Utah: Too many refugees? Just say, no! Wyoming did!

Utah is feeling the strain with too many refugees for the welfare system to handle. No sympathy here because you could just say, no! Tell the US State Department to tell their NGO contractors to cut the flow until you can get caught up with the needs of your own destitute people before they send you more from all corners of the world.  If you have trouble getting the State Department’s attention, then tell your Congressional delegation to get involved. 

Here is what the Salt Lake Tribune says today:

The dilemma has been raised on the governor’s advisory committee examining refugee services, said Michael Gallegos, director of the Salt Lake County Division of Community Resources and Development. “The question has come up: Can we turn the faucet down a little bit so we can get prepared and deal with issues already in front of us?” he said. “We don’t have the capacity to serve the refugees we have right now.”

Upon arrival, refugees are eligible for food stamps, cash assistance programs, Medicaid and other services, some of which are available for years, some for as little as eight months.

But after receiving initial housing assistance, refugee families join thousands of other Utahns hoping to obtain a federal subsidy that can significantly discount their rent. Many in this new wave of refugees will join more than 4,000 residents already on the Salt Lake City Housing Authority waiting list. They will have to wait at least two years to get a housing discount voucher

Frankly, I don’t get this. What is everyone so afraid of?  Afraid of looking “unwelcoming”?  Maybe someone will call you a racist?  There is nothing wrong with saying, we need a little breather here.  Wyoming does not participate in refugee resettlement and I don’t see that state maligned for the decision. 

Then this last line is really annoying.   

Refugees often feel helpless and alone when faced with a stack of critical documents linking them to food, medical care and other services .
“We’ve had people say, ‘It was better in the camps,’ ” Brown [Utah Refugee Services Director] said. 

We have from the earliest days of writing this blog advocated for the institution of a social and economic impact study of cities and states to help determine if a locale could handle new refugees.  If it was regularly updated better planning would surely result.

We have an extensive archive on Utah here.  Sadly Utah made the news a few months ago as the location where a little Burmese refugee girl was raped and murdered by another refugee in their housing complex.

Volunteers are good for refugees, while volag lets them down

This is a story I missed from earlier in the month.   It’s a touching story from North Carolina about how a couple of women have been a Godsend to Burmese Karen Christian refugees who felt abandoned.   Read the whole story here.

There is a single sentence near the end of the article that caught the eye of one of our readers.

Paw Yeh shared how deserted her family felt when a refugee caseworker dropped them off at their Carrboro apartment with two days of rice and not even so much as a blanket.

Which volag left these poor scared people with some rice and nothing else?    Was it Lutheran Family Services, World Relief, or possibly the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, all paid government contractors operating in North Carolina?

Reforms needed

We see over and over again in differant parts of the country where the volags are actually discouraging citizen volunteer help with refugees while one of the important reforms we have advocated is increased involvement by the public with the care and assimilation of refugees, not less.    Had a church or other group been lined up to greet and care for this family they would never have been “dropped off” to an empty apartment.

 

International Institute of New Hampshire screws up

Add the International Institute of New Hampshire to the list of subcontractors of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) not taking care of refugees.   I know I said this before (in my Akron post), but I really couldn’t believe my eyes to see the complaints leveled against this volag in Manchester, NH and how similar they are to complaints in Waterbury, CT and Akron, OH.   The Union Leader says:

Even so, Sanderson’s [longtime director of the Institute] departure follows an approximate four-month period in which community refugee advocates brought concerns about refugee resettlement in Manchester to the institute’s Boston headquarters and U.S. Sen. John E. Sununu, who relayed them to the U.S. State Department, his spokesman said.

Sununu, R-N.H., said his office is reviewing how many federal funds go toward settling refugees in New Hampshire and how it is spent.

“Are the right resources being allocated to housing, to health care, to education?” Sununu asked during a recent visit to Manchester.

Dear US State Department, why is the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants even one of the top ten refugee resettlement government contractors?  Is it because USCRI President Limon has come through the government/NGO revolving door?

Advocates said they raised other issues since late winter: poor quality, insect-infested housing; the institute’s alleged unwillingness to forge cooperative relationships with civic and church groups and volunteers whom refugees often turn to for help; questions about how federal funds allotted each refugee are split between the refugee and resettlement agency; and Manchester’s capacity to absorb more refugees.

