“I haven’t felt the commitment and the attention I was expecting.” [From the Biden Administration]
Angie Plummer, Ohio resettlement contractor
Hope all of you had a good Thanksgiving with your friends and family. No promises, but I will try to post from time to time so I won’t have too big a gap in my now nearly 15 year running catalog of ills surrounding the US Refugee Admissions Program.
Reminder: there are over 9,000 posts archived here at RRW and the search function works pretty well. Choose a few key words and see what is here.
You surely know by now that the tens of thousands of Afghan evacuees are being treated like legitimate refugees and have swamped the refugee program causing complaints to surface from other ethnic groups and from contractors*** who do not want the Afghans to completely wipe out the chances of others, like the Somali starring in thisColumbus Dispatchreport, getting their extended family members into the US.
Biden’s pause on refugee resettlement worries agencies, advocates in Greater Columbus
Aden Hassan wants his mother here. He blamed Trump for not moving faster and now he blames Biden.
Biden has paused the regular resettlement program in order to accommodate the Afghans, many of whom have not been vetted and likely will never be legal refugees.
Columbus is a top Somali resettlement target city
Angie Plummer, executive director of local refugee resettlement agency Community Refugee and Immigration Services (CRIS) [CRIS is a subcontractor of Church World Service—ed], which resettled Hassan, said there’s no reason why Afghans and refugees from other countries can’t be helped simultaneously.
“When we were asked do we want to pause (refugee) arrivals, I said no because it’s apples and oranges,” Plummer said. “We don’t think that it’s necessary. It’s not a competition for resources to have these folks come.”
[….]
“I fear there’s only so much bandwidth and that it’s shifted to focusing on Afghans, and we can’t take our eyes off these other crises that are happening,” Plummer said. “We want to serve the Afghans well, but we also feel committed to serving those people whose cases we started and who got the shaft under Trump.”
In light of the pause, refugee resettlement advocates are lamenting the fact that Biden did not prioritize rebuilding the refugee resettlement program as soon as he was inaugurated in January.
Plummer said she is concerned because the program’s capacity is still being rebuilt after Trump’s administration decimated its infrastructure.
“Any stopping and starting creates pains,” Plummer said. “I worry about that. Even if their intentions are to try to exempt out certain groups, we should be trying to ramp it back up and help this machinery work again.”
[….]
“I haven’t felt the commitment and the attention I was expecting,” Plummer said. “I really thought some wrongs would be righted and they haven’t been, and it feels like they’ve been shuffled down the road.”
Meredith Owen, Church World Service
The fact that the administration hasn’t prioritized restoring resettlement capacity sooner makes Meredith Owen, director of policy and advocacy at the national refugee resettlement agency Church World Service (CWS), furious.
“The problem is you never want to undermine or harm one refugee population in the name of another,” Owen said.
But, that is exactly what is happening. Muslim Afghans are apparently Biden’s priority. There is much more, visit theColumbus Dispatch for additional details.
*** For new readers, these are the nine major federal resettlement agencies which have contracts with the US State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement to place refugees (find housing!) and get them signed up for their welfare benefits, their medical care and get the refugee kids in school.
If you have an agency working near you and it doesn’t have the same name as one of the nine below, check its website carefully and you will most likely find it is a subcontractor of one of the nine (like CRIS is a CWS subcontractor).
Poor mouthing….
Know that when they “got the shaft” under the Trump Administration they were fundraising on their plight something they can’t do now that their guy is in charge of the taxpayer portion of their money stream.
U.S. housing shortage presents new challenge for refugee resettlement
When the White House announced earlier this month that it would increase the number of refugees granted admission into the United States this fiscal year by four times the previous target, to 62,500 people, reversing course from President Biden’s initial plan, immigrant advocates applauded the decision. Yet groups working to help resettle refugees are now facing another new challenge: finding housing for new migrants.
Rajbhandari — hmmm! a little dissension in the ‘humanitarian’ industry?
Sheryl Rajbhandari, the founder of Heartfelt Tidbits, a Cincinnati-based organization that has helped resettle over 50,000 [their website says 40,000 but who is counting!–ed] people in western Ohio since 2008, worries that refugees will be pushed into inappropriate housing.
The government-approved resettlement agencies*** that sponsor refugees and provide services for the first 90 days will often place them in public housing with high crime rates.
