Tag: Pittsburgh PA

Pittsburgh at “tipping point” as refugee population mushrooms

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Could we be seeing a new “pocket of resistance” growing, this time in Pennsylvania?

UH-OH!  Last year at the Lancaster, PA refugee pow-wow I attended, the ORR speaker assured the audience that there were no pockets in PA.

From the Pittsburgh Tribune (hat tip: Paul):

World Refugee Day celebrated in Pittsburgh. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2013/06/25/pittsburgh-world-refugee-day-brought-out-the-diversity-but-few-americans/

Pittsburgh and surrounding communities have reached a “tipping point” and need to plan for a rapidly rising and diverse foreign population, immigration experts tell the Tribune-Review.

“The changes we’re seeing today, which we’ve been seeing for years now and are building, are not merely anecdotal. We’ve reached the tipping point,” said Barbara Murock, manager of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services’ Immigrants and Internationals Initiative.

Murock said that means social welfare agencies, public service nonprofits and religious groups should expand literacy training, career counseling and health care programs for foreign families.

I guess they couldn’t find any local critics willing to speak on the record to a reporter, but they did get Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington to say a few words near the end of the article:

Critics voice concern about how the U.S. refugee resettlement program has morphed over the past decade, arguing that for every success story such as Pittsburgh’s Bhutanese there are others, such as Somali farmers, who struggle in 21st-century urban America.

They want the government to slash refugee quotas.

“The State Department should look at refugee resettlement in the United States as an absolute last resort, not the first. That’s been my problem with the policies. They took the easy way out and sent them here,” said Mark Krikorian, who directs the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies.

Read it all here.  Don’t miss the LIVELY comments (do I detect resistance?).

This is how the State Department rolls. They find a community that by its silence is deemed “welcoming” and then they don’t know when to stop delivering more refugees.  I’ll be keeping an eye on Pittsburgh and report back when we see the first real local push-back make the news.

By the way, the reporter never quite explains what happens when the “tipping point” is reached.

We did earlier this year report on refugee mental health problems in Pittsburgh, in addition to the World Refugee Day no-show article last year.

VDARE has an amusing analysis of this news items and Pittsburgh’s plight, here (refugees “enriching” Pittsburgh) yesterday.

More on refugee mental health issues from Pittsburgh

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Translation services are going to cost your “welcoming” community a bundle going forward (not to mention the cost itself of mental health treatment for immigrants).

This is another in a series of articles written by reporter Erika Beras and published here at the local NPR station.  We have mentioned previously two of Ms. Beras’s excellent investigative reports, here and here.

From WESA (Pittsburgh’s NPR station).  Emphasis below is mine:

Barbara Murock, Immigrants and International Initiative Manager for Allegheny County’s Department of Human Services. Does your county have such a position?

Pittsburgh was once an immigrant foothold. European and Middle Eastern immigrants and black migrants from the Jim Crow American South built the city into what it is. But when industry began to shutter in the ’70s, people started moving away in droves. And for a long time, people didn’t move in.

It’s only been in the last few years that census numbers have ticked upward. Some of that is young people moving to Pittsburgh from other cities, but it’s also refugees. Several thousand have been resettled here in the last few years by four resettlement agencies, and others move here after being resettled elsewhere.

In some ways it’s a perfect fit: There is ample employment and affordable housing stock. But in some critical ways, it’s not a good fit at all.  [What is the ample employment in Pittsburgh?—ed]

“Pittsburgh is about 20 years behind the rest of the country when it comes to immigrants,” said Barbara Murock, the Immigrants and International Initiative Manager for Allegheny County’s Department of Human Services, a relatively new initiative. “We’re still learning and we’re at a tipping point in terms of having enough immigrants that we need to start developing systems and programs and pathways for people to obtain services that they need.”  [What is that going to cost the taxpayers of the county?—ed]

Those services include everything from having interpreters in a slew of languages in the courts and schools and drug and alcohol treatment centers.

However, making services available is more than just language. For refugees, a lot of what they don’t understand is cultural.

What follows is a section worth reading about how in some cultures it is taboo to seek any mental health treatment.  Note one star of the story has “situational depression.”  I guess that means he has become disenchanted with life in America.  One proposal for reform I’ve mentioned previously is for the resettlement contractors to set aside money (preferably theirs!) for an airfare fund to send refugees back to their home country who are not cutting-it in the US.  Some want to go home but are trapped here in nasty jobs at low wages and can’t afford the airfare.

