Congo Refugees to Utah

Congolese refugees are going to Ogden, UT, volunteers needed, but whites should not apply, by Ann Corcoran, 5/22/16

Catholic Charities in Utah is recruiting volunteers who look like the Congolese!  Many people believe that Utah is resettling refugees through the Mormon church.  Although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints encourages the resettlement of refugees, including Muslim refugees, it is actually the Catholic Church in charge here.

An aside: every time I see something from Utah I wonder who had the bright idea to place a Burmese Muslim refugee in an apartment complex filled with Burmese Christians.  The end result was the brutal murder of a little Christian girl and now the taxpayers of Utah get to pay for Esar Met’s life in prison.

Former Somali refugee Aden Batar runs Catholic Community Service’s program in Utah.

We have been writing about new resettlement sites lately (Rutland, VT, Reno, NV, Ithaca, NY) as the federal government and its refugee contractors are scrambling for new places in which to seed third world diversity.  Now it is Ogden Utah’s turn.

From the Standard Examiner: OGDEN — Diverse populations of Ogden: You are wanted. The community is invited to a meeting for future volunteers to gear up to welcome refugees from the Congo beginning sometime this summer.

A refugee resettlement conversation is planned for 6 p.m to 7:30 p.m. Monday, May 23, at the Marshall White Center, 222 28th Street in Ogden.

“We want to involve Ogden’s diverse communities with this initiative,” said Jenny Gnagey, community awareness building specialist for Catholic Community Services and also an assistant professor of economics at Weber State University. “We want to be able to connect these refugees with people that look like them.”

“Each year, Catholic Community Services resettles 600 refugees from all around the world in the state of Utah,” Gnagey said. “This summer we are expanding our resettlement efforts to the Ogden community. In the coming year, we expect that Ogden will receive approximately 20 primarily Congolese refugee families.”

They must have problems in Utah with landlords fearful of renting to refugees or they wouldn’t be saying this: Catholic Community Services also is looking for landlords who will rent to these families.

The rental agreement comes with supervision of Catholic Community Services to assure that the families fulfill their obligations.

“If you rent to a refugee and they have any issue, we will be there to support them,” Batar said. “We want to assure landlords that they don’t have to worry.”

Batar wants future landlords to know that the refugees coming to Ogden are legally documented new American citizens.  [To be accurate, they aren’t US citizens until they go through the citizenship process—ed] For more, continue reading here.

Most of the Congolese refugees entering the US right now are from the DR Congo. We committed to taking 50,000 of them, here in 2013.

Below is a map (source: US State Department Refugee Processing Center) of where 20,967 of them have been placed in the last 4 years.  (Over 29,000 yet to be placed by the State Dept. target date of 2019!)

Please note that only a small number (846) are Muslims, but many Christian faiths are represented.  I wanted to mention that here because there are some misunderstandings flying around that all of our refugees are Muslims, they aren’t!

However, remember as we learned here, many from the DR Congo are women with (costly) mental health needs, and they likely won’t be supporting their families anytime soon.

https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2016/05/22/congolese-refugees-are-going-to-ogden-ut-volunteers-needed-but-whites-should-not-apply/