is where I believe the mental health crisis begins!
The streets are not paved with gold, they have to work (find work!) and the mythical city of El Doradois just that, a myth. Many will want to go home.
“It’s only about two years later or so when there’s a mental health crisis,” he said. “It’s at that point that reality hits and they really need a lot of mental health care.”
And get this! If you don’t take care of their mental health they could turn into Islamic terrorists!
Failure to address them could lead some refugees to withdraw from society, increasing the chances they’ll be drawn to extremist groups, Arnetz [Michigan professor] warned.
Some good news! Syrians are only trickling into the US and at the present rate, Obama won’t get to that magic 10,000 by September 30th (the end of the 2016 fiscal year). See numbers (so far) here. I’m guessing the securityscreening is going very slowly.
For ambitious readers we have 289 previous posts in our ‘health issues’ category (refugees have a lot of health issues!).
Who is working against American workers and your American towns and cities? Find out!
Let me be clear, many of you have foolishly (in my opinion) tried to make the distinction between LEGAL and ILLEGAL immigration for way too long (legal is good, illegal is bad). Please notice that the side, pushing for MASS MIGRATION, makes no such distinction.
They are all happily coming together surely (in December of this year) to get their marching orders (community/union organizing instructions!) for the 2016 Presidential race. LOL! to be a fly on the wall and hear how many times the name ‘TRUMP’ is mentioned. Eva Millona is the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. MIRA is a co-sponsor of the pow-wow at which they will denigrate you for standing up for your communities. http://www.miracoalition.org/en/about-us/staff
From New American Dreams (click on the site to follow links and to register):
We’ll be making history together Dec 13-15, 2015 at NIIC 2015. [for those who have enough money to stay in a hotel in Brooklyn—ed]
Founded over 25 years ago, the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), the local Co-Host for NIIC 2015, is the leading advocate for New York’s immigrant communities on the local, state and national level. NYIC brinPrintgs together 165 organizations and entities that work with immigrants and refugees across the city and the state; together, our multi-ethnic and multi-sector constituencies pursue a common agenda and represent what is best about New York—diversity, energy, and the drive for positive change.
NYIC is a proud member of the National Partnership for New Americans, the national Co-Host and anchor for NIIC 2015. NYIC is committed to bringing voices from across New York to NIIC 2015 and share our experiences from the last quarter century of advancing immigrant integration. NIIC 2015 will also advance NYIC’s work with regional and national partners.
The National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA) is a national multiethnic, multiracial partnership. We represent the collective power and NPNA resources of the country’s 34 largest regional immigrant rights organizations in 29 states. Our members provide large-scale services—from DACA application processing to voter registration to ACA outreach—for their communities, and they combine service delivery with sophisticated organizing tactics to advance local and state policy.
Our aim is to achieve a vibrant, just, and welcoming democracy for all. We believe America’s success is rooted in our ongoing commitment to welcoming and integrating newcomers into the fabric of our nation, and to upholding equality and opportunity as fundamental American values. Immigrants are the soul of our organization, and immigrant communities inspire, implement, and champion our work.
Joining the Co-Hosts on the NIIC 2015 Executive Committee are key partners. Make the Road New York, which builds the power of Latino communities to achieve dignity and justice, as well as the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, the largest organization in New England promoting the rights and integration of immigrants and refugees.
They are going to examine you!
LOL! They are going to have a session about us (about those of us who don’t want to CHANGE America, who want to know what they have planned for our towns, who want to put American workers first, who don’t want to spend enormous amounts of the federal treasury to care for third world migrants, who don’t want to dilute our Judeo-Christian culture and heritage). Check it out! At 3:15 on December 13th:
Understanding and Addressing Today’s Organized Backlash Against Muslim Immigrants and Refugees
This session will explore the resurgence of anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric and activism and the recent use of Islamophobia to undermine refugee resettlement. This new development has implications for receiving communities and for refugee resettlement, particularly of Muslim refugees. How does this backlash against resettlement fit within the broader attacks on Muslims in the U.S. and what are the best ways to respond? Who are the key actors fueling this campaign and how is their message spreading? Hear from experts from the Muslim community and from refugee resettlement leaders about this new challenge and potential responses.
