When your city has become a preferred resettlement site for refugees from the third world, eventually you will get to this point—needing workshops on “cultural understanding” and how “service providers” can do a better job supplying taxpayer-funded services to the city’s new impoverished people.
Mental health providers and other community members learned more about area refugees’ needs in a forum Friday hosted by Community Action of Southern Kentucky.
Refugees in Bowling Green sometimes don’t have easy access to services and resources they need, said Asti Offutt, mental health coordinator for the refugee service program at Community Action of Southern Kentucky.
“Because of the language barrier they are often ostracized or isolated in the community,” she said.
More than 100 people participated in the event throughout the day, which included two sessions – one for community partners and one for mental health providers, Offutt said.
Such a turnout indicates the need and desire for service providers to know more about refugee resettlement, she said.
Offutt said she wants to put together more programs, such as workshops to focus on cultural understanding of some of Bowling Green’s biggest refugee groups.
The program Friday was titled “Contextualizing the Refugee Experience: A Community Forum on the Resilience and Needs of Refugees in Bowling Green.”
Check out the community organizers at Community Action of Southern Kentucky—you are funding them! Out of an income of $15.7 million in their latest Form 990, government grants (you!) supplied them with $15.3 million.
Bowling Green, Bowling Green, where have we heard that before? Oh yeh! Here, on ABC’s Nightline about how Iraqi refugee terrorists found their way to Kentucky!
For more on Bowling Green, we have a lengthy archive here.
For our previous posts on Springfield, Massachusetts where Mayor Domenic Sarno asked the US State Department to halt resettlement of more refugees to the greater Springfield area until the ones already resettled had assimilated and dug their way out of poverty, go here.
Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno wants answers!
This is the latest from The Republican, which had been thoroughly covering the controversial issue. It never ceases to amaze me how arrogant the resettlement contractors are and how unwilling they are to release even the most basic information about how the Refugee Resettlement program operates. You can see that as you read through the full story. Here is how it begins (emphasis mine):
SPRINGFIELD — Two months after Mayor Domenic Sarno urged the federal government to stop sending new refugees to Springfield, a local task force will meet Thursday to respond to the mayor’s concerns about hardships faced by the refugees and the city.
Sarno said the meeting, along with documents provided last week by the two refugee resettlement agencies in Western Massachusetts, seem to be a positive first step.
“Hopefully, this is the beginning of an open and honest dialogue with the resettlement agencies,” Sarno said Thursday, after receiving 14 documents that further explain the refugee resettlement program and the assistance received by refugees. “While we are an open and caring city, we cannot keep concentrating poverty on top of poverty.”
Sarno said he continues to have serious concerns that too many refugees are being placed in Springfield, straining city services such as schools, code enforcement, and police because of cases of substandard housing, claims of inadequate services by some refugees and their advocates, and challenges refugees face pertaining to language, education and employment.
The two resettlement agencies — the Lutheran Social Services of New England and the Jewish Family Services of Western Massachusetts – said they were unable to release information sought by The Republican last week regarding the numbers of refugees resettled in Springfield and the region in the past fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.In addition, they did not respond to a question if the refugees have continued being resettled.
Holy cow! They resettled 1,771 refugees in Springfield just this year! (Update! The more I think about this, it can’t be right, something is missing at the data table. Maybe this is for the last ten years!)
Also, remember this may only represent a portion of the refugees who arrived in Springfield over the years because others may have come from other cities to join their relatives and friends there, so no one has the complete number of secondary migrants (they are not tracked).
Here are the countries from which they came (the highest number, 368, were Somalis):
Afghanistan
Azerbaijan
Belarus
Bhutan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Burma
Burundi
Dem. Rep. Congo
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Iran
Iraq
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Latvia
Liberia
Moldova
Russia
Rwanda
Sierra Leone
Somalia
Sudan
Syria
Ukraine
Uzbekistan
Vietnam
I don’t know the names of surrounding cities and towns, but a local reporter could visit the site and put it all together for the area surrounding Springfield.
Here are some snips from the story at New America Media (hat tip: Joanne):
….a public health care worker [Mohamed] who helps refugees from African and Middle-Eastern countries says once Obamacare is launched she will no longer have to witness her clients getting bumped off health care benefits eight months after they arrive in the United States, even as they are still trying to navigate the new culture. [She is referring to the initial health care that comes with each refugee, thanks to the US taxpayer—ed]
[….]