Manchester sounds exactly like Waterbury.  Most puzzling to me is why do these International Institute’s not seek enough help from churches and apparently even turn volunteers off.  We have been advocating a reform of the program that would put more responsibility for resettlement on volunteer churches and other groups, not less! 

Baines [former mayor, Robert Baines] was mayor in 2004 when the city succeeded in getting a three-month moratorium imposed on refugee resettlement after Manchester became overwhelmed with an unexpected influx of mostly Africans, including 34 children who became lead poisoned. Baines attributed most of the problems to the state’s other refugee resettlement agency, the Concord-based Lutheran Social Services of Northern New England, which he said brought refugees to Manchester without notifying school, health and other city officials.

Since then, the state’s largest city — which historically has absorbed most of the state’s refugees — has suggested other communities share in taking in refugees. 

That is no surprise.  We are hearing that everywhere?   Why us?  Why so many to our city?  It is simply because you let the program take root in the first place and at one point some leaders in your city were perceived as “welcoming”.  And, anyone who squawked too loud was silenced with charges that they were racist, xenophobic and uncharitable.

Based on some hardhitting comments to the Union Leader, the city isn’t so “welcoming” any more.  Here are just two:

While the citizens of this state and this country continue to get strangled by rising prices and a devalued dollar, we are forced to be a host to people without basic means of support. This is done against our will and without a vote. Therefore every employee of the International Institute as well as Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Charaties should be identified and then mandated to pay for every refugee that is settled here. They should also be mandated to serve the prison term each refugee recieves for any crimes commited. Then you would see how fast this BS would stop.
- John S., Manchester, NH 

Whether you’re a hard-nosed conservative or a bleeding-heart liberal, the bottom line is this: the will of the people must dictate political action. If a majority of residents are in favor of these programs, do it. If a majority are against, you don’t do it. Too often in this country, people like Bracy, Benedict-Drew and Sununu act without the slightest regard for the will of the majority of the community’s residents/voters.
- Matt, Manchester

John and Matt have hit the nail on the head.  If the volags (supposedly volunteer resettlement agencies) had to use their own funds (and not the taxpayers funds), resettlement would be slowed to a manageable level.  Also, we have contended from the earliest days of this blog that communities should be given all the facts and then the community should decide if they want refugees in the first place, or at some point should be able to say they have enough for now.

You know the old saying, “the buck stops here,”  well this buck stops with the US State Department and USCRI whose pres., Lavinia Limon , gets a few of those bucks herself ($195,000 annual salary courtesy of the US Taxpayer). 

Read about Waterbury, CT here and Akron, OH here. 

Fort Wayne, IN: Volag cat fight?

I’m posting this whole short article from the Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette about a second refugee agency horning in on Catholic Charities territory in Ft. Wayne, IN.   The article is revealing in several ways.  First, it confirms what we have written about in the past that the top ten volags (not really voluntary agencies because they get paid) are competing with each other for customers (refugees).

The article also helps answer a question I had from a reader just this morning.  The reader (who learned about us because I wrote a letter to VDARE) asked how are cities picked to be resettlement cities?  This article confirms another thing we have written about, that the volags (and not the federal government) choose the cities.  Volags are non-governmental organizations!  They have no power over local community governments!   

And, pay attention!  This is really important!  Once a city is deemed “welcoming” and doesn’t squawk it will receive more refugees through family reunification.  The volags take applications for family members from the refugees they have previously placed and the refugee population increases while the volags get the per head government payment.

Here is the whole article:

 

An international humanitarian aid organization will visit Fort Wayne next week to discuss opening a refugee resettlement office in the city.

Five staff members of World Relief Corp., one of the voluntary agencies used by the U.S. State Department to place refugees in American communities, will conduct meetings with churches, business leaders and other support agencies, said Tanya Thomas, World Relief’s north regional director.

Currently, Catholic Charities, in cooperation with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has been responsible for resettling refugees in this area – including more than 600 Burmese last year, according to the agency.

National representatives of the 10 voluntary agencies responsible for resettling refugees meet weekly to discuss incoming cases. Based on criteria such as community resources, refugees’ geographic preferences or reunifications of families, the federal government assigns each case to a local resettlement office. [Editor:  and whether they have deemed the city "welcoming"]

Because Fort Wayne has one of the largest concentrations of Burmese in the U.S. – estimated at more than 3,000 – refugees in camps in Thailand often request to come to the Fort Wayne area.