Here is the list of those working against your American towns, against American workers and against American taxpayers (regular readers of RRW will recognize many of these groups from our previous reporting). The gang is all here!
32BJ SEIU
Building Skills Partnership
CAPACES Leadership Institute
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York
Catholic Legal Immigration Network
Citi
Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center
Four Freedoms Fund
International Rescue Committee
JM Kaplan Fund
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services
Make the Road New York
Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition
Migration Policy Institute
National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders
National Council of La Raza
National Partnership for New Americans
New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito
New York Immigration Coalition
New York State Office of New Americans
Partnership for a New American Economy
Partnership for New York City
The Program for Environmental and Regional Equity at the University of Southern California
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
Unbound Philanthropy
Welcoming America
Western Union
About the photo: Learn more about Ms. Millona here as she played a major role in the Obama Task Force on New Americans.
Refugee resettlement contractor CEO Angela Bovill in 2013: “This is a business!”
This story is one I had hoped to get to before going awaylast weekend. Obviously there have been problems in overloaded Worcester and now the resettlement contractor is getting more grant money to help refugees access “services” which is code for welfare and other types of special treatment for this special class of immigrant.
I had to laugh (I know it isn’t funny!), but here we have Obama’s seeding program already being put into action. And, the buzzword “integration” is front and center. This is not a plan for the refugees to “assimilate” better. The extra grant is now to further smooth the way for refugees to get theirservices—the ultimate goal of Obama’s integration/colonizing scheme.
From theTelegram earlier this month. Don’t miss the comments, all critical and some reporting that the city is a “dumping ground.”
WORCESTER — Refugees by the thousands have found a welcoming environment in Worcester, as low-cost housing, public transportation and available jobs provide the required building blocks sought by the U.S. State Department.
But integrating refugees into the community remains a struggle, with gaps in various services, fragmented integration of others and outdated procedures that don’t reflect the current influx, officials said this week.
Armed with a $170,722 grant from the Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts, Ascentria Care Alliance hopes to reshape the integration template.
Pay attention to this next line. When the bill that was being spearheaded by Senator Ted Kennedy, that ultimately became the Refugee Act of 1980, critics in Congress wanted assurance that the bill would not just be a pipeline of foreign poverty into American cities, so “self-sufficiency” in a brief period of time was promised. But, you and I both know that ‘refugees’ with little education and job skills are not getting jobs very quickly so with this ‘reshaping template’ contractors and the State Department are trying to get away from the original expectation (to effectively change the law without Congress!) that refugees would be self-sufficient quickly and off the welfare rolls ASAP.
The planning grant, announced this week, will fund a yearlong effort to create a collaborative integration model — one that focuses on resettled refugees’ overall well-being and not just employment and self-sufficiency. [What a bunch of gobbledegook! —ed]
Angela Bovill, CEO of Ascentria Care Alliance. The agency was originally known as Lutheran Social Services of New England. I think they change names just to make it more difficult for the average American to figure out who they are. Or, did they get in some sort of trouble under their old name? underhttp://www.ascentria.org/about-us/faq-about-new-name
“How do we unify services around these people?” said Angela B. Bovill, president and chief executive officer of Ascentria, formerly Lutheran Social Services of New England***, a $59 million human service agency. “There are gaps and fragments and pressures that are not being met.”
Worcester is the largest site for refugee resettlement in Massachusetts, with more than 1,600 refugees resettled in the city in the past five years, including Bhutanese, Burundians, Congolese, Liberians, Iraqis, Russians, Somalis and Vietnamese. Over the past three years, the majority (51 percent) have come from Iraq, with Bhutan second at 28 percent.
The State Department normally provides about eight months of assistance to refugees, with the major emphasis on securing a job and finding a place to live.
But many refugees arrive with many health and social needs because of years spent in crowded refugee camps, separation from families and unfamiliarity with the English language.
Building a framework that assesses and connects the refugee population to those services will be a focus of the planning grant, which usually turns into multiyear support totaling about $2 million.
“This issue has bubbled up a couple of times,” said Janice B. Yost, president of the Health Foundation. “Worcester has the opportunity to be an excellent pilot for the rest of the U.S. to follow.”