Those agencies “want the money for each individual they resettle. So it’s like ‘We don’t really care if we move people,’” she said.
[….]
Once refugees are in the United States, a resettlement agency is responsible for finding and paying for housing for them for an initial period. In a real estate market driven to new highs by the pandemic, finding that housing has become increasingly difficult.
To be clear, the “resettlement agency,” one of the nine federal contractors*** doesn’t use its own money to pay for the initial housing, it uses your money that is passed through federal grants and contracts to their coffers.
Low-income and potentially dangerous housing may expose already vulnerable families to crime, and it can also restrict those families from getting the resources they need, Rajbhandari argued.
“If it’s a high-crime area, folks don’t want to go into that area,” she said. “So folks who might be able to provide assistance don’t feel comfortable driving into places where there are people being shot at and drugs are being dealt.”
Not so subtle pitch for more of your tax dollars to go to refugee resettlement.
The concerns over housing come as organizations working with refugees deal with two challenges: a sudden increase in the cap for people eligible for resettlement and limited government resources in place to help them.
[….]
…there are currently 35,000 refugees who have already passed security checks and have been cleared for entry into the U.S., and there are another 100,000 in the pipeline.
Independent resettlement organizations around the country are optimistic about reaching the 62,500 target, however difficult to achieve. The challenge now will be finding them appropriate housing.
Miry Whitehill, the founder of Miry’s List, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that assists families with the resettlement process, said this is a problem that goes deeper than just housing.
The cost of resettlement loans and plane tickets means many refugees enter the United States already owing money they must repay.
“Something that I think is really important to mention here is that refugees are starting out in debt,” Whitehill said. “Every refugee, they’re required to sign a financial contract agreeing to reimburse the resettlement agency for the cost of their flights.”
Whitehill isn’t telling the whole story on those airfare loans.
IOM bags at airports are the tip-off! Refugees Arriving!
The resettlement agency does collect the loan money from the refugees (when they can get it!), but it was your money, your tax dollars flowing through the United Nation’s International Organization for Migration that shelled out the money in the first place.
When one of the big nine does collect the airfare loan reimbursements, they get to keep a quarter of it for themselves, some years resulting in over a million in extra petty cash. Judicial Watchattempted to find out exactly how much was collected, but got the runaround.
I digress….the takeaway from this story is that Biden’s promised high number of refugees will be placed in crime ridden slums adding to the tensions already evident in most US cities unless you, the taxpayers of America stop being so greedy and spend more money on nicer housing for New Americans (because the US has run out of our own poor people).
Of course,the other option, but never discussed, is to not ‘welcome’ more refugees at this challenging time.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are alsopaid to find locations for the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
At this very moment they are all out scouting for new, fresh territory in which to place their refugee clients. See Winchester, VA.
Nevermind that it is the United Nations that halted refugee travel due to the Chinese virus crisis.
Refugee contractors are trying to “chart a path forward” as refugee admissions this year are set to be the lowest they have ever been since Senators Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and the peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, created the US Refugee Admissions Program that became law in 1980.
But, oh how they love their sob stories featuring poor suffering families seeking to be reunited.
Sob story design and promotion is one of the Leftwing media’s greatest skills!
Sorry, no sympathy from me for a mother who leaves her INFANT daughter in a hellhole refugee camp to come to America with a supposedly sick husband expecting then to have the US government fly her daughter to her at a later date.
A family was set to be reunited after nearly four years apart. Then coronavirus struck.
(CNN) More than three years ago, Deman Aman Abshir, a Somali national, faced an impossible choice: leave behind her newborn daughter to come to the United States or watch as her husband’s health worsened.
She left behind an infant daughter, now three years old, to hop on that plane with a supposedly sick hubby. She had another choice!
Abshir and her husband, fleeing deteriorating conditions in Somalia, worried that any delay in leaving could hinder their chances to resettle in the US and get medical treatment, she said. So they left.
[….]
In 2011, amid an ongoing civil war in the country, Abshir decided to leave Somalia and fled to a refugee camp in Ethiopia.
“Life was hard and there was a lot of struggle,” she said.
Over the years, the health of Abshir’s husband, Mohamed Hussen Ibrahim, who was being treated for a neurologic condition that prevented him from walking and doing other daily activities, started to worsen.
His “neurologic condition” apparently didn’t prevent some daily activities!
And, he sure must have gotten some magical medical treatment in the US (on your dime!) because he got a job, but there is not one word in this story about his diagnosis, treatment or recovery.