The frequency of requests for placement in Fort Wayne drew World Relief’s attention, Thomas said.

World Relief’s national staff spoke with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Indiana’s state refugee coordinator about opening an office in Fort Wayne, and both expressed support, Thomas said.

The office would primarily resettle Burmese of the Karen and Chin ethnic minorities and refugees from a few African and Asian countries.

Local resettlement offices receive less than $500 per refugee from the federal government. [Editor: this is deceptive because the volags receive all sorts of other government grants from other agencies in addition to this fee from the US State Department.]

If the agency decides to open a local office, the timing of its opening would depend on funding, Thomas said.

Debbie Schmidt, executive director of Catholic Charities for the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, said she is uncertain whether there is a need for a second refugee resettlement office in the city.  [Editor:  Hissssss]

She expressed concern that having two offices might cause confusion among the schools, medical offices and other community agencies that work with refugees.

 

We have written extensively about the huge refugee community in Ft. Wayne and the problems it has created for taxpayers, especially with the health department of Allen County (the cost of TB treatment alone has been burdonsome). 

I discussed the squawk factor the other day in my post on Aurora here.  That is World Relief involved there too. 

Today’s immigrants cost taxpayers a bundle

Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, has a book coming out soon, The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal. Phyllis Schlafly reviews it at World Net Daily.

The pro-more-immigration crowd argues that today’s immigrants are just like immigrants of a century ago: poor people looking for a better life who are expected to advance in our land of opportunity. Krikorian’s new argument is that while today’s immigrants may be like earlier ones, the America they come to is so very different that our previous experience with immigrants is practically irrelevant.

The essential difference between the two waves of immigrants was best summed up by the Nobel Prize-winning advocate of a free market, Milton Friedman. He said, “It’s just obvious that you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.”

She goes on:

Today’s low-wage immigrants and lower-wage illegals can’t earn what it costs to live in modern America, so they supplement with means-tested taxpayer benefits. And many immigrants don’t learn our language or assimilate into American culture because of the multicultural diversity taught in our schools and encouraged in our society.

So they get the benefits available to the working poor. These include Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (now called TANF, formerly AFDC), food stamps, school lunches, Medicaid, WIC, (nutrition for Women, Infants and Children), public housing, Supplemental Security Income, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and of course the public education that is provided to everybody.

Attempts to limit welfare eligibility for illegal aliens by provisions added to the 1996 welfare reform law, SSI, food stamps, Medicaid and TANF all failed. Krikorian concludes, “Walling immigrants off from government benefits once we’ve let them in is a fantasy.”

I’d guess that most refugees fall into the same category, and that’s after they get settled and get jobs. The government aid given to immigrants costs taxpayers an enormous amount of money.

The Heritage Foundation estimated that in order to reduce government payments to the average low-skill household to a level equal to the taxes it pays, “it would be necessary to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, all means-tested welfare, and to cut expenditures on public education roughly in half.” Obviously, that is not going to happen.

When we let refugees into the United States, not only do we not distinguish between groups that can assimilate easily and add something to our nation, and groups that have trouble assimilating and bring few skills, we don’t (as far as I know) distinguish between the skills and experience of the people we let in within each group. Maybe it’s time to reform both immigration and refugee policy to give preference to those who bring useful skills and a good attitude, and will not end up draining the taxpayers dry.

Rating NGOs

The crisis in Burma is the occasion for examining what the best charities are for getting aid where it’s needed quickly and efficiently. The Chronicle of Philanthropy has a post titled “Donors Need Emergency ‘Help’ in Deciding How to Aid Myanmar.”

“Google ‘Myanmar’ and you’ll see a huge list of organizations advertising for donations,” writes Holden Karnofsky, a program officer at GiveWell, a grant maker that publicizes its evaluations of nonprofit groups. “I don’t know whether they’re coordinating on the ground, but they’re certainly competing when it comes to raising money—and donors, including myself, have virtually nothing to go on in picking one.”