The ACA [Affordable Care Act] will require insurers to treat psychiatric illness like any other.It will also remove many of the obstacles to fair treatment, Muñoz said.
Mohamed [Amina Sheik Mohamed], program director at UCSD’s Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, and active in the African and Middle-Eastern refugee communities, said that if refugees can now enroll in Medi-Cal because of its expansion, they need no longer face the short-term health care their refugee status now limits them to.
That aside, Obamacare will allow refugees to access the mental health services they so acutely need, she said.
“Refugees come to the United States with a lot of anxiety and stress,” she pointed out. “They need mental health care.”
Yes they do! See our ‘health issues’category (168 previous posts!) for more on refugee mental illness. For new readers, to learn what other benefits refugees receive in addition to health care, see our Fact Sheet by clicking here.
This is a good article at Breitbart, but like most other news outlets they assume that the Catholic Church’s campaign for amnesty is being driven by its desire to add Hispanics to its dwindling flocks (and to show that they are good Christians), but few ever look at the fact that the Bishops are being funded by massive amounts of taxpayer dollars and the so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill that passed the Senate will give them gobs of more money!
Right now the Bishops are over 98% funded by tax dollars* and they are being paid to get refugees and asylees hooked up with social services. S. 744 contains aslush fund for the Bishops and others of the religious Left to do that same work for the newly legalized—help them do their paperwork, find jobs, find welfare, sign them up for Obamacare, and supposedly get them English lessons.
I’m a fallen-away Catholic and the main reason is this: I want no politics mixed with my religious worship, and the Church will have to really make sure they get the Hispanics because hearing a Leftwing political message (as is planned for September 8th) from the pulpit will only serve to drive more conservative-minded people from the Church.
Kevin Appleby, USCCB lobbyist pushing amnesty for money!
If you attend Mass on September 8th, it is likely the priest’s homily will be less about spiritual matters and more about the political imperative of passing an amnesty law for the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants. Last week, the Catholic Church announced a massive, coordinated effort to press Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship. Catholics make up the largest single religious group in Congress.
“We want to try to pull out all the stops,” Kevin Appleby, the director of migration policy at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the New York Times. Appleby said the immigration issue was at a now-or-never moment.“They have to hear the message that we want this done, and if you’re not successful during the summer, you’re not going to win by the end of the year.”
The Church is planning advertising, phone calls and marches targeting 60 Catholic House Republicans. Over 130 members of the House are Catholic, including Speaker John Boehner.
The Bishops are working harder on amnesty then on Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate and abortion!
The Church’s effort in support of amnesty seems broader and more coordinated than its actions against an ObamaCare mandate requiring coverage of contraception. In recent years, the Church has been more vocal in its criticism of abortion, but even that seems muted in comparison with current plans on immigration reform.
The Bishop’s lobbyist Appleby (Director of Migration Policy) will be pimping for amnesty and giving out marching orders in Minneapolis on September 4th. If you live in the area you might want to drop in on this meeting. After all, you help pay Appleby’s salary.
*The USCCB and YOUR money
Now check out the USCCB’s migration fund 2012 annual report (pdf here) and note on page 11 their income and expenses (I’ve rounded the numbers for easier reading).
Out of a revenue stream of $71 million, federal grants and contracts (that is you the taxpayer!) gave them $66 million. They also received $3.6 million from refugee travel loans. Your tax dollars pay for refugees to fly to America and then they are supposed to reimburse the government, but in fact a big chunk of whatever the refugee contractor extracts from the poor refugees, the contractor gets to keep—in the Bishops case, in 2012, that is $3.6 million that does not go back to the US Treasury.
Taking Caesar’s money! 98% of their budget is paid by the US taxpayer!
So, the USCCB only received $1.4 million from private sources of money (parishioners), but they paid salaries of $8 million!
The USCCB would wither on the vine and not be able to lobby if you, the taxpayer, weren’t funding them!
So, come on Breitbart! Let’s go a little deeper with your reporting!
Update: Here is an old story, but related. Catholic Charities in Memphis, TN dropped its refugee program in favor of spending more time and money on Hispanics. They will be well-placed for the newly amnestied!