In late 2016, more than a year after their case had been approved, the couple was ready to depart to the United States.
“Three different situations happened at the same time: my husband’s situation got worse; we had our newborn; we had the process approved,” Abshir recalled. “It was 2016 so Trump was getting elected, so we knew if we had to delay, the opportunity would never come so we had to choose sacrifice to be with our child or leave for the US with my husband to get better treatment.”
She had another choice: Let her husband go on to America (so you could pay for his medical care) and she could stay in Africa with her INFANT daughter!
Now we are expected to believe she is so emotional over the separation that she can’t work!
Abshir’s four-month-old daughter had not been part of the original case, therefore adding her would delay their departure and postpone obtaining medical treatment for her husband. Abshir called the decision to leave Nimco behind “painful,” recounting the difficulty she had in keeping jobs in the US because she was overwhelmed with emotions.
Plummer is described as the family’s lawyer, but she also happens to be the Executive Director of CRIS a Columbus, Ohio based subcontractor of Church World Service, facts not reported by CNN. https://www.crisohio.org/about-us/
Since then, Plummer has tried to get Nimco’s case approved to reunite with the family. The nearly four-year uphill battle appeared to be reaching a conclusion when the coronavirus pandemic shut down arrivals.
[….]
Abshir, whose husband also lost his job because of the pandemic [“also”? weren’t we just old she couldn’t hold a job due to being emotionally distraught?—ed] has remained hopeful, but extended separations often weigh on families.
[He had a job, wow! He must have recovered from his serious health issue and inability to walk.—ed]
CNN continues….
“I see these cases and it’s joyful when a child reunites with a parent and it’s all wonderful superficially but you can’t get that time back. The child doesn’t know their parents … just the psychological impact to the family for as long as the delay continues,” Plummer said. [Taxpayer-funded counseling ahead?—ed]
All of that is to set the tone for the rest of the article that goes on to bash the Trump Administration.
We do learn that no date has been set to resume refugee resettlement.
Refugee arrivals to the US were suspended as of March 19, with the exception of certain emergency cases, a State Department spokesperson told CNN.
No date has been provided on when admissions will resume.The spokesperson said State “will seek to resume refugee arrivals when it is safe and logistically feasible to do so, subject to any travel restrictions in place at that time.”
Some refugees are in America for years and never learn to speak English, and indeed many arrive in America unable to read in their own language, so now refugee resettlement agencies are scrambling to get out instructions to immigrant communities while they close their own doors to avoid face to face contact with their “clients.”
Language a barrier in getting coronavirus information to all
Those who don’t speak English may have trouble getting updates about what coronavirus is and its spread. Local and state immigrant and refugee advocates are working to get resources to people in the language they speak and read.
As many Americans try to absorb all the information they can on the coronavirus and its spread in Ohio, some are left out of the conversation entirely.
Advocates for immigrants and refugees say about 200 languages are spoken in the state, and many of those advocates are working to make sure the individuals who speak those languages can get information about the rapidly spreading virus in ways they can understand.
[….]
Advocates aren’t the only ones trying to make sure that everyone is reached.
The Ohio Department of Health is linking to CDC resources in other languages on its website, coronavirus.ohio.gov, spokeswoman Melanie Amato said. The agency is also reaching out to local organizations for translation resources and the Ohio Hispanic Coalition is working to translate press releases.
At US Together, a local refugee resettlement agency, staff members began being trained last week on how to prepare themselves and their clients for the virus, Emily Locke, a communications specialist with US Together, said in an email.
The training focused on what the virus is, how it spreads and which communities are vulnerable. They also addressed how to identify symptoms, prevent the virus and prepare food and supplies to deal with the outbreak.
On Monday, the resettlement agency closed its offices to the public and said its employees will work with clients by phone, email and other technology. [So much for looking out for the newly arrived refugees!—ed]
By the way, yesterday I wondered if refugee agency volunteers were still meeting refugees at airports (new refugees were arriving up to last Thursday), but it sure looks like either the State Department has now wisely cut off the flow of new arrivals or those that do arrive are on their own!
Top Ten Languages spoken by refugees arriving in America.
It’s been a long time since I reported on this information available at the Refugee Processing Center. This is a good time to tell you about it.
Don’t forget! According to aClinton-era Executive Orderyour local and state governments are on the hook for the cost of interpreters.