The site where I got the link, The Agitator, makes a great suggestion:

I’d love to see someone host online a developing country-by-country assessment of which NGOs are doing what. Not just relief work, but ongoing human and environmental betterment. Something that goes far beyond “percentage spent on overhead” scorecards. With “reviews” of that work by knowledgeable observers, both locals and outside experts … and even donors. Like Amazon book reviews.

We need an assessment website like that for organizations involved in refugee resettlement, or any domestic charities for that matter. (Is there one? Let me know if so.)  Chris Coen has a ton of information about the various groups, based on his personal experience. Maybe other people do too. The State Department has steadfastly ignored him. It would be useful to have a place to collect information and make it public.

See one account of Chris Coen’s experiences here. And enter “Chris Coen” in our search function for more.

What is the truth about HIV and refugees?

Yesterday the Washington Post published an opinion piece by Andrew Sullivan who says that all immigrants with HIV aids are barred from the US.     He begins “Phobia at the Gates”:

Twelve countries ban HIV-positive visitors, nonimmigrants and immigrants from their territory: Armenia, Brunei, Iraq, Libya, Moldova, Oman, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sudan and . . . the United States. China recently acted to remove its ban on HIV-positive visitors because it feared embarrassment ahead of the Olympics. But America’s ban remains.

It seems unthinkable that the country that has been the most generous in helping people with HIV should legally ban all non-Americans who are HIV-positive. But it’s true: The leading center of public and private HIV research discriminates against those with HIV.

HIV is the only medical condition permanently designated in law — in the Immigration and Nationality Act — as grounds for inadmissibility to the United States. Even leprosy and tuberculosis are left to the discretion of the secretary of health and human services. 

I am sure that last fall when we had our September Forum (see our whole category) in Hagerstown, MD about refugee resettlement that the State Department representatives told us the ban on refugees with HIV had been lifted by the Clinton administration.    Here is a post in which I mentioned the supposed lifting of the ban.   Now I’m wondering if it isn’t really lifted but just ignored by those admitting refugees to the US.

By the way, one of the flaws in Sullivan’s argument involves who pays for HIV treatment of immigrants.  He says they should be required to carry private health insurance.  That is not going to happen with refugees who get medical care gratus from local governments.

Take a look at the problems some county health departments are having with the cost of health treatment for refugees.  Ft. Wayne, IN (Allen County) comes immediately to mind.

Would treating HIV like any other medical condition cost the United States if such visitors or immigrants at some point became public dependents? It’s possible — but all legal immigrants and their sponsors are required to prove that they can provide their own health insurance for at least 10 years after being admitted. Making private health insurance a condition of visiting or immigrating with HIV prevents any serious government costs, and the tax dollars that would be contributed by many of the otherwise qualified immigrants would be a net gain for the government — by some estimates, in the tens of millions of dollars.

Sullivan does mention that immigrants with all other diseases including leprosy and tuberculosis are not legally banned.   A Somali refugee died of TB in a Tyson’s meatpacking plant in Emporia, KS last year—funny you never heard that reported in the mainstream media.

I would really like to know what is the truth about refugees with HIV.

State Department yanks International Institute of Connecticut contract

Update:  Jerry Gordon at the American Congress for Truth blog has also posted on this story here.  Gordon suggests a GAO study should be initiated by members of Congress.

Wow!  Unbelievable!  There is justice afterall!  From the Republican-American today:

The State Department has canceled its contract with the agency responsible for resettling 64 Burmese refugees to Waterbury. In response, Connecticut’s congressional delegation has sent a letter of protest to the state department, asking it to give the International Institute of Connecticut more time to settle its problems.

This follows months of reports of poor housing, fractious relationships with volunteers, missed immunizations for students and insufficient assistance with daily tasks. The State Department brought the refugees here to escape the tyranny in their native Myanmar.

“I’ve heard of agencies being under investigation and there being a threat of canceling a contract, but this is the first time I’ve known about a particular case being canceled,” said Stephanie J. Nawyn, a sociologist at Michigan State University who studies resettlement. “I do think this is unusual.”

This professor, Stephanie J. Nawyn, has been in her ivory tower too long.    Dear Ms. Nawyn, this is going on across the country.  Many agencies have been closed but no one is talking about it.   I recommend she do some research into the Ethiopian Community Development Council as a first step in informing herself.