This is a report from Bobbie Patray of theTennessee Eagle Forumabout the first meeting of a select committee of the Tennessee legislature to address the 10th Amendment of the Constitution and the encroachment by the federal government on states’ rights in regards to the resettlement of migrants in the state by Catholic Charities (through the US State Department).
Holly Johnson, Catholic Charities TN, with her Idaho counterpart at 2010 Refugee meeting. In Tennessee, Catholic Charities calls the shots on resettlement.
See our earlier coverage here. (You will find links there for reports from The Tennesseanand Nashville Public Radio.)
Patray:
It was an exciting day to be at Legislative Plaza and see history being made yesterday. The first official meeting of the Joint Legislative Advisory Committee was convened. This creation of and mission of this committee grew out of the increasing concern of both legislators and grassroots activists about the ongoing encroachment of the federal government on the constitutional rights of the sovereign states.
Members of the committee are: Rep. Judd Matheny, Chairman, Rep. John Ragan, Rep. Joe Carr, Rep. Josh Evans, Rep. Mike Turner, Sen. Mike Bell, Sen. Janice Bowling, Sen. Ferrell Haile, Sen. Thelma Harper, Sen. Jim Summerville. All members were present except Sen. Harper.
There was enough interest in this important issue that other legislators attended: Rep. Jeremy Faison, Rep. G.A. Hardaway, Rep. David Alexander, Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver, Rep. Shelia Butt, Sen. Mark Green, M.D., Sen. Frank Niceley.
It was that concern that drove the motive for taking up the first issue of this committee: The Federal Cost Shifting of the Refugee Resettlement program.
As one article stated: “A newly-created legislative committee met for the first time Wednesday to investigate the indirect fiscal impact of refugee resettlements. They were given an unsatisfying answer: no one is keeping track.”
That is the problem. Each year, lawmakers are responsible for passing a budget and certainly have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayer to know where these dollars are going. Except….in this case…they don’t!!!
Chairman Judd Matheny CLEARLY laid out the parameters of the discussion: It was ONLY about the COST SHIFTING to the states. It was NOT about the value of the refugee resettlement program, it was NOT about what the refugees bring to this state, it was NOT about the work that the providers or participants do.
It is not just Tennessee lawmakers that have these concerns. Two years ago, the National Governors Association stated: “The federal government’s unwillingness to provide adequate funding for costs attributable to migration and resettlement services has resulted in a dramatic shift of program costs from the federal government to state and local taxpayers.”
The first speaker, Kasar Abdulla, started telling her personal story, which, of course, was compelling. However, as was stated earlier, the value of the program was NOT the subject of the hearing. Chairman Matheny asked her a couple of time to please stick to the topic, but she did not and, in fact, clearly was not prepared to do that. So the Chairman called for the next speaker, Holly Johnson, State Refugee Coordinator, Tennessee Office for Refugees, Catholic Charities of TN, Inc. After Miss Johnson spoke, Don Barnett and Joanne Bregman, Esq. addressed the committee. Bregman’s testimony was incredible as she revealed the cold, hard facts and figures. The last speaker Stephen Fotopulos, with the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition was totally out of line with his testimony.
Just as a snapshot, Sen. Mark Green, M.D., observed that using the two numbers provided in the testimonies, the refugee program would be costing TennCare between $7.2million and $12.1million over a four year period. This is the kind of information that is desperately needed for budget purposes and that we have not been able to get hard figures on. The committee passed a motion to ask the Fiscal Review Committee to do a comprehensive study of all aspects of this program with emphasis on any cost shifting, expenses incurred, what enabling legislation they are acting under, including a proportionality of refugees coming to TN versus other states to present at the November 12 meeting.
Click here to watch the proceedings. For more on Tennessee and refugees, click here.
Photo is from this story about a Wilson-Fish (Office of Refugee Resettlement) meeting in Washington, here. When you click that W-F link you can see if your state refugee program is now being run by a non-governmental agency.
Oops! Depending on your screen size, in an earlier version of this post, the TEF logo blocks Johnson’s face… should have checked that first!
When your city has become a preferred resettlement site for refugees from the third world, eventually you will get to this point—needing workshops on “cultural understanding” and how “service providers” can do a better job supplying taxpayer-funded services to the city’s new impoverished people.
This is a report from Bobbie Patray of the