(By the way, the growing cost of interpreter services, especially involving medical services, is something I never see calculated in any economic study of whether immigrants/refugees benefit the economy.)
Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken in East Africa. Kinyarwanda is a Rwandan language. Sgaw Karen is a Burmese language.
For my recent posts onCOVID-19see that I have a tag for it.
Editor’s note: As RRW approaches its 13th birthday, there are over 10,000 posts archived here at Refugee Resettlement Watch. Unfortunately, it is just me here with no staff and so it has become virtually impossible to answer all of the basic questions that come into my e-mail inbox or to RRW’s facebook page every day. I don’t want to appear rude—I simply haven’t enough hours in the day.
Please take time tovisit RRW (don’t just read posts in your e-mail) and use the search window in the right hand sidebar and see if you can find the information you need. Also see my series that I wrote in recent months entitled Knowledge is Powerwhich explains some basic principles of how Refugee Resettlement is carried out in the US.
And, lastly, I don’t write that much every day, so if you made a habit of reading my posts here on a daily basis, you would eventually catch on to what is happening because I do link back to previous posts as much as possible. LOL! Thank you for helping me not go crazy!
John Binder does excellent work on the immigration/refugee beat for Breitbart and this is one post I missed (lost in my overflowing e-mail inbox).
Thanks to reader Robert for bringing it to my attention.
More confirmation that we aren’t only dealing with liberal Open Borders types on immigration, but must battle Chamber of Commerce Republicans who are shilling for businesses looking to make money off of the immigrant population either as cheap labor or consumers.
As one of my readers once quipped—refugees buy used cars.
Ohio GOP Chair Defends Republicans Importing Refugees to Fill U.S. Jobs
Chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party, Jane Timken, is defending Republican governors like Ohio’s Mike DeWine for asking the federal government to continue resettling refugees in their states.
[….]
Coupled with the refugee reduction, Trump signed an executive order that gives localities, counties, and states veto power over whether they want to resettle refugees in their communities.
DeWine, along with 18 other Republican governors, announced he would continue allowing refugee contractors to resettle refugees in Ohio — a decision that Timken is now defending using widely circulated talking points, which Breitbart News exclusively reported.
Here are the 19 Republican governors who thumbed their noses at President Trump and said—send us more impoverished people willing to work for low wages and for our taxpayers to support!
An orange X indicates those who quickly dissed the Prez, and the pink X marks the second wave of Republican governors who told Trump they want more refugees. Of course Governor Abbott of Texas is the only governor to say NO (so far).
In a statement to Ohio Republicans, Timken said she is “supportive of Governor DeWine’s decision” to bring more refugees to Ohio, declaring without evidence that the refugee vetting process has been fixed and thus previous national security concerns are no longer valid:
“Accusations that the federal government is letting dangerous individuals into the country through poor vetting are no longer accurate. President Trump’s administration approves every refugee resettled into Ohio, and the process is now very stringent. We can now be confident in how the federal government is vetting refugees.”
Vetting is only one issue, what about Ohioans who need jobs?
Does the President know she opposes his refugee reform effort?
Like so many other state officials she doesn’t know how the program works.
We get a lot of Chinese asylum seekers (who get across our borders without any vetting and then apply for asylum), but vetted Chinese refugees are rare.
Timken also said refugees arriving in the U.S. today “are truly victims of oppression,” citing that “an example of someone who would be able to seek refugee status would be a Christian in China who is being persecuted by the Chinese government for her religious beliefs.”
That example, though, is not indicative of the refugees who are often resettled in Ohio. Since Trump’s inauguration in 2017, only 18 refugees from China have been admitted to the U.S. and none have been resettled in Ohio.
Ohio, since 2017, has resettled nearly 4,500 refugees in areas like Cleveland Heights, Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. The majority of these refugees have arrived from Bhutan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Ukraine.
[….]
Today, there are more than 242,600 unemployed Ohioans — indicating that Ohio has the sixth-largest unemployed state population in the U.S. just behind Pennsylvania with an unemployed population of about 293,000. Likewise, Ohio’s unemployment rate of 4.2 percent remains above the national average.
Refugee contractors are trying to “chart a path forward” as refugee admissions this year are set to be the lowest they have ever been since Senators Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and the peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, created the US Refugee Admissions Program that became law in 1980.
It’s been a long time since I reported on this information available at the 