Former Democratic Presidential candidate Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd joins Ms. Nawyn in demonstrating his ignorance.   He has spearheaded a Congressional letter in defense of the volag.

So did Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, whose office was said to have spearheaded the letter to the State Department.

“The IIC has made it clear that they are taking the necessary steps to improve their resettlement program, including incorporating the recommendations of the U.S. Committee on Refugees and Immigrants” Dodd spokesman Bryan DeAngelis said. “The IIC has only asked to be returned to suspension status, so they can continue to make the necessary improvements in their program, and the Senator believes their request should be considered fully by the State Department.” 

A State Department spokesman, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said he was shocked at the delegation’s support for the institute. “I’d love to know why they’re coming so quickly to the defense of an organization that is clearly not doing its job,” he said. The spokesman said State Department investigators were shocked and embarrassed by the squalid apartments where the refugees were initially housed.

To the State Department spokesman who wants to know why Senator Dodd and others in the Connnecticut delegation have so quickly jumped to the defense of the Institute—it probably all goes back  to the mothership.  Likely Dodd has a cozy relationship with the IIC’s mothership, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants and its president Lavinia Whoop-de-do Limon.   This is how Washington works!  She is an old Democratic insider (headed up the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Clinton administration) who I am guessing jumped on the phone and got Dodd’s staff involved, who in turn then don’t have all the facts and don’t know what they are talking about.

The people who do know what they are talking about are the volunteers in the local churches who have befriended the Burmese refugees and can’t figure out why Dodd and these volags would not first look to the well-being of the refugees.

Diana Monti, of Living Faith Christian Church, believes the institute has done a poor job teaching the Burmese refugees to deal with critical daily tasks, like mailing a letter or paying a bill. “They brought them here. But whose job is it to teach them how to write a check, how to pay a bill? I don’t see the follow-through. If we didn’t step in, where would they be today?”

The volunteers plan to contact members of Congress to try to get the facts to them about this egregious case in Connecticut.  See all of our earlier coverage on Waterbury here.

And, I can’t believe this is coming from me, but, way to go US State Department!

 

Update a few hours later:   Here is a comment from Chris Coen, Friends of Refugees, on the Republican-American website today:

” When the World Relief refugee program in Port Richey, Florida (Tampa area) was shut down in 2006 for abuses and deficiencies similar to the ones in this case, many of the refugees were left high and dry.

The affiliate began by destroying all of the refugees’ documents, including paperwork for pending immigration cases. There didn’t seem to be any consequences for that outrageous action from the State Department or Florida’s refugee coordinator. To this day refugees in the Tampa area still do not have green cards, seven years after their arrival, thus jeopardizing their ability even to work legally in the U.S. We recently counted seven Lost Boys of Sudan refugees in New Port Richey, FL alone who still did not have green cards seven years after their arrival.

A Liberian refugee mother’s immigration case to bring her husband to join the family was closed for lack of activity. With an infant and three other young children she has struggled to maintain fulltime employment and care for her children while also sending money to her husband in Africa, a displaced refugee in Ghana who is unable to find any work. Had the U.S. refugee program operated with some integrity and responsibility this refugee woman’s husband would be in the U.S. now and helping to support his family.

When the State Department closes a refugee affiliate agency – and only in cases of extreme neglect and/or media scrutiny – the refugees often get swept under the rug.

Sincerely,
Christopher Coen
Director
Friends of Refugees
FORefugees@hotmail.com

The UN is blocking a solution to the Palestinian refugees

We’ve often written about the UN’s refugee agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR. But there is another refugee agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), that exists solely to deal with the Palestinian refugees, the Arabs who left Israel at its founding, and their descendants.

In a new report from the GLORIA Center (Global Research in International Affairs), Barry Rubin, Asaf Romirowsky and Jonathan Spyer show how dysfunctional and destructive this agency is.

On the surface, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) seems a humanitarian group helping Palestinian refugees. In reality, it actually helps destroy the chance of Arab-Israeli peace, promotes terrorism, and holds Palestainians back from rebuilding their lives.

Unique in history, UNRWA’s job is to keep Palestinian refugees in suspended animation–and at low living standards–until they achieve the goal set for them by the PLO and Hamas: Israel’s extinction. In the meantime, their suffering and anger is maintained as a weapon to encourage them toward violence and intransigence.

