Secrecy surrounds refugee program in Tennessee
(your state too!) Posted by Ann Corcoran on June 25, 2016
This is an
opinion piece published in The Tennessean yesterday and
posted in its entirety here with permission from the author. Don Barnett is an
expert on the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program and its history
having followed its progression for literally two decades. Don Barnett is a
longtime resident of the Nashville, TN area
From The Tennessean: Before the Refugee Act of 1980,
refugee resettlement was the work of true sacrificial charity, where sponsors
and charities committed to maintaining and supporting the refugees with housing
and employment, even medical care if needed. There was an explicit bar to the
access of welfare benefits. The sponsor was responsible for all costs. This
helped to guarantee assimilation and is how we absorbed post-WWII refugees,
those fleeing communist oppression in Eastern Europe, the Hungarian Revolution
and other upheavals.
With the 1980
Refugee Act and related laws, the charities morphed into money-making federal
contractors whose main job is to link the refugees with social services and
welfare benefits. The 1980 act made all
welfare available to refugees upon arrival — for life, if eligibility is
maintained.
Originally, the
Refugee Act included three years of federal refugee cash assistance and medical
insurance. As well, state governments were reimbursed for their expenditures on
welfare used by refugees, such as Medicaid (TennCare), for three years. By
1991, reimbursement from the feds for state welfare expenditures had been
completely eliminated and the three-year period of refugee cash and medical
assistance for refugees was limited to eight months.
According to
the most recent government data, even those refugees in the country for five
years are largely dependent on taxpayer largesse. Sixty percent of this group
receives food stamps and 17 percent are on the cash welfare program Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). A nationwide U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services study shows 44 percent are still in Medicaid and 29 percent
of families who have been here for five years have one or more members on the
lifetime cash welfare program Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
This gives an
idea of the costs to the federal taxpayer and of the unfunded federal mandate
placed upon state taxpayers by this program.
Because of the
byzantine structure of Tennessee’s program, there is no way to get exact costs.
Both the state refugee coordinator and state refugee health coordinator, who
are supposed to represent the state and its taxpayers, are actually employees
of Catholic Charities, the federal contractor whose income rises in direct
proportion to the numbers of refugees resettled. Further, the salary for both
of these positions is paid not by the contractor, but by the feds. How’s that
for a conflict of interest?
In a healthy
and open environment, information would be made available from these two
sources, which would help in evaluating program success and program costs, such
as use of TennCare by refugees, rates of infection with communicable disease
and so on. Alas, because of incentives and disincentives built into the refugee
coordinators’ jobs, the best strategy for them is to withhold information.
Secrecy
surrounds all aspects of the program. We have no idea what it is costing
Tennessee. Statistics about medical conditions among refugees are secret. Even
the numbers of refugee arrivals proposed for next year is a secret. And when
arrival numbers are reported, after the fact, they are routinely reported as
lower than actual numbers by conveniently neglecting to include categories of
resettlement that are not official refugees, but that have the same
entitlements — and benefits to the contractor — as refugees.
Orwellian use
of language allows for absurd claims about refugee economic integration. For
instance, refugees are considered officially “self-sufficient” even if they
receive every federal welfare benefit except TANF. Refugees in temporary jobs
or training programs are counted as “employed.” An unpublicized federal audit
from 1999 obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request found that
Memphis Catholic Charities was dropping refugees off at a day labor lot and
reporting them as “employed.”
It was never
intended that the sponsors, known as “Voluntary Agencies,” would be purely
federal contractors with all the behavior, untoward incentives, money and
influence peddling that this brings. Yet, that is what we have today.
There would be
no issue with this program if refugees were resettled in the traditional way
America has always absorbed refugees. As long as the current resettlement model
persists, it is imperative that Tennesseans have a say in how state resources
are used. The state attorney general should proceed with SJR 467 challenging
the federal government’s presumed authority over state resources.
We have
previously posted op-eds by Don Barnett or written about his work, click here for posts mentioning Barnett.
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