Federally mandated translation services could bust your city or county budget!

Those services are expensive and not always easily accessible. The cost of an interpreter, even on the phone, can be high. The translation services the center uses averages $5,000 a month. They also use in-person interpreters, staff who speak a variety of languages.

[….]

By law, health care providers that receive federal monies such as UPMC have to provide interpreter services, and they do in more than 200 languages. That number is only expected to grow as the number of refugees in the community grows and changes.

Readers should try to find out what translation services are costing your local government.  It isn’t just health care services that must provide an interpreter, but the court system as well.   Even when some refugee has a minor traffic problem and ends up in local court—he or she must have a translator!

Pittsburgh: Bhutanese have more health problems

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last week we reported on the mental health issues plaguing America’s 70,000-strong Bhutanese refugee population and now according to reporter Erika Beras, here at New America Media, it seems they are also being plagued by diabetes they got after arriving in America.  Type II diabetes is associated with too much weight gain.   Sure is a good thing Obamacare has come along to take care of them!

And get this!  Pittsburgh now has 4,000-5,000 Bhutanese (mostly Hindu) refugees.   That population growth is only since 2008!

Bhutanese family in Pittsburgh sees first snow! Reporters love these refugee snow stories! http://www.alleghenyfront.org/story/new-natural-world-bhutanese-refugees-brave-pa-weather

From New America Media:

On a typical weekday morning, 47-year-old Tek Nepal is moving about the Mount Oliver duplex he shares with his wife, sons, daughter-in-law and grandchild.

He works nights, so he gets his family time in the mornings. And often, that time centers around eating. Those meals used to consist of lots of starches. But since a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis last year, they have changed.

“I don’t eat rice at all. I don’t eat potatoes. I try to eat a lot of green vegetables like lettuce, spinach … carrots, and I don’t eat totally fried things,” he said, showing off a chart of appropriate foods on his kitchen wall.

Nepal is ethnically Nepalese. He was resettled in California as a refugee, moved to Tennessee, then Pittsburgh, which has a lower cost of living and boasts a growing Bhutanese-Nepalese population. Before coming to the U.S., he spent 17 years in refugee camps in Bhutan.

About 4,000 to 5,000 ethnically Bhutanese-Nepalese refugees call Pittsburgh home. Having migrated in the last six years, it’s a new population that is falling into an old immigrant paradox.

Nearly 26 million Americans have diabetes, and another 79 million are pre-diabetic, up sharply over the last few decades. Included among those statistics are newer Americans, people such as Nepal who came here as refugees. According to a study published in the journal Human Biology, an immigrant’s risk of obesity and hypertension — indicators of diabetes — grow with every year they are here.

At the Squirrel Hill Health Center, a federally qualified facility that provides the bulk of initial and follow-up care to refugees, Chief Medical Officer Andrea Fox is perpetually busy. She spots trends in her patient population. Rarely do the Bhutanese come to the U.S. with a diabetes diagnosis, but they’ve found a high prevalence of the disease in those they treat.

[…..]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention monitors refugee populations. Among their priority health conditions for the Bhutanese are anemia, B12 vitamin deficiency and mental health. They haven’t been tracking diabetes numbers.

There is a lot more.  Check out the nice kitchen!

See our ‘health issues’ category for 191 previous posts on refugee health problems.  We have them all—HIV/AIDS, TB, intestinal parasites, mental health issues, and now diabetes.

Mayor Bloomberg, super rich, pushing the meme that immigrants are responsible for large percentage of new American businesses

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

When you read a story like this one in the New Pittsburgh Courier (Hat tip from Tennessee), you know that something stinks.

It makes absolutely no sense that poor refugees and other immigrants are the driving force for the small business community.  The truth is that this is just political spin and new “entrepreneurial” immigrant businesses are heavily supported and funded with special loans and grants that are available to them (and not to Americans!) gratis the US taxpayer.

Diversity is strength, right? Togolese will bring ‘culturally appropriate’ day care facility to Pittsburgh. Well, at least they obviously aren’t Muslims! From Fotopedia

LOL! As my informant from Tennessee says, if the resettlement contractors and immigrant advocacy groups are so good at getting immigrants employed, why don’t they give Americans a little help?

Here is the story which of course in a back-handed way says Americans are just plain lazy, while immigrants work their butts off.   My first thought on reading this was, how many of those Mom & Pop convenience stores being busted for food stamp fraud are in the glowing stats?