UNRWA schools become hotbeds of anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Semitic indoctrination, recruiting offices for terrorist groups. UNRWA’s services are dominated by radicals who staff and subsidize radical groups while potentially intimidating anyone from voicing a different line. UNWRA facilities are used to store and transport weapons, actually serving as military bases.

In this process, UNRWA has broken all the rules that are supposed to govern humanitarian enterprises. Consequently, UNRWA is the exact opposite of other refugee relief operations. They seek to resettle refugees; UNRWA is dedicated to blocking resettlement. They help refugees to live normal lives so that they can move on with their existence; UNRWA’s role is to ensure their lives remain abnormal so they are filled with anger and a thirst for revenge that inspires violence and can only be quenched by a victorious return. They try to create stable conditions for refugees; UNRWA’s mission is to enable radical political activity and indoctrination by armed groups which ensures a continual state of near chaos.

The Palestinians are the only group of refugees that were not resettled after World War II. UNRWA was set up in such a way that it discouraged the refugees from building new lives, unlike the UNHCR, which seeks resettlement if repatriation is not an option. The authors go into the historical reasons that this happened, and a great deal more.  They have three recommendations:

First, UNRWA should be dissolved.

Second, all services it provides should be transferred to other agencies within the UN, notably the UNHCR, which has a long and productive experience in this area.

Third, responsibility for normal social services should be turned over to the Palestinian Authority. Most UNRWA staff should be transferred to it. Donors should use the maximum amount of oversight to ensure this be done effectively.

People often wonder why violence and instability persists and why the Arab-Israeli conflict is so seemingly impossible to resolve. One important part of the answer is that UNRWA perpetuates the problem. All those seeking real progress toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians need to take a close look at this unacceptable situation. All those with responsibility for the management of these issues need to work for a change of course.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Refugee children arrive with health problems: follow-up spotty

Yesterday I came across a press release from the Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Rhode Island.   Several of their doctors prepared papers on the health of refugee children for presentation to a Pediatric Conference on-going in Hawaii.   

The first paper says that refugee children are arriving in greater numbers to the US with a large burden of disease and other health issues requiring followup by medical specialists.   Additionally the paper discusses the variability in screening. 

ABSTRACT: Newly arrived refugees are an increasing presence in the American health care system. Research has shown that newly arrived refugee children have an appreciable burden of disease. Little is known, however, about subspecialty referral for identified morbidities.

The objective of this study was to describe the health status and the subspecialty needs of a pediatric refugee population in the first year after resettlement. The results of the study demonstrate a high disease burden in a population of newly arrived pediatric refugees, with rates of disease similar to those found in other studies of refugee children. Although the burden of disease justifies screening at arrival, there was variability in the specific screening tests performed. The study also highlights the common subspecialty needs of this population. More than half of the patients were referred to a subspecialist, and they interfaced with a wide variety of subspecialists. A medical home that includes primary care and subspecialty providers who have an understanding of the medical needs of refugee children will likely improve health care for this vulnerable population. 

The second paper reports that vaccination schedules for preventable disease is often not followed up.  Although this abstract doesn’t say it, I suspect this is the fault of the volags who resettle refugees and in many cases do not even know where the families are in 4-6 months after arrival in the US.    For instance, the Somali refugees are nomadic and I doubt they are reporting in to the health department as they move from city to city.

ABSTRACT:

Newly arrived refugee children are at risk for vaccine preventable diseases due to incomplete immunization. Catch-up vaccination requires multiple visits to a primary care provider. There has been little research addressing vaccination status of refugee children after resettlement.

 

The objective of this study was to assess immunization rates for refugee children who have been in the United States for at least one year. Findings showed that low overall rates of complete immunization were found in a population of pediatric refugees after resettlement. These low rates were mostly due to children who were lost to follow-up within the first year. For those refugees attending a primary care clinic throughout the first year of resettlement, immunization rates were comparable to rates in the general population. The creation of a medical home for refugee children will likely increase immunization completion rates. 

Our attention was first drawn to this issue in reports from Ft. Wayne, IN last September where its health department was stretched to the max by the large numbers of refugees arriving in that city.   See our whole Ft. Wayne archive here and learn how one city has struggled to pay for this health care burden. 

To learn more about health related problems with refugees see our “health issues” category.