The planning grant will build relationships with the city of Worcester, the state Office of Refugees and Immigrants, Community Legal Aid, Family Continuity, the Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center, Quinsigamond Community College and Worcester Public Schools.
It is probably too late for Worcester as the resettlement agency is well-entrenched and likely now bringing the extended family members of all the first ‘refugees’ they brought in. But, it is not too late for places like Spartanburg, SC. Everytown America is a potential resettlement site, so please check out Ten Things your town needs to know!
This is a business—a very complicated business!
We reported on Angela Bovill’s comments in 2013 as she was taking over the reins of then Lutheran Social Services of New England:
Angela Bovill
The Worcester Business Journalinterviewed LSS’s CEO Angela Bovill just this past June and here are a few things she said.
When asked if her previous experience in business helps LSS, she responded:
This is a business. Yes it is a nonprofit, but (in) a nonprofit, it’s even more critical that you understand how to manage it like it needs to be managed. We have 1,600 employees across six states.It’s a very complicated business, so if you don’t have the business background to run it, I’m not sure how you could succeed.
Note to residents of Worcester: Two “pockets of resistance” have formed in Massachusetts—both Springfield and Lynn mayors are trying to get the spigot closed on the refugee pipeline!
***See our previous posts on problems with Lutheran Social Services New England.
Remember the story: concern was raised when three Afghan military trainees went AWOL in Massachusetts.
Maj. Jan Mohammad Arash, 48, Capt. Mohammad Nasir Askarzada, 18, and Capt. Noorullah Aminyar, 20. (not sure in which order!) http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/missing-afghan-soldiers-found-at-canadian-border-near-niagara-falls/question-4510091/
The first one to go before an immigration judge has been denied refugee protection in the US. He says he fears the Taliban. Well, he shouldn’t! According to Obama and his State Department the Taliban is not a terrorist group!
BUFFALO (AP) — An immigration judge denied asylum Friday for an Afghan military officer who sneaked away from a U.S. training exercise in Massachusetts to avoid returning to Afghanistan, where he said he had been threatened by the Taliban.
The judge ruled that Maj. Jan Arash did not qualify for certain protections because the Taliban is not a government, his lawyer said, nor had he proven that he would be persecuted, rather than legally prosecuted, by the Afghan government.
“If he gets deported and hung for desertion, that’s OK under the law,” attorney Matthew Borowski said.
“We have no choice but to appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals,” the attorney said. The process could take several months.
In the meantime, Arash will continue to be held at the Buffalo Federal Detention Center, where the asylum case was heard.
Arash is one of three Afghan military officers who were detained in September after being denied entry into Canada, where they had planned to seek refugee status.
[….]
The three soldiers took a cab more than 500 miles from Massachusetts to the Canadian border in Niagara Falls while in the United States for a training exercise at Joint Base Cape Cod. In interviews with The Associated Press shortly after they were detained, they described being targeted by the Taliban because of their work with U.S. soldiers.
If granted asylum, Arash will be eligible for the Cadillac treatment all refugees receive—virtually all forms of welfare, healthcare, job counseling and training, etc. by one of the hundreds of federal contractors operating in over 180 cities in the US. He would be able to bring his family from Afghanistan to join him.
The assumption is that the case involves an immigrant, but no word of that in this short AP story (posted at Drudge):
LYNN, Mass. (AP) — More than 30 Lynn Community Health Center employees and 800 patients are being tested to determine if they were exposed to tuberculosis after center doctors confirmed a case. [must be active TB or they wouldn’t be taking such measures—ed]
Center Director Lori Berry says after confirming the single positive test for tuberculosis in a male health care worker around Labor Day, center medical workers contacted and tested employees as well as patients ‘‘having sufficient exposure to warrant testing.’’
See all of our earlier posts (going back a couple of years) on the refugee and migrant overload in Lynn by clicking here. See especially this post from 2011 where the mayor was planning to ask the United Nations to stop sending refugees to the town. Refugees with TB are permitted entry to the US (see our health issues category).
The assumption is that the case involves an immigrant, but no word of that in this