Perks for Refugees

Radio Commentary, 90.7, 91.7 New Life FM, October 9, 2015 – By Sue Ella Deadwyler

Did you know? Over 60,000 people signed a White House petition encouraging an increase in refugee admissions to the United States. Did you know? The Refugee Council USA wants the administration to bring in 100,000 refugees every year. That’s an annual increase of 30,000, and they want 200,000 brought in next year.

Each state has a Refugee State Coordinator to coordinate public and private benefits for refugee resettlement. In Georgia the Department of Human Resources, DFACS Office of Family Independence administers the refugee program.

There are five categories of refugees; two are nation-specific; and all of them benefit from the Program that gets them here, and gets them started with cash, housing, education, healthcare, and job training. Here in Georgia, State government contracts with 12 public and private agencies for specific social services, but local government is expected to provide “existing community resources.”

Communities are told that 80 percent of employable adult refugees resettled in Georgia are working and paying their own expenses and taxes within six months. But the literature doesn’t mention the other 20 percent that don’t get jobs, don’t pay their own way, but remain dependent on “utilizing existing community resources.” If 20 percent of the 200,000 don’t get jobs, 40,000 refugees will continue to be taxpayer-dependent, indefinitely. That’s a lot of milk and cheese and bread and butter, and housing and healthcare and education and transportation.Benefits to refugees include federal support for education, but not total school funding. Federal money helps pay for after-school enrichment and tutoring, translation, early-learning, and cultural training for school staff, but there’s no mention of federal funds to build new wings at schools that are bulging with refugee children.

Refugees are invited by the U.S. government to be resettled and they’re here to stay. They enter the U.S. as legal residents, on-track to becoming U.S. citizens. They are eligible to work upon arrival, apply for permanent residence after one year, and they can apply for citizenship after five years.

Refugee Resettlement originates with the UN, is partially federally funded, is planned and carried out without consent of communities that bear the brunt and un-ending cost of change, fewer jobs for U.S. citizens, and eternal support for at least 20 percent of the refugees that never become self-sufficient. Re-population is being thrust upon the United States. For Georgia Insight, I’m Sue Ella Deadwyler, your Capitol correspondent.