The topic of immigration reform has been in the forefront of President Barack Obama’s agenda for several years. His goal is to fix what he calls the broken immigration system so that it can be “fairer for and help grow the middle class by ensuring everyone plays by the same rules.”  The President is requesting approval by the Senate and House of a comprehensive immigration overhaul measure for him to sign into law by years end.  To Rufus Idris, a native of Kogi State, Nigeria and executive director of the Christian Evangelistic Economic Development organization, the Immigration Bill is a wise move. [More immigrants=more government grants!—ed]

For the past nine years CEED has built a reputation for assisting and developing small businesses in the region. A large portion of those businesses have been established by the immigrant and refugee population. “Creating more businesses that strengthens our economy and create jobs for Americans is inevitable.

Idris indicated that businesses under five years old are responsible for all net job creation over the past three decades in America, and a critical driver of new business creation in America has been entrepreneurial immigrants. “Immigrants start small businesses in their quest to become economically self-sufficient and serve the consumer needs of the local and global community,” he said.

In his strong support of the Immigrant Bill he cited that the Partnership for a New American Economy found that immigrants are now more than twice as likely as the native-born to start a business and were responsible for more than one in every four (28 percent) U.S. businesses founded in 2011, significantly outpacing their share of the population (12.9 percent).

If these stats are even true (given their source!), could it be the government grants and government micro-loans are behind the “entrepreneurs?”  You betcha!  And, do we know the failure rate?

It’s for the women, don’t you know!

Partnership for a New Economy is made up of leftwing big city mayors and BIG business leaders with “Nanny” Bloomberg topping the list, thus tainting this whole story!  Marriott hotels (Bill Marriott Jr is a co-chair) wants to be sure their cheap laborers have daycare for the kids (funded by you, not them)—what is wrong with that?

I kid you not!  To give an example of the “entrepreneurial” spirit, the article goes on to discuss all the fabulous work the Pittsburgh area welfare agencies  and quasi non-profits are doing to develop a program to teach refugee and immigrant women how to set up their own CULTURALLY APPROPRIATE DAY CARE facilities—I told you about this Office of Refugee Resettlement federal grant program here in March in a post entitled,  “Come and get it—free government money…!”

So, how many of you think any assimilation is going on when Allegheny County, PA is encouraging separate day care businesses for its Somali, Liberian, Togolese, South Sudanese, Burmese and Bhutanese immigrant populations (at your expense!)?

Suicide rate high in US Bhutanese refugee communities

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I told you about Director Eskinder Negash’s year-end review for the Office of Refugee Resettlement here and here recently.  There was one paragraph in his report that I noted to follow up on.  It was this:

ORR has been working with CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) to try to understand what is triggering suicides in Bhutanese refugee communities, undertaking an Epi-Aid study focusing on eleven communities in four states: (1) Arizona (Phoenix and Tucson), (2) Georgia (Atlanta Metropolitan Area, including Atlanta, Clarkston, Decatur, and Stone Mountain), (3) New York (Buffalo, and Syracuse) and (4) Texas (Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston). Results of the study were shared with ORR in October, and ORR is following up on CDC recommendations and next steps.

Here is the report from the CDC dated October 2012.  Sixteen newly resettled Bhutanese/Nepali refugees killed themselves in a three year period alarming the social engineers at the ORR in Washington DC, and within a year of getting to the US.   Researchers had data on 14 of those and interviewed family members to try to ascertain why they killed themselves (13 by hanging).  The reasons were in order of importance:  language barriers, worry about family back home, separation from family, and difficulty in maintaining cultural and religious traditions.

You will have to go to the report for the CDC’s recommendations which include more mental health screening for refugees, building support in communities among families etc, and expanding mental health facilities for refugees.

Just a reminder to readers that there was much angst and consternation in the refugee camps in Nepal where these refugees had lived for going on two decades about coming to the US in the first place.  We wrote about it on several occasions as the great emptying of camps began in 2007.  We reported last month that in the ensuing years we have resettled over 60,000 Bhutanese/Nepali people, so that meatpackers would have some more good docile workers, the contractors could get your taxpayer dollars, the Dems could get more voters and Americans could feel all warm and fuzzy about giving them this opportunity (I just threw that last part in there because I’m so cynical now!).

And, just so you know, some Bhutanese are doing well. Here is one glowing report from Pittsburgh, PA.   But, oops! it is the location of one of the suicides as we reported here in 2010 (Sheesh, I googled Pittsburgh Bhutanese and my own post came up!).